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Dame Helen Mirren to join Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations

Dame Helen Mirren is set to join the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

The 76-year-old actress will join a star-studded cast to celebrate the Jubilee at Windsor Castle, with the event being staged across four nights in May next year.

The Gallop Through History event has been billed as a “personal tribute to our monarchy”. The show is designed to take the audience on a journey from Elizabeth I to Queen Elizabeth and will feature horses, dancers and musicians.

Volunteers from across the UK and the Commonwealth will also be involved in the celebrations, with a special pageant being staged in the streets of London.

One courtier told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “It is going to absolutely be the best of British on show and there will be something for everyone to enjoy on what will be a series of magnificent occasions during one of the biggest celebratory events for decades.”

Helen famously took on the role of Queen Elizabeth in the 2006 film ‘The Queen’.

And the actress previously admitted to having sympathy for the monarch, acknowledging that she’s “had drama all of her life”.

She said: “[The Queen] had huge drama all of her life.

“When you think that when she was in her early teens [it] was the second World War … what could be more dramatic than that? I mean, what would have happened to that family if the Nazis, if Germany, had won that war?

“Yeah, it really, really looked as if Germany was going to win that war. So, you know, this is a woman who’s been through an extraordinary life of change, of drama, of tragedy, of triumph … She’s a survivor.”