new biography of queen elizabeth ii

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, sitting on the throne for 71 years. She was succeeded by King Charles III in 2022.

Who Was Queen Elizabeth II?

Quick facts, early life and family tree, ascension to the crown and coronation, husband prince philip, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, family scandals and losses, death and funeral, latest news: one year since her death.

On the first anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, King Charles shared an unreleased photo of the late queen. “In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us,” he said in a statement. Additionally, Prince William and Princess Kate attended a private church service in Wales to commemorate her life, and Prince Harry visited the chapel at Windsor Castle , where the queen is buried. Planning for a memorial to Elizabeth is underway. The targeted unveiling is 2026, the year she would have turned 100.

Queen Elizabeth II became queen of the United Kingdom on February 6, 1952, at age 25 and was crowned on June 2, 1953. She was the mother of Prince Charles , who ascended to the throne after her death, as well as the grandmother of Princes William and Harry . As the longest-serving monarch in British history, she tried to make her reign more modern and sensitive to a changing public while maintaining traditions associated with the crown. Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022, at age 96.

FULL NAME: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary BORN: April 21, 1926 DIED: September 8, 2022 BIRTHPLACE: London, England, United Kingdom PARENTS: King George VI and Queen Mother Elizabeth SPOUSE: Prince Philip CHILDREN: King Charles III , Princess Anne , Prince Andrew , and Prince Edward ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Queen Elizabeth II was born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary on April 21, 1926, in London. Her parents were then known as the Duke and Duchess of York. Prince Albert—later known as King George VI —was the second son of Queen Mary and King George V . Her mother was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon .

Elizabeth had ties with most of the monarchs in Europe. Her British ancestors include Queen Victoria (ruled 1837 to 1901) and King George III (ruled 1760 to 1820).

At the time of her birth, most people didn’t realize Elizabeth would someday become the queen of the United Kingdom. Nicknamed Lilibet, she got to enjoy the first decade of her life with all the privileges of being a royal without the pressures of being the heir apparent.

Elizabeth’s father and mother divided their time between a home in London and Royal Lodge, the family’s home on the grounds of Windsor Great Park. Elizabeth and her younger sister, Margaret , were educated at home by tutors. Academic courses included French, mathematics, and history, along with dancing, singing, and art lessons.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Elizabeth and her sister largely stayed out of London, having been relocated to Windsor Castle. From there she made the first of her famous radio broadcasts in 1940, with this particular speech reassuring the children of Britain who had been evacuated from their homes and families. The 14-year-old princess, showing her calm and firm personality, told them “that in the end, all will be well; for God will care for us and give us victory and peace.”

Elizabeth soon started taking on other public duties. Appointed colonel-in-chief of the Grenadier Guards by her father, Elizabeth made her first public appearance inspecting the troops in 1942. She also began to accompany her parents on official visits within Britain.

In 1945, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service to help in the war effort. She trained side-by-side with other British women to be an expert driver and mechanic. While her volunteer work only lasted a few months, it offered Elizabeth a glimpse into a different, non-royal world. She had another vivid experience outside of the monarchy when she and Margaret were allowed to mingle anonymously among the citizenry on Victory in Europe Day .

When Elizabeth’s grandfather King George V died in 1936, his eldest son (Elizabeth’s uncle) became King Edward VIII . Edward, however, was in love with American divorcée Wallis Simpson and had to choose between the crown and his heart . In the end, Edward chose Simpson and abdicated the crown.

The event changed the course of Elizabeth’s life, making her the heir presumptive to the British crown. Her father was crowned King George VI in 1937, taking on the name George to emphasize continuity with his father. Her mother became Queen Elizabeth.

Fifteen years later, the monarchy changed hands again when King George died. The younger Elizabeth assumed the responsibilities of the ruling monarch on February 6, 1952. At that point, the 25-year-old became Queen Elizabeth II, and her mother became Queen Mother.

Elizabeth was crowned on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey, at the age of 27. For the first time ever, the coronation ceremony was broadcast on television, allowing people from across the globe to witness the pomp and spectacle of the event.

Elizabeth married her distant cousin Philip Mountbatten (a surname adopted from his mother’s side) on November 20, 1947, at London’s Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth first met Philip, son of Prince Andrew of Greece, when she was only 13. She was smitten with him from the start. The two kept in touch over the years and eventually fell in love.

They made an unusual pair. Elizabeth was quiet and reserved, while Philip was boisterous and outspoken. Her father, King George, was hesitant about the match because, while Mountbatten had ties to both the Danish and Greek royal families, he didn’t possess great wealth and was considered by some to have a rough personality.

At the time of their wedding, Great Britain was still recovering from the ravages of World War II, and Elizabeth collected clothing coupons to get fabric for her gown.

The family took on the name Windsor, a move pushed by her mother and Prime Minister Winston Churchill that caused tension with her husband. In 1960, she reversed course, issuing orders that her descendants who didn’t carry royal titles (or needed last names for legal purposes such as weddings) would use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. Over the years, Philip inspired numerous public relations headaches with his off-the-cuff, controversial comments and rumors of possible infidelities.

Philip died on April 9, 2021, at age 99. Days later, Prince Andrew told the media Queen Elizabeth described his death “as having left a huge void in her life.” She had previously said he was her “strength and stay.”

Elizabeth and Philip wasted no time in producing an heir: Their son Charles was born in 1948, the year after their wedding, and their daughter, Anne , arrived in 1950. As queen, Elizabeth had two more children—sons Andrew and Edward —in 1960 and 1964, respectively.

King Charles III

In 1969, Elizabeth officially made Charles her successor by granting him the title of Prince of Wales. Hundreds of millions of people tuned in to see the ceremony on television.

In 1981, Charles, then 32, wed 19-year-old Diana Spencer, who became known as Princess Diana . The wedding drew enormous crowds in the streets of London, and millions watched the proceedings on television. Public opinion of the monarchy was especially strong at that time. Later, rumors surfaced that he was pressured into the marriage by his family.

Now King Charles III, he is married to Queen Camilla .

Princess Anne

Princess Anne began working as a member of the royal family when she was 18 in 1969 and continues today. She is also heavily involved in charity work. A noted equestrian, Anne competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Her mother opened the Games that year, and the rest of the royal family traveled to support Anne.

Previously married to Captain Mark Phillips, she and her current husband, Timothy Laurence, wed in 1992.

Prince Andrew

Andrew was the first child born to a reigning monarch in more than 100 years. In 1979, he joined the British Royal Navy, became a helicopter pilot, and served during the Falkland War in the early 1980s. He became the Duke of York after marrying Sarah Ferguson , though the couple later divorced. Following scandal, Andrew stepped back from public duties in his royal capacity in 2019, a decision that was made permanent in 2022.

Prince Edward

The queen’s youngest child, Edward, worked in theater and television production for many years, at one point through his own production company. Since 2002, he has worked full-time supporting his mother and now brother. Edward is married to Sophie Rhys-Jones. He became the Duke of Edinburgh—a title previously held by his father—in March 2023.

Queen Elizabeth had eight grandchildren and was great-grandmother to 12 in her lifetime.

