Flypast, prayers and pop anthem mark Falklands ceremony

Veterans and politicians yesterday commemorated what may prove to have been Britain's last imperial victory, and marked the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands with a military parade, prayers for the victors and the dead and a flypast over Buckingham Palace. More than 10,000 of the 27,000 members of the taskforce which completed the recapture of the islands on June 14 1982 were thought to have turned out for a ceremony at Horse Guards Parade in central London. They marched down the Mall, a dozen abreast, to salute Prince Charles, his brother Andrew, who took part in the invasion as a helicopter pilot, and Lady Thatcher, the prime minister who sent them to war and whose political career they salvaged after her government miscalculated Argentinian resolve to seize the islands.