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Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: 1926–2022: A celebration of her life and reign

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There were compensations, however. On the day before the wedding he was made a Royal Highness, a Knight of the Garter, Baron Greenwich, Earl of Merioneth and Duke of Edinburgh. “It is a great deal,” the King said, “to give a man all at once.” With the characteristic precision the King brought to such arcane matters, he had bestowed the Garter on his daughter a week earlier to establish the precedence of a future sovereign over her future consort. Nor was Prince Philip allowed to invite his three surviving sisters, each the wife of German princes, to his wedding. It was, the King insisted, too soon after the end of the war. (By the time of the Coronation, they were welcome guests.) The arcane language of a medieval monarchy persisted into a democratic society without strain. After the tumult of a general election, the Court Circular, surmounted by the Royal Arms, would announce that the Queen had been “graciously pleased” to accept the resignation of a defeated prime minister; and that his successor had “kissed hands” on appointment – as if he were a 16th-century Cecil paying homage to an earlier Elizabeth – though the phrase was metaphorical. Ministers dependent on the ballot box still began their letters to the Sovereign, “With humble duty...” The Queen, happiest when at Windsor or her private residences of Sandringham and Balmoral, was not wedded to a life of luxury. On behalf of English Heritage, I would like to express my deep sadness at the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and offer my sincere condolences to the Royal Family.

The Queen, Princess Anne and Prince Charles with Sir Winston Churchill at Balmoral, October 1952 CREDIT: National Trust CollectionAlmost 10,000 people turn out to see the Queen, on the second day of her Golden Jubilee visit to Powys, Wales, June 2002 | CREDIT: David Jones/ROTA The Queen reigned for 70 years. How can we describe that length of time to help us understand how long it is? How many times older than you is it? After the birth of their two children, the marital dispute became public knowledge. Each resorted to the media with their grievances. With her connivance, the Princess’s friends fed Andrew Morton with disobliging tales about the Prince for his book Diana: Her True Story (1992). The Prince returned the compliment by co-operating all too openly with Jonathan Dimbleby, author of The Prince of Wales: a Portrait (1994). The Mountbatten and Greek royal families encouraged the match. Princess Elizabeth’s parents, however, were more cautious. “We both think she is too young for that now,” the King wrote to Queen Mary in March 1944, “as she has never met any young men of her own age.” So her vigil was prolonged. The war ended and with her sister she was swept off on a three-month tour of South Africa with the King and Queen in the hard winter of 1947. She spent her 21st birthday in Cape Town and broadcast her moving message of dedication to the Imperial Commonwealth. “There she goes,” the King said to Field Marshal Smuts, “alone as usual, an extraordinary girl.”

Lieutenant Mountbatten was required to change not only his nationality and his status but also his religion. In October 1947 he formally relinquished membership of the Greek Orthodox Church and was received into the Church of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. Even in her ninth decade the Queen was still accumulating historic firsts, notably in her state visit to Ireland in 2011 when she became the first reigning British monarch to visit the Republic for 100 years. After a century of tension, the Queen’s arrival in Dublin signified the normalisation of relations between the two countries.Eden’s succession in April 1955 was the first of the three occasions on which the Queen was required to exercise her prerogative of choosing a new prime minister; and since Eden had long been Churchill’s unchallenged heir apparent, the least difficult. His premiership of less than two years is largely remembered for the Suez adventure that ended in humiliation. The extent of the Queen’s concern has never been revealed, nor whether at any stage of the preparations for the invasion of Egypt she counselled caution. It has been alleged that Lord Mountbatten, the then First Sea Lord, used his privileged access to the Palace to warn her of the perils of Eden’s policy. There is more solid evidence of a division of opinion among her three private secretaries. The senior, Sir Michael Adeane, approved of Eden’s enterprise; Sir Edward Ford and Sir Martin Charteris, both of whom had experience of the Middle East, were opposed to it.

Prime Minister James Callaghan with Queen Elizabeth II on his arrival at Windsor Castle for lunch, December 1977 CREDIT: Hulton Royals CollectionQueen Elizabeth II with the Duke of Edinburgh, looking out from her Coronation Coach en route to Westminster Abbey, 1953 CREDIT: Fox Photos / Getty Images

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