Her most well-known grandchildren are Charles and Diana’s sons, Prince William , who became second-in-line to the throne at his birth in 1982, and Prince Harry , born in 1984. Elizabeth emerged as a devoted grandmother to her grandsons. Prince William has said that she offered invaluable support and guidance as he and Kate Middleton planned their 2011 wedding.

In addition to Princes William and Harry, the queen’s other grandchildren are: Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, born to Princess Anne; Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York, born to Prince Andrew; and Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn, born to Prince Edward. Peter is Elizabeth’s oldest grandchild; he was born in 1977, four years before his sister and five years before Prince William.

William and Kate have three children, who are Elizabeth’s great-grandchildren. The Prince and Princess of Wales welcomed Prince George Alexander Louis in July 2013, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana in May 2015, and Prince Louis Arthur Charles in April 2018. All three are currently in the line of succession directly after their father.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan Markle gave the queen two more great-grandchildren with the birth of their son, Prince Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor , and daughter, Princess Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor , in May 2019 and June 2021, respectively.

Elizabeth’s other great-grandchildren include Savannah Phillips, Isla Phillips, Mia Tindall, Lena Tindall, August Brooksbank, Lucas Tindall, and Sienna Mozzi.

Elizabeth’s long and mainly peaceful reign was marked by vast changes in her people’s lives, in her country’s power, how Britain is viewed abroad, and how the monarchy is regarded and portrayed. As a constitutional monarch, Elizabeth didn’t weigh in on political matters, nor did she reveal her political views. However, she conferred regularly with her prime ministers.

When Elizabeth became queen, post-war Britain still had a substantial empire, dominions, and dependencies. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, many of these countries achieved independence, and the British Empire evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations. Elizabeth II thus made visits to other countries as head of the Commonwealth and a representative of Britain, including a groundbreaking trip to Germany in 1965. She became the first British monarch to make a state visit there in more than five decades.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Elizabeth continued to travel extensively. In 1973, she attended the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa, Canada and, in 1976, traveled to the United States for the 200 th anniversary celebration of America’s independence from Britain. More than a week later, she was in Montreal to open the Summer Olympics. In 1979, she traveled to Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman, which garnered international attention and widespread respect.

In 1982, Elizabeth worried about her second son, Prince Andrew , who served as a helicopter pilot in the British Royal Navy during the Falklands War. Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a clash that lasted for several weeks. While more than 250 British soldiers died in the conflict, Prince Andrew returned home safe and well, much to his mother’s relief.

In 2011, Elizabeth showed that the crown still had symbolic and diplomatic power when she became the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland since 1911 (when all of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom).

As queen, Elizabeth modernized the monarchy, dropping some of its formalities and making certain sites and treasures more accessible to the public. As Britain and other nations struggled financially, Britain abolished the Civil List in 2012, which was a public funding system of the monarchy dating back roughly 250 years. The royal family continues to receive some government support, but the queen cut back on spending.

Also in 2012, Elizabeth celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, marking 60 years as queen. As part of the jubilee festivities, a special BBC concert was held on June 4 featuring the likes of Shirley Bassey , Paul McCartney , Tom Jones , Stevie Wonder , and Kylie Minogue. Elizabeth was surrounded by family at this historic event, including her husband Philip, son Charles, and grandsons Harry and William.

On September 9, 2015, she surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria as Britain’s longest-ruling monarch, who reigned for 63 years.

Despite the occasional call to step aside for Charles, Elizabeth remained steadfast in her royal obligations as she passed her 90 th birthday in 2016. She continued making more than 400 engagements per year, maintaining her support of hundreds of charitable organizations and programs.

On February 6, 2017, the queen celebrated 65 years on the throne, the only British monarch to ever celebrate her Sapphire Jubilee. The date also marks the anniversary of the death of her father. The queen chose to spend the day quietly at Sandringham, her country estate north of London, where she attended a church service. In London, there were royal gun salutes at Green Park and at the Tower of London to mark the occasion. The Royal Mint also issued eight new commemorative coins in honor of the queen’s Sapphire Jubilee.

Later that year, the monarchy took what was considered a major step toward transitioning to the next generation: On November 12, Charles handled the traditional Remembrance Sunday duty of placing a wreath at the Cenotaph war memorial, as the queen watched from a nearby balcony.

In August 2019, Elizabeth made a rare intrusion into political matters when she agreed to a request by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament until October 14, less than three weeks before Britain’s planned departure from the European Union.

In 2022, the nation celebrated Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee year. Another milestone for the monarchy, it marked her 70 years on the throne.

Relationship With Prime Ministers

Elizabeth had 15 prime ministers placed into power during her reign, with the queen and PM having a weekly, confidential meeting. (Elizabeth also met about a quarter of all the U.S. presidents in history, most recently receiving Joe Biden for a state visit in June 2021.)

She enjoyed a father-figure relationship with the iconic Winston Churchill and was later able to loosen up a bit and be somewhat informal with Labour leaders Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. In contrast, she and Margaret Thatcher had a very formal, distant relationship, with the PM tending to be a grating lecturer to the queen on a variety of issues.

Tony Blair saw certain concepts around the monarchy as somewhat outdated, though he did appreciate Elizabeth making a public statement after the death of Princess Diana .

Later, Conservative leader David Cameron, who was Elizabeth’s fifth cousin removed, enjoyed a warm rapport with the queen. He apologized in 2014 for revealing in a conversation that she was against the Scottish referendum to seek independence from Great Britain.

Theresa May was described as being tight-lipped about Brexit plans to leave the European Union, with a rumor circulating that Elizabeth was perturbed over not being informed about future exit strategies.

Two days before her death, Elizabeth welcomed her final prime minister, Liz Truss , at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The September 6, 2022, meeting was her final act as monarch.

Threats to Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family

Elizabeth worked tirelessly to protect the image of the monarchy and to prepare for its future. But she saw the monarchy come under attack during her lifetime. The once-revered institution weathered a number of storms, including death threats against the royal family.

In 1979, Elizabeth suffered a significant personal loss when Lord Mountbatten, her husband’s uncle, died in a terrorist bombing. Mountbatten and several members of his family were aboard his boat off the west coast of Ireland when the vessel exploded on August 27. He and three others, including one of his grandsons, were killed. The Irish Republican Army, which opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, took responsibility for the attack.

In June 1981, Elizabeth herself had a dangerous encounter. She was riding in the Trooping the Colour, a special military parade to celebrate her official birthday when a man in the crowd pointed a gun at her. He fired, but fortunately, the gun was loaded with blanks. Other than receiving a good scare, the queen wasn’t hurt.

Elizabeth had an even closer call the following year when an intruder broke into Buckingham Palace and confronted her in her bedroom. When the press got wind of the fact that Prince Philip was nowhere to be seen during this incident, they speculated about the state of the royal marriage.

The marriage of Elizabeth’s son Charles to Diana made headlines for years before the couple announced their separation in 1992, followed by their formal divorce in 1996. In the wake of Diana’s death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, Elizabeth experienced intense media scrutiny. Her incredibly popular ex-daughter-in-law had been called the “People’s Princess.”

