Today, Her Majesty will travel to Westminster to open a new parliamentary session. It comes after Boris Johnson secured a thumping majority at the general election last week. As the last Opening of Parliament was held just nine weeks ago, the ceremony will happen with less pomp than usual.

There will be no ceremonial robes and no golden carriage, but the speech, which will outline Boris Johnson’s agenda for the coming year, will be broadcast live on television.

The Queen has been a constant presence at the State Openings of Parliament during her reign and has delivered the speech 64 times.

She was absent on only two occasions – in 1959 and 1963, because she was pregnant with Prince Andrew and Prince Edward respectively.

Back then, there was a different general attitude towards pregnancy.

Unlike today, the time she had Prince Charles in 1948 all the way to 1964 when she welcomed her youngest child, Prince Edward, the Queen and Buckingham Palace kept the pregnancies very low-key.

Buckingham Palace released perplexing statements announcing the monarch would not be seen in public, instead of her pregnancy.

In 1948, the statement read: “Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth will undertake no public engagements after the end of June.”

Moreover, not only was the Queen not photographed while pregnant, but no pictures of her with her children were published until their christenings.

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Princess Diana was the first member of the Royal Family to deal with her pregnancies in a more modern way.

When it came to announcing that she was pregnant with Prince William, the statement was a little less formal.

The news broke on November 5, 1981 – just a little over three months after her marriage to Prince Charles.

A Palace statement said: “The Prince and Princess of Wales, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and members of both families are delighted by the news. The princess is in excellent health.”

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Diana also spoke openly about her pregnancy to the media and she was the first royal to give birth in a hospital.

Diana reportedly told biographer Andrew Morton: “I couldn’t handle the press pressure any longer, it was becoming unbearable.

“It was as if everybody was monitoring every day for me.”

She also started the tradition of posing in front of the steps of St Mary’s Lindo Wing after William’s birth.

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