The Crown From The Crowd

[esillett]

Renowned royal expert Jennie Bond, who served as the BBC?s Royal Correspondent during 14 of the most turbulent years the monarchy has endured, has today (20th March) issued a national call-to-action for people across the country to raid their attics and albums for any retro-royal photos taken at any one of the estimated 50,000 royal engagements since the Second World War.

Designed to commemorate the forthcoming royal wedding, the ground-breaking project, which was inspired by Karen Anvil?s world-famous Christmas Day photograph of Prince William, The Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aims to shed a new light on the Royal Family through eliciting the people?s perspective of both era-defining events and everyday appointments.

Over 300 of the most engaging pictures and accompanying anecdotes will be published in a spectacular 160-page coffee table tome, available to buy from May 8th ? with all profits donated to Help for Heroes.

Providing a people?s portrait of the modernisation of both the institution and family, The Crown from the Crowd will chart the extraordinary evolution of the people, characters and behaviour of the members of the House of Windsor, revealing the best, hidden, forgotten and unseen images from an untapped national archive.

Leading cultural historian Dominic Sandbrook will provide narrative and context through an alternative modern social history of the Elizabethan era ? from the austere, buttoned-up conservative personas of the post-war era, through to the more accessible, personable and relatable personalities of the two 21st century, contemporary Royal Princes.

?The marriage between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle marks a seminal moment in the history and evolution of the Royal Family?. Comments Jennie Bond. ?To think, even decades ago, that a previously married, American actress would be welcomed into the bosom of the Royal Establishment with such genuine warmth shows how far the Crown has changed. 

This project will be a fascinating exercise in plundering an untapped national archive of otherwise forgotten or lost pictures of the most famous family in history.?   

Dominic Sandbrook says ?The story of the Royal Family has always been woven into our national fabric, but this project offers a brilliant opportunity to explore it in an entirely different way. This won?t be an official, manicured history, but a genuine people?s history, told through the eyes of ordinary people themselves, from the austerity of the 1950s to the abundance of today. We?ll see what they saw, and for the first time we'll glimpse the Royal Family through their eyes. We?ll see how the royals have changed, how Britain has changed - and how we?ve changed, too."

Rory Scott, Photobox spokesman, says, ?This is nothing short of a photographic archaeological quest for long lost royal treasures lying forgotten in the nation?s attic archives. A blend of royal reportage and citizen photojournalism. It?s a true world first.

?While members of the Royal Family are some of the most photographed people on the planet, it?s very rare to come across un-staged, unedited, and non-professional pictures that are not taken by the accredited media corps of photographers. We hope by creating what will be the people?s Royal Family album we?ll open a new, previously unseen window into the House of Windsor.? 

Images can be submitted via the CROWN FROM THE CROWD website from Tuesday 20th March until midnight on Monday 2nd April. The Crown from the Crowd will be published on Tuesday 8th May 2018 RRP ?25.