Buckingham Palace will host tribute to Diana on 20th anniversary of her death alongside exhibition of gifts to the Queen

Cassette tapes with music ranging from George Michael to Pavarotti that once belonged to Diana, Princess of Wales, will go on display among gold and silver treasures at Buckingham Palace this summer.

A small case containing Diana’s eclectic collection of music is part of a special tribute to her on the 20th anniversary of her death. It also includes albums by Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Céline Dion and Lionel Richie – who once said the princess told him Hello was her favourite song.

The exhibition, which opens this weekend, recreates part of Diana’s sitting room at Kensington Palace.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A case of cassette tapes including albums by Diana Ross, Elton John and George Michael. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Elton John, who memorably rearranged his hit song Candle in the Wind for her funeral, also appears, along with some Verdi, Pavarotti, the Three Tenors, and the Bette Midler soundtrack to the Hollywood weepy Beaches.



Diana had written her name on some of the tapes, and while they are not visible in pictures her collection almost certainly contains some Dire Straits and Duran Duran, who were among her favourite bands.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Diana’s wooden school trunk bearing the name D. Spencer. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

Other personal artefacts, all chosen by her sons, William and Harry, include her old boarding school wooden trunk, bearing the name D Spencer. Quite compact and well preserved, it was used for special treats, taken with her to the exclusive West Heath girls’ school near Sevenoaks, Kent. Along with her first portable typewriter she kept it in the sitting room of her apartment.



The exhibition is in the palace’s Music Room, traditionally the scene of royal christenings, including that of William. Centrepiece is her desk, on which is a blue leather blotter where she wrote on cypher-embossed writing paper surrounded by photos of her sons. There are no pictures of Prince Charles, although a large photograph of the pair with their young sons aboard the royal yacht Britannia forms part of the exhibition’s backdrop.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The desk used by Princess Diana in Kensington Palace is displayed at this year’s Summer Opening of the state rooms at Buckingham Palace. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images

A Cartier silver calendar, given to the princess by Ronald Reagan and his wife during the 1985 official visit by Diana and Charles to the US, has the birthdays of all four members of the family engraved on it. It was during that visit that Diana, then 24, danced with John Travolta at a White House gala dinner. Her passion for dance is remembered in the exhibition with a pair of her ballet shoes, which she hung on the door of her sitting room.



Of the tribute exhibition, a Royal Collection spokesperson said it was “very personal, very emotive”.



It is the first tribute of its kind to the late princess at Buckingham Palace, and runs alongside a display of more than 200 gifts from more than 100 countries given to the Queen during her reign.

From the ornate Australian 1988 state coach to a large white metal samovar, or tea-urn, presented by Boris Yeltsin, while Russia’s president, and still used to dispense hot water in Buckingham Palace today, gifts for the Queen range from the eccentric to the practical and original.

A silver model of a dhow from Qatar, a sperm whale tooth necklace from Fiji and an honorary Bafta – awarded not for the Queen’s starring role in the Olympic James Bond sketch, but rather for her patronage of film and television – are among the exhibits on display.



According to the exhibition’s curator, Sally Goodsir, one of the most exciting is the Union flag that was sewn on to the space suit worn by the astronaut Tim Peake during his space walk, “and is the first Union flag to be worn in the vacuum of space”. Peake had been inspired by the explorers James Cook and Scott, who always brought back something for the monarch. “He thought if he ever had something to present he would, and several years later he had something very good,” said Goodsir.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Security passes for the Queen and Prince Philip for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

A straw hat from Niue, and a handbag made from coconut leaves from the Marshall Islands may not have made it into the Queen’s wardrobe, but now have their day on display.

The oldest item is a fossilised dinosaur bone paperweight, dating back 86-66m years. The upper arm bone of a Hadrosaur family of duck-billed herbivorous dinosaurs was presented by the city of Drumheller in Alberta, Canada. Historic, for different reasons, is a signed photograph of John F Kennedy, given to the Queen when the US president popped into the palace for dinner during an unofficial visit to London in 1961.



The most banal – for the world’s most recognisable woman, who is not even required to have a passport – are two security lanyards. The Queen sees these regularly around the necks of those surrounding her on official engagements. She has almost certainly never been required to wear one herself. But she and Prince Philip were presented with one each at the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow, in 2014. Numbered 0000001 and 0000002 respectively, they accorded the highest VIP access. “She didn’t need to wear it. But we have a photograph of her looking at it,” said Goodsir.



During her reign the Queen has received a menagerie of live animals, including a 589kg elephant from Cameroon, which was fed avocado and sugar to keep it happy during its flight to the UK. She also got 20 horses and has received two black swans, six toucans, two anteaters, one sloth, and, in 1976, one giant armadillo from Brazil. A year later, Australia gave her six kangaroos, two Brolga cranes, and one fat-tailed dunnart. All were cared for at the Zoological Society of London, and such gifts now are kept in their native countries. “We don’t catalogue them,” said Goodsir.



• The Summer Opening of the state rooms at Buckingham Palace, including both exhibitions, is from 22 July to 1 October.