The queen was at her Balmoral estate in Scotland with Charles and his sons with Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry, at the time. For days, Elizabeth remained silent while the country mourned Diana’s passing, and she was sharply criticized for her lack of response.

Stories circulated that the queen didn’t want to give Diana a royal funeral, which only fueled public sentiment against the monarch. Nearly a week after Diana’s death, Elizabeth returned to London and issued a statement on the late princess.

Elizabeth also initially objected to the relationship between her son Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles . Charles and Camilla had dated years before he met his family, but the relationship ended under family pressure, only to resume during Charles and Diana’s marriage. Known to be a stickler for ceremony and tradition, she eventually showed signs of softening her stance over the years. When Charles and Camilla wed in 2005, Elizabeth and Prince Philip didn’t attend the civil ceremony but attended a religious blessing and held a reception in their honor at Windsor Castle.

In 1992, another of Elizabeth’s children, Prince Andrew, ended up in the tabloids after photos emerged of his wife, Sarah Ferguson , and another man engaged in romantic activity. The couple divorced soon after. Along with the dissolution of Charles’ and Andrew’s marriages, Princess Anne divorced her husband Mark Phillips that year. More bad news came when a fire broke out at Windsor Castle in November. The 15-hour blaze destroyed 115 rooms, though it only consumed two pieces of art from the queen’s valuable private collection. The year became known as her “annus horribilis.”

After the start of the 21 st century, Elizabeth experienced two great losses. She said goodbye to both her sister, Margaret, and her mother in 2002, the same year she celebrated her Golden Jubilee that marked her 50 th year on the throne. Margaret, known for being more of an adventurous soul than other royals and who was barred from marrying an early love, died in February after suffering a stroke. Only a few weeks later, Elizabeth’s mother died at Royal Lodge on March 30 at the age of 101.

In November 2017, the media reported the queen had some $13 million invested in offshore accounts. The news came following the leak of the so-called “Paradise Papers” to a German newspaper, which shared the documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Duchy of Lancaster, which holds assets for the queen, confirmed that some of its investments were overseas accounts but insisted they were all legitimate.

Also in 2017, the former owner of the lingerie company Rigby & Peller, which had serviced Elizabeth for more than 50 years, wrote a tell-all autobiography that included some of her experiences with the royal family. Although the author insisted that “the book doesn’t contain anything naughty,” the queen responded in early 2018 by revoking Rigby & Peller’s royal warrant.

In 2019, Prince Andrew was forced to step down from public duties, following a media firestorm. Andrew had courted years of scandal surrounding his controversial business pursuits and friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ,

Just weeks later, in January 2020, the family again found themselves in the spotlight, following the bombshell decision by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle , the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to step away from their roles as senior royals.

For much of her life, the queen surrounded herself with dogs. She was especially known for her love of corgis, owning more than 30 descendants of the first corgi she received as a teenager, until the death of the final one, Willow, in 2018.

Elizabeth was also a horse enthusiast who bred thoroughbreds and attended racing events for many years.

Not one for the spotlight, Elizabeth liked quiet pastimes. She enjoyed reading mysteries, working on crossword puzzles, and reportedly, even watching wrestling on television.

Queen Elizabeth II died peacefully at her Balmoral estate in Scotland on September 8, 2022, at 3:10 p.m. local time. She was 96 years old. Her official cause of death was old age, according to her death certificate.

The public was first aware of the queen’s ill health earlier that day when Buckingham Palace issued at statement around 12:30 p.m. that said, “Following further evaluation this morning, the queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision.”

Soon, members of the royal family began traveling to see the queen. At the time of her death, Prince Charles and Camilla, as well as Princess Anne were at the castle. William, Harry, Andrew, Edward, and Sophie arrived later in the evening. Kate Middleton didn’t travel to say her final goodbyes, citing the recent start of the school year for her children. Meghan Markle was also absent.

Her death was publicly announced at 6:30 p.m. After, newly minted King Charles issued a statement that said:

The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty The Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family. We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished Sovereign and a much-loved Mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world. During this period of mourning and change, my family and I will be comforted and sustained by our knowledge of the respect and deep affection in which The Queen was so widely held.

On September 14, Elizabeth’s coffin traveled from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall by horse-drawn carriage and lay in state for four days. The day of her state funeral, September 19, was declared a bank holiday. The funeral was held at Westminster Abbey and ended with two minutes of silence, observed there and throughout the United Kingdom.

President Joe Biden , First Lady Jill Biden , French President Emmanuel Macron , and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the dozens of world leaders and 2,000 total people in attendance. Millions more watched or listened in; the funeral was broadcast on TV and radio and streamed on YouTube. Elizabeth’s pony and her corgis, Muick and Sandy, watched the procession, as did tens of thousands of people.

A private burial came later that day. Elizabeth was buried with Prince Philip at the King George VI Memorial Chapel.

• I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
• 1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an “annus horribilis.”
• When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
• Discrimination still exists. Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened. Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured that there is so much to be gained by reaching out to others; that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.
• Grief is the price we pay for love.
• I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.
• In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognize how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.
• We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

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Accession to the throne

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Elizabeth II

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Elizabeth II (born April 21, 1926, London, England—died September 8, 2022, Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland) was the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952, to September 8, 2022. In 2015 she surpassed Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

Elizabeth was the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of York , and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon . As the child of a younger son of King George V , the young Elizabeth had little prospect of acceding to the throne until her uncle, Edward VIII (afterward duke of Windsor), abdicated in her father’s favour on December 11, 1936, at which time her father became King George VI and she became heir presumptive. The princess’s education was supervised by her mother, who entrusted her daughters to a governess, Marion Crawford; the princess was also grounded in history by C.H.K. Marten, afterward provost of Eton College , and had instruction from visiting teachers in music and languages. During World War II she and her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, perforce spent much of their time safely away from the London blitz and separated from their parents, living mostly at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and at the Royal Lodge, Windsor , and Windsor Castle .

Early in 1947 Princess Elizabeth went with the king and queen to South Africa . After her return there was an announcement of her betrothal to her distant cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten of the Royal Navy , formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark . The marriage took place in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947. On the eve of the wedding her father, the king, conferred upon the bridegroom the titles of duke of Edinburgh, earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. They took residence at Clarence House in London . Their first child, Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), was born November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace .

In the summer of 1951 the health of King George VI entered into a serious decline, and Princess Elizabeth represented him at the Trooping the Colour and on various other state occasions. On October 7 she and her husband set out on a highly successful tour of Canada and Washington, D.C. After Christmas in England she and the duke set out in January 1952 for a tour of Australia and New Zealand , but en route, at Sagana, Kenya , news reached them of the king’s death on February 6, 1952. Elizabeth, now queen, at once flew back to England. The first three months of her reign, the period of full mourning for her father, were passed in comparative seclusion. But in the summer, after she had moved from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, she undertook the routine duties of the sovereign and carried out her first state opening of Parliament on November 4, 1952. Her coronation was held at Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953.

