Queen Elizabeth II in Pakistan

In the middle of a six-week tour of the Indian sub-continent between January and March 1961, the Queen and Prince Philip visited Pakistan (1-12 February) and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh (12-16 February). It was their first state visit to a region that had been part of the British Empire until 14 August 1947, when the modern state of Pakistan was formed out of the majority Muslim parts of what was previously British India. The Queen remained Pakistan’s monarch until 1956, when the country became a republic. The tour took in Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore and Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh), with visits to the memorial to modern Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the township of Korangi (site of a major development scheme), the Khyber Pass (the geographical gateway to the entire Indian subcontinent, and a crucial outpost of the old British Empire), the then-new Warsak Dam on the Kabul River, the valley of Swat, the Badshahi mosque (until 1986 the largest in the world), the Shalimar and Gulistan-e-Fatima Gardens, a jute mill, a river trip around the Ganges delta, a torchlight tattoo by the West Pakistan Rangers, a Girl Guides display and, possibly of greatest interest to the royal visitors, the Lahore Races and Annual Horse Show. The latter’s demonstration of the ancient cavalry sport of ‘tent-pegging’ (in which horsemen have to spear small targets while riding at a gallop) provides a high-speed action interlude.

They also visit Islamabad, though it’s a far cry from the bustling, cosmopolitan capital of present-day Pakistan. In the 1950s, it was a comparatively small city with a population of around 100,000. In 1958, for primarily geographical reasons (the original capital, Karachi, was considered strategically vulnerable and too remote from much of the country), Islamabad was selected as the new national capital, and the film catches the city at an early stage of what would be a huge expansion, with shots of the planned grid-based layout. The Queen would visit Bangladesh, independent since 1971, from 14-17 November 1983, and Pakistan again from 6-12 October 1997 as the first leg of what turned out to be one of her more controversial state visits. Although the Pakistan trip itself passed smoothly, a perceived promise by the then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to help the Pakistanis resolve the longstanding Kashmir dispute caused outrage in India and cast a pall over the Queen’s visit there, which followed immediately afterwards.