LONDON: Buckingham Palace will begin PR preparations for Queen Elizabeth II's golden jubilee celebrations early next year, the monarch's press secretary said this week.
LONDON: Buckingham Palace will begin PR preparations for Queen Elizabeth II's golden jubilee celebrations early next year, the monarch's press secretary said this week.
The 50th anniversary of the Queen's coronation is not until autumn 2002. But Penelope Russell-Smith, who was appointed last week as the Queen's press spokesperson, said a major part of her job would be to coordinate media activity around the jubilee.
'The event is expected to attract enormous interest from regional, national and international media,' she said. Work will start in January to lay the groundwork for that.'
Russell-Smith takes over the reins at Buckingham Palace on Christmas Eve. She succeeds Geoffrey Crawford who is due to return to to his native Australia early in the new year. He is to start work in Sydney for an unnamed PR agency.
Russell-Smith has been deputy press secretary to the Queen since 1996 and has been at the Palace since 1993. She took up the post on secondment from the Government Information and Communication Service.
Her previous roles have included a three-year stint as principal information officer on European matters at the Foreign Office.
In her new role, Russell-Smith reports jointly to overall royal communications secretary Simon Walker - a secondee from British Airways - and to the Queen herself.