Beginning in November 1953 the queen and the duke of Edinburgh made a six-month round-the-world tour of the Commonwealth , which included the first visit to Australia and New Zealand by a reigning British monarch. In 1957, after state visits to various European nations, she and the duke visited Canada and the United States . In 1961 she made the first royal British tour of the Indian subcontinent in 50 years, and she was also the first reigning British monarch to visit South America (in 1968) and the Persian Gulf countries (in 1979). During her “Silver Jubilee” in 1977, she presided at a London banquet attended by the leaders of the 36 members of the Commonwealth, traveled all over Britain and Northern Ireland, and toured overseas in the South Pacific and Australia, in Canada, and in the Caribbean.

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, her son Prince Charles became heir apparent; he was named prince of Wales on July 26, 1958, and was so invested on July 1, 1969. The queen’s other children were Princess Anne (Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise), born August 15, 1950, and created princess royal in 1987; Prince Andrew (Andrew Albert Christian Edward), born February 19, 1960, and created duke of York in 1986; and Prince Edward (Edward Anthony Richard Louis), born March 10, 1964, and created earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn in 1999. All these children have the surname “of Windsor,” but in 1960 Elizabeth decided to create the hyphenated name Mountbatten-Windsor for other descendants not styled prince or princess and royal highness. Elizabeth’s first grandchild (Princess Anne’s son) was born on November 15, 1977.

The queen seemed increasingly aware of the modern role of the monarchy, allowing, for example, the televising of the royal family’s domestic life in 1970 and condoning the formal dissolution of her sister’s marriage in 1978. In the 1990s, however, the royal family faced a number of challenges. In 1992, a year that Elizabeth referred to as the royal family’s annus horribilis , Prince Charles and his wife, Diana, princess of Wales , separated, as did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, duchess of York. Moreover, Anne divorced, and a fire gutted the royal residence of Windsor Castle. In addition, as the country struggled with a recession , resentment over the royals’ lifestyle mounted, and in 1992 Elizabeth, although personally exempt, agreed to pay taxes on her private income. The separation and later divorce (1996) of Charles and the immensely popular Diana further eroded support for the royal family, which was viewed by some as antiquated and unfeeling. The criticism intensified following Diana’s death in 1997, especially after Elizabeth initially refused to allow the national flag to fly at half-staff over Buckingham Palace. In line with her earlier attempts at modernizing the monarchy , the queen subsequently sought to present a less-stuffy and less-traditional image of the monarchy. These attempts were met with mixed success.

In 2002 Elizabeth celebrated her 50th year on the throne. As part of her “Golden Jubilee,” events were held throughout the Commonwealth, including several days of festivities in London. The celebrations were somewhat diminished by the deaths of Elizabeth’s mother and sister early in the year. Beginning in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century, the public standing of the royal family rebounded, and even Charles’s 2005 marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles found much support among the British people. In April 2011 Elizabeth led the family in celebrating the wedding of Prince William of Wales —the elder son of Charles and Diana—and Catherine Middleton . The following month she surpassed George III to become the second longest-reigning monarch in British history, behind Victoria . Also in May, Elizabeth made a historic trip to Ireland , becoming both the first British monarch to visit the Irish republic and the first to set foot in Ireland since 1911. In 2012 Elizabeth celebrated her “ Diamond Jubilee ,” marking 60 years on the throne. On September 9, 2015, she surpassed Victoria’s record reign of 63 years and 216 days.

In August 2017 Prince Philip officially retired from public life, though he periodically appeared at official engagements after that. In the meantime, Elizabeth began to reduce her own official engagements, passing some duties on to Prince Charles and other senior members of the royal family, though the pool of stand-ins shrank when Charles’s younger son, Prince Harry, duke of Sussex , and his wife, Meghan, duchess of Sussex , controversially chose to give up their royal roles in March 2020. During this period, public interest in the queen and the royal family grew as a result of the widespread popularity of The Crown , a Netflix television series about the Windsors that debuted in 2016. Having dealt with several physical setbacks in recent years, Philip, who had been Elizabeth’s husband for more than seven decades, died in April 2021. On their 50th wedding anniversary, in 1997, Elizabeth had said of Philip, “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.” Because of social-distancing protocols brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the queen sat alone in a choir stall in St. George’s Chapel (in Windsor Castle ) at Philip’s funeral. The widely disseminated images of her tragic isolation were heartbreaking but emblematic of the dignity and courage that she brought to her reign.

In June 2022 Britain celebrated Elizabeth’s 70 years on the throne with the “Platinum Jubilee,” a four-day national holiday that included the Trooping the Colour ceremony, a thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, a pop music concert at Buckingham Palace , and a pageant that employed street arts, theatre, music, circus, carnival, and costume to honour the queen’s reign. Health issues limited Elizabeth’s involvement. Concerns about the queen’s health also led to a break in tradition when, in September, she appointed Boris Johnson ’s replacement as prime minister , Liz Truss , at Balmoral rather than at Buckingham Palace, where she had formally appointed more than a dozen prime ministers.

Just days later, on September 8, Elizabeth’s death, at age 96, shocked Britain and the world. Prince Charles succeeded her on the throne as King Charles III . Ten days of national commemoration of her life and legacy—long planned as “Operation London Bridge”—followed. Notably, the queen lay in state for a day in St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh and then for three days in Westminster Hall in London, outside of which mourners stood in a line that stretched for miles, in some cases waiting for more than 24 hours to view Elizabeth’s casket. Her sombre funeral ceremony in Westminster Abbey , officiated by Archbishop Justin Welby on September 19, was attended by an estimated 100 heads of foreign governments. Following a procession to Wellington Arch, during which Big Ben tolled, the queen’s casket was borne by hearse to her final resting place in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Elizabeth was known to favour simplicity in court life and was also known to take a serious and informed interest in government business, aside from the traditional and ceremonial duties. Privately, she became a keen horsewoman; she kept racehorses, frequently attended races, and periodically visited the Kentucky stud farms in the United States. Her financial and property holdings made her one of the world’s richest women.

The life and legacy of Britain’s longest-serving monarch

LONDON — She was born a royal but with little hope of wearing the crown. 

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, known by her family as Lilibet , was born April 21, 1926 — third in line to the throne after her uncle and her father. But a scandalous royal love affair changed the course of Lilibet’s life and paved the way for her to become the United Kingdom’s longest-serving monarch, a much-admired symbol of comfort and continuity and arguably the most famous woman in the world. 

Elizabeth’s reign lasted from the industrial age to the internet age — 70 years of endurance and stoicism in which she met generations of legendary, mostly male, global leaders and helped steer Britain through the loss of its empire and its emergence as a midsized multicultural nation.

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From a young queen to the grandmother of the nation, decade after decade she smiled, waved, shook hands and chatted with a vast number of her subjects and admirers, despite family scandals and the tragedy of a dead princess.  

Her cool, reliable cheerfulness made her overwhelmingly popular with the British public.

Queen Elizabeth II died Thursday . Her eldest son, Charles, is now king.

On the eve of World War II, her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 after his marriage proposal to an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, erupted in a scandal that engulfed the royal family and embroiled the country’s politicians. 

