and most glamorous - royal visits of all time. So, can YOU tell...

The image, from Elizabeth II's 1957 tour of Paris, is on display in London . But there is more to the famous black and white photograph than meets the eyeIt is monumental in sweep, mixing formal dignity with vast scale and, even today, unmatchable glamour.

This remarkable panorama shows Queen Elizabeth II as she ascends the grand staircase at the Palais Garnier on the first evening of her state visit to the French capital in 1957 First published in Picture Post of April 20, the panorama comprises 15 separate shots or more, each trimmed with a scalpel by Hardy’s colleagues back in London then taped together to create a single whole.Hardy would later describe it as one of the most ambitious montages, or ‘join ups’, he had ever produced in a long and acclaimed career and today it features in a new exhibition of his work in a major London gallery.

Attaching himself to a group of French dignitaries resplendent in plumed hats, Hardy slipped through the entrance then looked for a good vantage point. ‘Before the Queen actually entered, I started taking shots of the vast entrance hall, working slowly from left to right and from top to bottom, and making sure that the edges of each shot coincided as far as possible with some feature like the edge of a balcony or pillar.

One clue is that the guards on the right-hand side of the panorama, figure 7 of our illustration, have their swords lowered rather than raised, suggesting they were captured early in Hardy’s sequence, before the arrival of the Queen and President Rene Coty. The Queen and Prince Philip found a nation not only grateful for Britain’s support in the war but united in shared anger – and humiliation - at the recent failure of the joint Franco-British Suez expedition.

The municipality of Paris presented a model railway based on the Metro – too complicated for eight-year-old Prince Charles, said the Queen, but his father would be delighted – and a collection of 12 Parisian dolls for Princess Anne, each one representing a different part of the city. Sir Gladwyn felt that Serge Lifar’s ballet, Le Chevalier et la Demoiselle, had been a dismal failure at the Palais Garnier, but that the ‘immense enthusiasm’ from the audience and the crowd outside had more than made up for it.

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