Greater Glasgow has witnessed few more memorable royal visits by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II than the day Her Royal Highness arrived to launch the Clyde-built ocean liner named in her honour: the QE2.
On September 20, 1967, our late Queen had millions of viewers glued to their television sets as the live coverage of the historic launch at John Brown's shipyard in Clydebank got underway. Huge crowds assembled with flags waving and voices cheering as Her Majesty prepared to press the button to send the 293-metre-long ship into the water.
In these precious photographs, kindly sent in to us by Eric Armstrong, we gain an idea of the scale of the occasion as throngs of people push forward to get a front row view of the proceedings. But, as often happens during such momentous occasions, everything did not go quite as smoothly as Cunard chiefs would have hoped.