Elizabeth’s father became a reluctant King George VI, making Elizabeth the direct heir to the crown. 

Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1952 at the age of 25 after the sudden death of her father in his sleep at 56. In the 70 years since, she worked with 15 British prime ministers and met every U.S. president during her time as queen except Lyndon Johnson. The vast majority of Britons have never known another monarch, and she remained overwhelmingly popular until her death.

She reigned against the backdrop of vast cultural and political transformations — the end of Britain’s age of deference and its empire, and the advent of globalization and the multimedia age. Throughout, she and her family experienced unprecedented levels of public exposure and, at times, a fractious relationship with the media.

Elizabeth also oversaw the monarchy’s evolution into a champion of a diminished United Kingdom at home and abroad, and she worked tirelessly to keep the crown relevant in a changing world. A source of unending fascination to many, she’s been the subject of movies, plays and TV series, including “The Crown,” “The Queen,” and “The Royal House of Windsor.”

“She has throughout her reign managed to make people feel that she is the spirit and the soul of the country,” said Clive Irving, the author of “The Last Queen: How Queen Elizabeth II Saved the Monarchy.” “She gives over a maternal feeling. She’s a safe pair of hands at the top. No one else has ever been able to convey that as she did.”

That was evident most recently during the pandemic, when early on the queen addressed the U.K. in a rare broadcast to urge her subjects to show the same “self-discipline” and “quiet good-humored resolve” that characterized previous generations.

The queen, whose image adorns stamps, money and mailboxes, is more than a mere figurehead: She played an essential role in the functioning of the U.K. as a constitutional monarchy. After an election, it is the U.K.’s monarch who calls on the political parties to form a government. The monarch also must give assent to all legislation passed by Parliament, and meets weekly with the prime minister to discuss government matters. They are legally allowed to “advise and warn” the government’s ministers.

Crucial to what is widely seen as a successful reign was Elizabeth’s ability to appear ubiquitous and at the same time remain an enigma. She accomplished this by avoiding expressing her political views or making controversial statements in public — no mean feat for someone constantly in the limelight. This meant keeping her own counsel during thousands of events, appearances and speeches, according to Philip Murphy, the director of history and policy at the University of London.

“She has an incredible capacity for repeating the same sorts of rather dull official events which clearly mean an awful lot to other people,” said Murphy. “So much of being a constitutional monarch is the repetition of boring regimes, and there’s something about her that has never rebelled against that. She would call that a sense of duty.”

During the war, Elizabeth and her sister went to live in Windsor, while their parents stayed in London despite the heavy bombardment from German bombers. She made her first radio address in 1940, speaking to other children who had been separated from their families to keep them safe. 

Toward the end of the conflict, the princess joined the all-female Auxiliary Territorial Service and trained as a mechanic. 

It was during the war that the young royal began to date her future husband.  

Philip , her third cousin, was a Greek prince but had spent most of his childhood in the U.K. His family fled Greece after a revolution and were largely penniless. The couple first crossed paths in 1934 at a family wedding and then met again in 1939 when she was 13 and he was 18. While he was stationed abroad during the war, they wrote letters to each other, but his background and her youth were a cause of concern to other members of the royal family. 

During their courtship, Philip and Elizabeth would go out driving in Philip’s tiny MG sports car, as well as dancing at London nightclubs. The couple announced their engagement in July 1947 after Elizabeth returned from her first trip abroad to South Africa. They wed that November, and Philip renounced his Greek title and became a British citizen.

Two years later, they moved to Malta, where Philip was stationed with the British Navy and she lived as an officer’s wife, far from the public eye. Royal observers have speculated that these were some of the happiest years of Elizabeth’s life, a time when she was able to drive her own car and mingle with other officers’ wives without the layers of security and protocol that have defined her reign. 

Their relative freedom was cut short when King George, who’s health had long been precarious, suddenly deteriorated. At the time of his death in February 1952, Elizabeth was in Kenya on a royal tour with Philip. After word reached an aide, Philip broke the news to Elizabeth during a walk.

Royal experts say it was Elizabeth’s husband, five years her senior, who helped guide the young queen in the early years.

“She was so young when she ascended the throne,” royal biographer Ingrid Seward said, adding that Elizabeth followed much of the tradition her father had established. “Everything was completely archaic. It was so old-fashioned. I think more than anyone, Prince Philip helped move the monarchy up.”

That was particularly evident in the way he helped revamp the royal estates — the land and holdings belonging to the crown — making their operations profitable, she said.

Philip’s influence on the monarchy as an institution was mirrored in their personal lives, as well.

In one of her more revealing speeches about her husband on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997, the queen referred to his “constant love and help” and said, “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.”

Philip, who retired from his official royal duties in 2017, died in April 2021 at the age of 99. He and Elizabeth were married for 73 years.

In addition to Prince Charles, Elizabeth is survived by two sons, Princes Andrew and Edward; a daughter, Princess Anne; four grandsons; four granddaughters; and 12 great-grandchildren.

Over her 70-year reign , the queen eased the U.K. into its new post-World War II role, which had been diminished after the loss of its colonies around the world.

The queen placed a strong emphasis on her position as the head of the Commonwealth , a loose alliance of more than 50 countries, many of which are former British colonies.

“The queen had to work out how to manage decline — the dissolution of the empire, coming to terms with diminished power — but she also understood that diminished power does not have to mean diminished quality,” Irving said.

Her extensive travels around the globe, many on her beloved royal yacht Britannia, helped raise the profile of the U.K. and brought a dose of glamor to the places she visited. In 1961, she visited the former British colony of Ghana, which had gained independence just a few years earlier in 1957. During that trip, a charm offensive in one of the first members of the Commonwealth , she was filmed dancing with the country’s leader, Kwame Nkrumah, at a time when segregation still existed in the U.S.

Like with so much else that the queen does, it was her actions and not her words that carried weight. 

“A man could not have done it,” historian Nat Nunoo Amarteifio said in the BBC documentary “The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story.” “Here is our president, being respected enough by the queen of England for her to put her arms around him.”

While she was lauded for her work abroad, she was also praised for opening up the royal household and giving the public a glimpse of the family’s life at home.

A 1969 documentary, “Royal Family,” revealed the royal couple’s private life for the first time, showing Elizabeth and Philip having dinnertime conversations and engaging in other regular activities, including barbecuing.

“People realized they weren’t gods. They were real people,” Seward said. “A lot of people said this was a turning point.”

While the queen’s steady consistency was largely considered a boon for the monarchy, her children and grandchildren’s lives have occasionally been a thorn in the side of monarchists. 

Most recently, her grandson Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan , accused an unnamed member of the royal family of asking how dark the skin of their children would be. The couple gave up their royal duties and left the U.K. in 2020. 

Just before their departure, the queen was faced with a growing scandal around her son Prince Andrew’s friendship with the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew stepped down from his public duties in support of the queen in November 2019, and she stayed largely silent on the topic.  

Despite the recent challenges facing the monarchy, its popularity has remained high. That hasn’t always been the case. 

