By Royal appointment - the Queen's cultural likes and dislikes

Over her lifetime, Queen Elizabeth II witnessed potentially the greatest shift in artistic tastes to happen across a century.

When Elizabeth II was born in 1926, black-and-white silent film was the norm, jazz was considered a new genre, and modernist literature was all the rage.

In the decades that would follow, she would see the growth of television, the pop music revolution of the 60s, and growing recognition of a far more diverse range of artists.

But which artists rank among the Queen’s favourites? 

When the news was announced of Elizabeth II’s passing on the 8th of September, the number one song in the UK charts was B.O.T.A. (Baddest of them all) by Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal.

But while in the last decade of her life, the British music scene has been predominated by house and grime tracks, the Queen's tastes, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a little more old school.

In 2016 she revealed her favourite songs. They were mostly made up of show tunes from musicals, hymns, and some classic crooners. No mention of Stormzy, but she was 96. What did you expect?

Of her top 10, she included musical numbers ‘Oklahoma!’ by Howard Keel and ‘Anything You Can Do (Annie Get Your Gun)’ by Dolores Gray and Bill Johnson.

There were the hymns ‘Praise, My Soul, The King Of Heaven’ and ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’.

Also featured were 30s and 40s classics ‘Cheek to Cheek’ by Fred Astaire, ‘The White Cliffs Of Dover’ by Vera Lynn, and ‘Leaning on a Lamp-post’ by George Formby

Elizabeth II referenced another Vera Lynn song, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ when addressing the UK in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown.

Most surprising on the list though is an entry from Take That’s frontman Gary Barlow. The Queen specifically mentioned her enjoyment