QE2 to show her swinging 60s style in anniversary exhibition

SHE was the last great liner to be built at John Brown’s yard, launching on the River Clyde to embark on a successful and lengthy transatlantic career.

Now a new exhibition has been launched to celebrate 50 years since the QE2 – the last great Clydebuilt passenger liner – left the Clydebank shipyards.

Opening today at the Glasgow School of Art, the exhibition will feature photographs, brochures, models, original menus, plans of the ship and other memorabilia of the famous ship.

Curated by GSA lecturer, Professor Bruce Peter, it includes images and ephemera from his own personal collection together with a number of loaned items.

The exhibition will focus on the design of the ship and its interiors – which represented a high point for British post-war design and involved a number of very significant British architects, industrial, interior and graphic designers.

Many Scots still recall when the Queen Elizabeth 2 slid into the Clyde in 1967 to become the flagship of the Cunard Line.

At almost 1,000 feet long and after nearly 70 years of building, the QE2 was part of the British design renaissance of the 1960s, dubbed a “style icon” of the day.

Tens of thousands of people gathered to see the Queen launch the liner, with a bottle of champagne smashing against its bow.

Her maiden voyage was in 1969, the same year Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and she continued to sail for more than three decades of service.

Over the years, she became a destination in and of herself, rather than a carrier, and carried around 2.5 millions passengers including the Queen, Nelson Mandela, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and lunar astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

She also served as a troop carrier in the Falklands War in 1982, shipping the Fifth Infantry Brigade, including the Scots and Welsh Guards, out to the conflict.

Her replacement, the Queen Mary 2, took over as the Cunard flagship on her maiden voyage in 2004, with the QE2’S final voyage taking place in 2008.

For the past nine years she has been docked in Dubai. Long-discussed plans of her transformation into a floating hotel appear to be taking new shape with a new website saying the hotel would be “coming soon”.

Picture: Colin Mearns „ Bruce Peter, Professor of Design History at the Glasgow School of Art, pictured with a 1:500 scale model of the QE2 that he built as a boy.

„ The QE2 arrives in to New York in 1989 when she still crossed the Atlantic.

„ QE2 staff in their 60s uniforms.