The British Government thought long and hard about what to give the Queen as a Diamond Jubilee gift. The cabinet gave her a set of place mats decorated with pictures of Buckingham Palace, but the Foreign Office have been a bit more imaginative. They've named a large piece of Antarctica Queen Elizabeth Land - an area twice the size of the UK. Professor Julian Dowdeswell is the Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University. Of course, Queen Land is ice for the most part. And, in fact, the two edges of it converge on the South Pole. The both of it is covered by ice up to about 3,5 km in thickness, but there’re also several mounting ranges that also poke their way through to the surface. In some areas there are mountains that we call nunataks. And it doesn’t have a coast line, does it? I heard from the reports that it’s one of the most inaccessible spots left on Earth. Yes, that’d be true, partly because that area of Antarctica is covered by sea ice, a very thick sea ice. And it makes it hard for the ships to get there. It was the part of Antarctica that Shackleton was hoping to cross during his expedition when he suggested the first trans-Atlantic crossing 100 years ago. But of course he failed either. And I suppose the other problem for the Queen to get there and have a look at the place is that there’s an international disagreement on whether anybody has a right to claim any portion of Antarctica as a national territory. A number of countries have made claims to parts of Antarctica. Those claims including that of U.K. were held in the bans under the Antarctic Treaty system of which the U.K. is a signatory. I don’t think there’s any kind of immediate controversy about the area. What about the actual registering of that name of maps? Who is likely to adopt it? Will everybody go along with it? Not necessarily. There’s a Place-names Committee for the British Antarctic Territory. And we make a series of recommendations to the commissioner of the British Antarctic Territory who has adopted this suggestion as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. And therefore on British maps the name will appear. There’s no compulsion for any country to use the name at all. The name will also be submitted to the scientific committee on Antarctic research and we hope to adopt it there which will make it more likely for the other countries to use it. I think there’s already a piece of Antarctica which was named after her before she came to the throne. That’s right. It was named in the 1930s by Sir Douglas Mawson. There were also one or two other royal names in Antarctica – Victoria Land is clearly named after Queen Victoria. And there’s Princess Royal Range elsewhere on the British Antarctic Territory. Source: Voice of Russia,
