2012 has been a truly great year for Britain and Britishness, with the Queen's diamond jubilee, followed by the enormously successful and uplifting Olympics and Paralympics, they've have had much to celebrate. In continued celebration and continuing British traditions, Queen Elizabeth has opened the Jubilee Gardens in South Bank, created to mark her 60 year reign. 

The gardens have had £5m pumped into them (expensive fertilizer), and has gone from a "flat featureless space" to a thing of urbane beauty. Plus, around 1000 mature oak trees have been planted in the area, which, when grown will provide a gorgeous shaded area in summer, with one of the UK's most iconic trees. Ted Inman is the chairman of the Jubilee Gardens Trust, a registered charity, he spoke with glee about the garden and its improvement:"It's now an open space worthy of where it is, it's so busy now and well used," he said, quoted on the BBC news website. "We opened at the end of May in time for the river pageant and there were about 15,000 people here watching the procession."

Also marking its own jubilee this year is BFI, and the Queen celebrated with them in viewing a 3D version of her own coronation from 1953, called Royal Review. The Guardian Film Blog nodded towards the irony and post-modernity of the Queen's life, "it is staggering to think that over 60 years, her life has been an unbroken series of such events, like that first "ancient Christian ordeal" in 1953 to this reception at BFI Southbank," wrote the blogger, likening her life to a film itself. "We, the public, move before her like a frieze, or perhaps like a colossal crowd scene in an epic film produced specially for her."