The photograph was taken during Jack Lieb’s stay in London in the spring of 1944, the preparatory phase before the landing in Normandy. Buckingham Palace had been damaged multiple times by German air attacks during the Second World War; the royal couple nevertheless remained in London and made the palace a symbol of British determination. Lieb’s color camera captured here a moment of military routine in the British capital – at a time when Allied planning for D-Day was in full swing.