AN ARBROATH war veteran will make a special journey to London next month to have lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Eighty-six-year-old Dick Middleton, of Clyde Court, was selected for the honour after being nominated by his daughter Brenda.

The lunch date is one of a number of events being held to commemorate the end of the second world war.

Mr Middleton, originally from Inverbervie, joined the army just before the outbreak of the war and served with the 2nd Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders.

He travelled to Singapore and was captured by the Japanese during the fall of the city.

Mr Middleton then spent three-and-a-half years working as a prisoner of war in the gold and silver mines in Formosa, which is now known as Taiwan.

At the end of the war, he returned to Aberdeen where he married Mima in 1946, and the couple then moved to Arbroath.

Brenda said she had the idea of nominating her father after hearing about the forthcoming celebrations on the radio.

“I felt my dad deserved it but I wasn’t sure who to get in touch with,” she said.

“I sent letters to Buckingham Palace, my MP, the Gordon Highlanders, the British Legion—basically to any Tom, Dick or Harry that I could think of—and it was the Ministry of Defence and British Legion that came up trumps.”

Mr Middleton will be accompanied on the trip by his son Richard.