They made several films together, appeared in Royal Command Performances, and won a string of showbiz distinctions.

BBC: News | Entertainment | Comedian Ernie Wise dies

It didn't make sense for manufacturers to retool factories for short-lived designs or for low-volume vehicles that didn't command a royal price.

FORBES: Water Wagons

And 56, 000 women had joined the Royal Artillery Anti-Aircraft Command by 1943.

BBC: Home Front volunteers honoured

Mr Douglas was kidnapped in the Congo in 2000 and was also second in command of a Royal Irish battalion when members of a patrol were abducted by rebels in Sierra Leone in the same year.

BBC: In Amenas road sign

One Royal Navy captain after another would champion his new command's inaugural performance at sea trials, or praise the yard to the hilt when a vessel returned to the port of its birth.

BBC: Reliving Swan Hunter's darkest day 20 years ago

The Royal Navy works with what the military call Mission Command, which sets out the intent, strategy, resources, contingency and inspiration for any large-scale activity (it actually derives from Nelson's order of battle set out a month before Trafalgar).

CNN: SHARE THIS

In Bahrain, at another military base well out of the public eye and set apart from that country's simmering unrest, Royal Navy personnel man the naval HQ known as the UK Maritime Component Command (UKMCC), directing Britain's minesweepers and frigates around the Gulf, in co-ordination with the far larger US Navy 5th Fleet headquarters.

BBC: 'East of Suez': Are UK forces returning?