The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s baby boy Archie joined in with a video call to his great-mother the Queen on her 94th birthday.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are thousands of miles away living in Los Angeles after quitting as senior members of the royal family earlier this year. After initially moving to a rented home in Vancouver, Canada, they flew to California last month to settle down as a family.

Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, who turns one in a fortnight, was with his mum and dad as they delivered their birthday wishes to the Queen, who is marking the occasion at Windsor Castle away from her family while Britain is on lockdown. The trio called later in the afternoon due to the eight hour time difference between the UK and the west coast of America.

The Queen is with her husband of 72 years, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Windsor with a reduced household for their protection. Like the rest of the nation, the royals are staying away from one another as they follow the social distancing rules amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Other family members will have also telephoned and video-called the Queen privately to deliver their birthday messages.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are at Anmer Hall in Norfolk with their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

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Prince William and Kate Middleton both shared birthday congratulations to the Queen on their social media accounts alongside a picture of them showing her the duchess’s garden at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall’s Twitter account also sent birthday wishes, with a collection of touching archive photos of Charles and his mother.

Charles, who has recovered from the Covid-19 illness, is at Birkhall in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with his wife Camilla.

Anne Princess Royal, Prince Andrew Duke of York and Prince Edward Earl of Wessex are all in their own separate homes around the country.

The bells of Westminster Abbey – the church where the Queen was married and crowned – stayed silent on her birthday for the first time in more than a decade.

There were no gun salutes in central London, at the Queen’s request, for what was believed to be the first time.

In celebration of the monarch’s special day, Buckingham Palace shared the Royal Pastry Chefs’ chocolate cupcake recipe online.

Images included rows of delicately decorated cakes with pale pink, yellow and lilac icing each adorned with an EIIR cypher, golden crown or a rose.

The recipe makes 15 cakes and the secret ingredients include 15g of vinegar and 100g of white chocolate chips.

Meanwhile Buckingham Palace has released private footage of the monarch as a carefree young princess.

Behind-the-scenes archive film from the Royal Collection Trust shows Princess Elizabeth playing with a pram as a toddler, as a happy young girl on a seesaw, and skipping and jumping around a garden with her younger sister Princess Margaret.

It also shows her delight as she sits on a horse, and she is seen dancing on a yacht with Margaret, in matching outfits, as they learn dance steps from their mother, Queen Elizabeth.

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