In the early 1990s, Charles’ rocky marriage to Princess Diana was all over the news, eventually ending in divorce in 1992. In one of the queen’s most famous speeches marking the 40th anniversary of her ascension, she referred to 1992 as an “annus horribilis,” or disastrous year. Speaking just days after a blaze destroyed a large part of her Windsor Castle residence, the queen made a plea for understanding, saying that “most people try to do their jobs as best they can, even if the result is not always entirely successful.”  

Five years later, when Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris and the world mourned, Elizabeth was criticized for staying silent for days and hunkering down at her home in Scotland with Charles and Diana’s sons, her grandsons Princes William and Harry. Satisfaction with the way she was doing her job dipped to 66 percent after that, according to the U.K. polling company Ipsos Mori. (At the time of her 60th anniversary on the throne in 2012, her popularity had risen to 90 percent.)

“I think that was an extremely challenging time for the monarchy, because people couldn’t understand why the royal family weren’t responding as they wanted to,” Seward said of Diana’s death. “In times of great tragedy, they just always lock down. ... They don’t grieve in public. And people wanted more than that.”

When the queen finally returned to London nearly a week later, she paid tribute to Diana . “I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death,” Elizabeth said.

She acknowledged in a 1997 speech that the monarchy “exists only with the support and consent of the people.” 

In September 2015, she became the longest-serving monarch in British history, surpassing her great-great-grandmother Victoria’s record of 63 years, 216 days.

“Inevitably a long life can pass by many milestones. My own is no exception,” the queen noted at the time.

While she carried on working until the end, meeting foreign dignitaries, visiting cities around the U.K., supporting charities and promoting her kingdom at home and abroad, she had canceled a number of appearances and events toward the end. 

Perhaps the greatest measure of Elizabeth’s success in carrying the House of Windsor into the future will be how it continues on in her absence. Charles, 73, now becomes king , a role he’s been groomed for since birth. 

At his 70th birthday celebration, in November 2018, Elizabeth called him “a dedicated and respected heir to the throne to stand comparison with any in history — and a wonderful father.”

Yet his popularity is nowhere near as high as his mother’s, coming in sixth on YouGov’s royal popularity ranking, behind his sister, Anne.

While most Britons “love” the queen, Irving said, “the question is how relevant does the monarchy remain after the queen.”

Rachel Elbaum is a London-based editor, producer and writer. 

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/key-milestones-in-the-life-of-queen-elizabeth-ii-britains-longest-reigning-monarch

A timeline of Queen Elizabeth’s life

LONDON (AP) — Key milestones in the life of Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96 after serving more than seven decades on the throne.

READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, dies at 96

• April 21, 1926: Born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary in Mayfair, London, the first child of the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, later called the Queen Mother.
• Dec. 10, 1936: Elizabeth becomes heir-apparent to the throne after her uncle King Edward VIII abdicates and her father becomes king.
• Oct. 13, 1940: Elizabeth makes first public speech at age 14 on the BBC Children’s Hour to reassure children who had been separated from their parents during the Blitz.
• 1945: Elizabeth is made a Subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, serving for Britain during World War II.
• Nov. 20, 1947: Elizabeth marries Prince Philip Mountbatten of Greece and Denmark at Westminster Abbey.
• Nov. 14, 1948: Prince Charles, now Prince of Wales, heir-apparent to the throne, is born.
• Aug. 15, 1950: Elizabeth’s second child and only daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, is born.
• Feb. 6, 1952: Elizabeth becomes queen upon the death of her father George VI.
• June 2, 1953: Crowned in a grand coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. She sets out on a tour of the Commonwealth, visiting places including Bermuda, Fiji, Tonga, Australia, and Gibraltar.
• Feb. 19, 1960: Elizabeth’s third child, Prince Andrew, is born.
• March 10, 1964: Elizabeth’s fourth child, Prince Edward, is born.
• May 1965: Elizabeth makes a historic visit to West Germany, the first German visit by a British monarch in 52 years.

• 1977: Elizabeth celebrates her Silver Jubilee, which marks 25 years on the throne.
• 1992: Elizabeth has what she describes as an “annus horribilis,” or a “horrible year.” The year sees marriages for three of her four children end. Also that year, a fire damages Windsor Castle. Public outcry over the cost of repairs amid a recession prompts the queen to volunteer to pay income taxes.
• Aug. 31, 1997: Princess Diana dies in a car crash in Paris. Under public pressure to demonstrate her grief, Elizabeth makes an unprecedented television broadcast in tribute to Diana’s memory.
• 2002: Elizabeth marks 50 years of reign with her Golden Jubilee. The year also sees the deaths of Elizabeth’s mother and her sister, Margaret.
• Dec. 20, 2007: Elizabeth becomes the longest-living British monarch, overtaking Victoria.
• May 2011: Elizabeth makes a historic visit to Ireland — the first visit by a British monarch since Irish independence.
• 2012: Elizabeth marks 60 years of her reign with a Diamond Jubilee .
• Sept. 9, 2015: Elizabeth surpasses Queen Victoria and becomes the longest-serving monarch in British history.
• June 11, 2016: Britain celebrates Elizabeth’s official 90th birthday with three days of national festivities.

READ MORE: King Charles III will succeed Queen Elizabeth II. Who is next in line to take the throne?

• Feb. 6, 2017: Elizabeth becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a Sapphire Jubilee , marking 65 years on the throne.
• March 2020: Elizabeth and Philip move from Buckingham Palace in London to Windsor Castle at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
• April 9, 2021: Prince Philip, Elizabeth’s husband of 73 years, dies at age 99 .
• Oct. 20, 2021: Elizabeth spends a night in a London hospital undergoing health tests. She cancels major engagements in subsequent months, on doctors’ orders to only undertake light duties.
• Feb. 6, 2022: Elizabeth becomes first British monarch to reach a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years as sovereign.
• June 2022: Elizabeth makes limited public appearances during a four-day holiday weekend celebrating her Platinum Jubilee .
• Sept. 6, 2022: Elizabeth meets Boris Johnson and Liz Truss at her summer holiday home in Scotland to oversee the handover of power from the outgoing prime minster to his successor. The ceremonies, traditionally held at Buckingham Palace in London, were moved to Balmoral for the first time in the queen’s reign in light of her mobility problems.
• Sept. 8, 2022: Elizabeth dies at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96. Her eldest son becomes King Charles III.

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How a ‘progressive’ new arrangement for the British royal family could work

World Jan 13

• HISTORY MAGAZINE

Queen Elizabeth II: A lifetime of devotion and service

The funeral of Britain's longest-ruling monarch concludes a life exemplified by a personal motto of "I serve."

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch died on September 8, setting off a series of well-planned events to mark her passing. The culmination of these events is the state funeral at Westminster Abbey on Monday and her subsequent interment at King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle. The people of the United Kingdom and leaders from around the world will gather in London to pay their respects to the late queen and bid a final farewell.

The beginning of an era

Queen Elizabeth II sat at her desk, undertaking her first duties as monarch. Just hours before, she had been Elizabeth Windsor; now she was queen of the United Kingdom, head of the Commonwealth of Nations, and sovereign of the Commonwealth realms.

