Leicester Mercury 20th April 2005 from the 25 YEARS AGO feature
Leicester received another royal visit yesterday when Princess Alice,Duchess of Gloucester, presented colours to the city-based 7th Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment. About 3,000 people turned out on a chilly morning to watch the ceremony at the Victoria Park war memorial, where nearly 200 men of the Territorial Army were on parade. The Princess presented the Queen's and regimental colours to the battalion, watched by civic dignitaries and senior Army officers.
The Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, Colonel Andrew Martin, the Lord Mayor, Mr Bill Scotton, and the chairman of Leicestershire County Council, Mr George Farnham, were joined by civic leaders from all the towns where the battalion has companies based.
Seeing this in the Mercury reminded me that an artist was commissioned to record the occasion on canvass, when the painting was finished the RSM at the time, Roger Jones, didn't appear on the painting although of course he had played an important part in the parade. The artist, unable to add him to the picture, painted his face in the bushes in the bottom left corner of the picture, clearly recognisable as Roger, square jaw, row of white teeth, and his face appears on all the copies that were produced for sale afterwards.
However the QM, Maj Stan Bullock was equally upset, as he didn't appear in the painting either, so the artist painted his face into the bushes in the bottom right of the picture but only after the original had been copied. So although RSM Roger Jones appears on the original and all the copies, Maj Stan Bullock only appears on the original. (excerpt from 'Boring but True')