Calendar Girls given royal treatment ahead of their upcoming gala show

The Calendar Girls shared the Queen’s portrait photographer to promote their upcoming gala show at the Royal Albert Hall in October.

The girls became famous in 1999 after they released an alternative Women’s Institute calendar featuring them in the nude.

Their story has since been made into both a film and a theatre production.

The women, from the Rylstone and District Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire, were photographed by John Swannell, who took the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee portrait. Mr Swannell travelled to Yorkshire to photograph the women who will feature in Good Housekeeping magazine’s May edition.

The girls have helped to raise £3 million for blood cancer charity Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research in memory of John Baker, the husband of Calendar Girl Angela Baker and the inspiration behind the calendar.

The gala show, Seasons of Love, on 7 October, will be presented by broadcaster and novelist Alan Titchmarsh and will feature actresses from the stage and screen versions of Calendar Girls.

Cathy Gilman, chief executive of Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, said: “When that first calendar was launched in 1999 we couldn’t have imagined what they would go on to achieve.”