It was 1952, and she was in mourning. But despite her grief, the young queen shouldered her new responsibility with grace—and her signature stiff upper lip. “She was sitting erect, fully accepting her destiny,” her private secretary later recalled. When he asked her which name she would reign under, she said “My own, of course.”

Over the seven decades that followed, Queen Elizabeth II would leave an unmistakable impression on her nation and the rest of the world. Her road to the throne was a twisted one; her reign beset by crises and social cataclysms. But her destiny was to rule through triumph and sorrow, conflict and almost unthinkable change. Along the way, she would become the longest-ruling British monarch—linking past and present and emerging as an indelible figure on the world stage.

A twist of royal fate

Born in London on April 21, 1926, Elizabeth was the granddaughter of a king and daughter of a duke—the newest member of the House of Windsor. Despite her royal pedigree, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary didn’t seem destined to the British throne. She was third in line to the monarchy, but it was widely assumed that her uncle Edward would become king, marry, and produce royal heirs of his own. History had other plans for Elizabeth.

When she was nine years old, her uncle took the throne as Edward VIII according to plan. Less than a year later he abdicated, abandoning the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite. Elizabeth’s father would become king, and suddenly Elizabeth was next in line to helm Britain’s hereditary monarchy.

The lonely princess

Elizabeth had been raised quietly along with her younger sister, Princess Margaret. But when she became heir to the throne, her future reign indelibly shaped young Elizabeth’s life. Privately educated in Buckingham Palace and overseen by a beloved governess, she was tutored in her future duties by leading scholars and in religion by the archbishop of Canterbury. She learned from her father, too: Shy, stuttering George VI nonetheless addressed his people regularly and insisted on staying in London during the Blitz of World War II.

Elizabeth was a lonely but dutiful young girl—one biographer noted that her loud cries during her christening as a baby were “the last recorded instance of her surrendering to anything like a tantrum.” But the war opened up her horizons.

In 1940, she made her first public speech at age 14, addressing children who had been separated from their parents during the war. “We children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage,” she said. “We are trying . . . to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war.”

Love and war

The teenage princess took part in the war effort in another way, too. In 1945, Elizabeth made history when she became the first woman in the royal family to serve full-time in Britain’s military as a truck driver and mechanic. When the war ended later that year, she wore her uniform and slipped into the celebrating crowds, blending in with the revelers as she basked in the joy and relief of peace.

By then, the seeds of what would become a seven-decade romance had been sown. Elizabeth and Margaret spent much of World War II at Windsor Castle. Elizabeth’s third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark often stayed there when he was on leave from the Royal Navy. After the war, their relationship bloomed.

The dashing, blunt prince—who was exiled to England as an infant amid political strife in Greece and became naturalized as Philip Mountbatten in 1947—was an unlikely match for the reserved queen-to-be. He was relatively poor and seemingly rootless, his childhood marked by instability and trauma. But Elizabeth was captivated, reportedly falling in love at age 13. “She had a protective shell around her, and he brought her out of it,” said one observer. They married in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.

The young queen

As a young wife and mother—Charles III was born in 1948 and Princess Anne followed in 1950—Elizabeth began to step into her aging father’s shoes. In 1952, she undertook a world tour in King George VI’s stead. During a brief getaway with Philip in Kenya, word arrived that her father had died. The 25-year-old was now a queen.

Elizabeth II, Britain’s 61st monarch, would reign over a vast empire and serve as head of the Church of England. At the time of her accession, Britain had more than 70 territories overseas. She was sovereign and head of state of the Commonwealth realms, including Canada and Australia, and the second Head of the Commonwealth of the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of sovereign states mostly linked to the United Kingdom through a history of British colonial rule. But her role was mostly symbolic: Though technically head of state and church, under the United Kingdom’s constitutional monarchy she possessed no ability to pass or enforce laws and was responsible for serving as a national figurehead, not a politician.

Elizabeth considered her responsibility as monarch a sacred duty. “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she said in a radio address on her 21st birthday, when her father was still king. She would spend the rest of her life living up to that promise.

A glittering coronation

As she mourned her father and acclimated to life as queen, Elizabeth prepared for perhaps the most memorable of the many royal appearances she was to make during her long life: Her coronation, held in Westminster Abbey in June 1953, hewed to time-honored tradition.

The day of the ceremony, the demure young queen, wearing an elaborate white satin dress, took a carriage from Buckingham Palace to the abbey. Inside the abbey, she was blessed and anointed with oil, decked with royal robes, and given a scepter and an orb.

Finally, after a nearly five-pound crown studded with jewels was placed on her head, she received the homage of the royal family and the peerage. Prince Philip was the first to kneel before her, pledging to be her “liege man of life and limb.”

Admiring subjects lined the streets of London to celebrate. They weren’t the only ones to take in the grandeur—at the queen’s insistence, television cameras were allowed inside the church for the first time, and the coronation was broadcast live. An estimated three-quarters of the population of Britain, more than 20 million people, tuned in for the ceremony, and millions more watched from other countries. Her coronation was the world’s first must-see television event and ushered in a new, modern monarchy.

Her changing empire

The British Empire of the queen’s forebears was changing rapidly as countries asserted their independence in the postwar years. Elizabeth continued to serve as constitutional monarch of a growing number of Commonwealth realms. And as head of the Commonwealth of Nations, she presided over a loose group of mostly former British colonies that had abandoned their colonial relationships with Britain.

After the coronation, Elizabeth and Philip embarked on an unprecedented tour of the Commonwealth. During the trip, the pair traveled more than 40,000 miles and visited 13 countries. It was the first time a reigning monarch had visited either Australia or New Zealand.

The Commonwealth would become one of Elizabeth’s most enduring projects. She embraced the association’s diversity and fostered close relationships with its leaders. The Commonwealth “bears no resemblance to the Empires of the past,” she said. “It is an entirely new conception, built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty, and the desire for freedom and peace. To that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life.”

Royal duties

A busy travel schedule made up just part of the queen’s royal duties. Though the British sovereign must remain externally neutral on matters of state, they retain the right to appoint prime ministers and call a general election. Although those duties are usually no more than ceremonial, they remain a key part of protocol. Monarchs can also advise—or be advised by—their prime ministers.

During her weekly visits with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in her first years as queen, Elizabeth received his tutelage and shared in his notorious sense of fun. Her private secretary recalled hearing “peals of laughter” during their audiences, and the queen wrote that she was “profoundly grateful” for his guidance during her first years as sovereign.

A “priggish schoolgirl”

Despite her outward neutrality, the queen had her detractors—and soon learned that, in times of national strife, the monarchy could be harshly criticized. The first gauntlet came after the Suez Crisis, Britain’s disastrous, short-lived invasion of Egypt in 1956. The brief fiasco resulted in a decline in the U.K.’s global status and fueled a political and economic crisis.

