Remembrance Sunday 2021: Queen to attend service at Cenotaph

The 95-year-old monarch will miss General Synod next week though

The Queen will attend the (Getty Images)

The Queen will appear at a Remembrance service in London on Sunday, Buckingham Palace has announced.

The 95-year-old monarch will watch the Cenotaph ceremony from the balcony of the Foreign Office building, after previously saying it was her “firm intention” to attend the annual occasion to honour Britain’s war dead.

However, she will miss the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday evening and the General Synod next week because of her doctors’ advice to rest, the statement added.

The announcement comes three weeks after the Queen spent a night in hospital for “preliminary investigations”, fuelling speculation about the state of her health.

Prince Charles sought to reassure the public about his mother’s health on Thursday, while appearing at an event in south London.

After he met young entrepreneurs who are supported by his charity the Prince’s Trust, one man asked the 72-year-old heir how his mother was faring.

The Prince of Wales is reported to have replied: “She’s alright, thank you.”

Last week, doctors gave the Queen permission to leave Windsor Castle for the first time since her evening in hospital. She returned to her Berkshire residence on Tuesday after spending a long weekend at Sandringham in Norfolk.

As head of the armed forces, the monarch, who was a teenager in the Second World War, appears each year at the Cenotaph service to pay her respects to those who have lost their lives fighting for Britain.

The Queen’s daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Cornwall, laid a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey on Thursday to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War.

The Queen’s late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, who died earlier this year, usually performed this tradition.

Additional reporting by PA