LONDON: She has several castles and hundreds of millions of pounds in the bank, but Queen Elizabeth II looked delighted with her winnings from a horse show — a £50 supermarket voucher.
Photos published Friday from the Royal Windsor Horse Show showed a smiling British monarch, who has a life-long passion for horses, clutching a voucher from retailer Tesco.
Her 14-year-old bay gelding Barber’s Shop won first prize in the Tattersalls and RoR Thoroughbred Ridden Show Series Qualifier at the show near her Windsor Castle residence on Thursday.
The voucher may not be worth much financially to a woman who has a personal fortune of £340 million ($490 million, 430 million euros), according to the Sunday Times Rich List. But the Daily Telegraph reported that the queen burst out laughing when she opened the winner’s envelope, which included the gift token and another for a jacket from another retailer.
“She usually distributes her winnings to her trainers, jockeys and others with a hand in her success,” the newspaper reported.
Tesco later offered its congratulations, with a spokesman quoted by the Telegraph as saying: “We hope this win provides a little help with the weekly royal shop.”
The latest royal accounts show the queen’s household spent £1.3 million on food and drink in 2015 — the equivalent of £25,000 a week.
The queen’s modest winnings made for some better headlines in Friday’s papers than earlier in the week, when the monarch was caught in a rare diplomatic gaffe describing some Chinese officials as “very rude.”
Queen delighted after winning Tesco voucher
Queen delighted after winning Tesco voucher
Cambodia takes back looted historic artifacts handled by British art dealer
- The objects were returned under a 2020 agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and the family of the late Douglas Latchford, a British art collector and dealer who allegedly had the items smuggled out of Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Cambodian officials on Friday received more than six dozen historic artifacts described as part of the country’s cultural heritage that had been looted during decades of war and instability.
At a ceremony attended by Deputy Prime Minister Hun Many, the 74 items were unveiled at the National Museum in Phnom Penh after their repatriation from the United Kingdom.
The objects were returned under a 2020 agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and the family of the late Douglas Latchford, a British art collector and dealer who allegedly had the items smuggled out of Cambodia.
“This substantial restitution represents one of the most important returns of Khmer cultural heritage in recent years, following major repatriations in 2021 and 2023 from the same collection,” the Culture Ministry said in a statement. “It marks a significant step forward in Cambodia’s continued efforts to recover, preserve, and restore its ancestral legacy for future generations.”
The artifacts were described as dating from the pre-Angkorian period through the height of the Angkor Empire, including “monumental sandstone sculptures, refined bronze works, and significant ritual objects.” The Angkor Empire, which extended from the ninth to the 15th century, is best known for the Angkor Wat archaeological site, the nation’s biggest tourist attraction.
Latchford was a prominent antiquities dealer who allegedly orchestrated an operation to sell looted Cambodian sculptures on the international market.
From 1970 to the 1980s, during Cambodia’s civil wars and the communist Khmer Rouge ‘s brutal reign, organized looting networks sent artifacts to Latchford, who then sold them to Western collectors, dealers, and institutions. These pieces were often physically damaged, having been pried off temple walls or other structures by the looters.
Latchford was indicted in a New York federal court in 2019 on charges including wire fraud and conspiracy. He died in 2020, aged 88, before he could be extradited to face charges.
Cambodia, like neighboring Thailand, has benefited from a trend in recent decades involving the repatriation of art and archaeological treasures. These include ancient Asian artworks as well as pieces lost or stolen during turmoil in places such as Syria, Iraq and Nazi-occupied Europe. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the prominent institutions that has been returning illegally smuggled art, including to Cambodia.
“The ancient artifacts created and preserved by our ancestors are now being returned to Cambodia, bringing warmth and joy, following the country’s return to peace,” said Hun Many, who is the younger brother of Prime Minister Hun Manet.