After Anthony Eden, the prime minister who had given the invasion the green light, resigned, Elizabeth came under fire for relying on the advice of an insular group of royal insiders in choosing Eden’s successor. In 1957, Lord Altrincham, the influential editor of the National and English Review, published sharp criticism of Elizabeth and her “tweedy” advisers. Then he launched into a personal attack on the queen herself, complaining about everything from her voice to her “priggish schoolgirl” demeanor.

The criticism—and the debate it generated—prompted the queen to make lasting changes. Though the queen kept the monarch’s prerogative to appoint prime ministers, she would defer to political parties’ choice of prime minister for the rest of her life. And, in a nod toward equality, the queen eventually did away with the custom of presenting upper-crust debutantes at court, a long-standing tradition seen by some as evidence of a privilege unfairly extended to an elite minority.

A troubled nation

British society was changing and so was the monarchy. During her reign, Elizabeth faced a seemingly endless parade of crises, from economic malaise in the 1970s and 1980s to the international woes of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic in the 21st century. But some events hit closer to home than others.

One such event was the Aberfan mine disaster in 1966, a landslide in which 144 people, many of them schoolchildren, were killed. After refusing to visit the Welsh community until more than a week after the incident, Elizabeth faced deep criticism for what some saw as leaving her subjects in the lurch. The queen reportedly considered her bungled response to the disaster to be the biggest regret of her reign.

The Troubles, a three-decades-long conflict between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, was another crucible. The violence left more than 3,600 dead and more than 30,000 injured. The Troubles also touched Elizabeth personally: Her second cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1979. It would take until 2011 for Elizabeth to make an official state visit to the Republic of Ireland, where she offered her sympathy to the victims of the Troubles. Despite her words—the closest a member of the Royal Family ever came to apologizing for Britain’s reprisals during the conflict—tensions continued to simmer in Northern Ireland, especially in the throes of Brexit, which threatened trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Pomp and circumstance

As a mother of four—Prince Andrew was born in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964—the queen hewed carefully to her symbolic duties. Every year, she presided at the State Opening of Parliament, delivering a speech to the assembled members of the Houses of Commons and Lords. (During her reign she missed only three appearances; twice while pregnant with her younger sons and once in 2022 as concerns for her health increased.)

State events were filled with pitfalls of procedure and etiquette. But for the queen, there was a practical annoyance: the weight of her nearly five-pound Imperial State Crown. “You can’t look down to read the speech, you have to take the speech up. Because if you did, your neck would break—it would fall off,” she told the BBC in a 2018 documentary. “So there are some disadvantages to crowns, but otherwise they’re quite important things.” As the queen aged, she began wearing a lighter-weight diadem to Parliament instead.

Another tradition was the royal Christmas message, a speech broadcast first by radio, then by television to a worldwide audience. During the annual messages, which her grandfather first instituted, Elizabeth offered thanks and encouragement to the people of the Commonwealth and commented on the most pressing issues of the time.

And then there were the jubilees—anniversary celebrations of the queen’s ever lengthening rule. The queen would often travel throughout the Commonwealth of Nations during jubilee years, and she used the jubilee celebrations as chances to greet her subjects and focus on the unity and progress of her nation and the Commonwealth.

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In 1969, she presided over a very personal ceremony: the investiture of her oldest son, Charles, as Prince of Wales. As her son knelt before her at Caernarfon Castle, she placed a jewel-studded coronet on his head and presented him to the Welsh people as their prince.

Family matters

Over the years, the queen survived multiple assassination attempts. But those were arguably less traumatic than the family conflicts that rocked her personal life and shook public confidence in the monarchy.

The queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, caused a furor when tabloids published photos of her cavorting with her lover in 1976. Though Margaret’s subsequent divorce scandalized the family, Elizabeth gave it her blessing. It was just a preview of the strife to come.

The fallout of the tempestuous marriage and separation of Charles III and Princess Diana led Elizabeth to refer to 1992 as her “annus horribilis,” a year that also included a catastrophic fire at Windsor Castle, the divorce of Princess Anne, and the separation of Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah.

When Diana died in a tragic car crash while being pursued by paparazzi in 1997, her former mother-in-law was condemned for her seeming lack of emotion. But in private, the queen expressed her grief, writing to a friend that Diana’s death was “dreadfully sad.” In the aftermath, she protected and cared for her grandsons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

A stiff upper lip

Elizabeth’s troubles didn’t end then. Her son Prince Andrew was linked to infamous American financier Jeffrey Epstein and accused of sexually assaulting a minor Epstein had allegedly trafficked. Under increasing public pressure and after a widely criticized television interview in which Prince Andrew downplayed Epstein’s actions and denied any wrongdoing, he stepped down from public life in November 2019 and returned his royal patronages and military titles to the queen in January 2022.

In January 2020, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, announced they would step back from the royal family and become financially independent. They also alleged that Meghan, who is biracial, had received racist treatment from members of the royal inner circle. Though the couple’s retreat to the United States reportedly came as a blow to the queen, the monarch retained a relationship with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from afar and was said to have been “overjoyed” that the pair named their second child Lilibet.

Another blow came in 2021, when Philip, the longest-serving royal consort in British history, died at age 99. Images of the queen sitting alone at her husband’s funeral, which was kept small to conform with the British government’s coronavirus-era restrictions, vividly illustrated the queen’s loss. But through it all, she presented a placid face to the world.

Intensely private though she was, the queen was also known to be warm and witty. She doted on her corgis and relished her summer retreats to Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where she could go on long walks and picnics, drive her Range Rover, and visit with her royal ponies. A committed horsewoman, she was a fixture at horse shows and races and could be spotted in the saddle into her 90s.

But for the woman who committed to serving her country at the age of just 25, her country was never far from her thoughts. She remained active and involved in public events into her mid-90s and never turned away from her responsibilities as queen. “These are the things that, at her age, she shouldn’t be doing, yet she’s carrying on and doing them,” her grandson Prince Harry said in a 2012 interview. So, what did the resilient queen make of her own boundary-breaking life? She reportedly joked, “I have to be seen to be believed.”

Elizabeth could find the humor in her complicated destiny. And for those who loved her—her millions of subjects, her loving family, and her fans around the world—she was much more than a figurehead. “In the days when it was a man’s world, it was very difficult for her to . . . make a difference,” her grandson Prince William said in a 2019 interview. “And she’s done it. In her own very unique, distinct way.”

To the end, she retained the calm resolve of the young woman who accepted her royal fate so many years before—a life of duty and service, accomplished as no one but Elizabeth could.

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9 Books to Read About Queen Elizabeth II

Elizabeth, famously reticent during her decades in the public eye, was a source of fascination for many. These books offer a deeper understanding of her life, family and world.

By The New York Times Books Staff

During the 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, through times of turbulence and peace, celebration, controversy and scandal, the monarchy has been an object of fascination.

Elizabeth, who died on Thursday at 96 , became Britain’s sovereign in 1952. Her reign, which spanned 15 British prime ministers and 14 American presidents, coincided with tremendous social and cultural change at home and abroad, as its empire overseas fell away.

Her duties were largely ceremonial, but supporters felt that she, and the monarchy, played an important and stabilizing role as the anchor of the country. Critics, on the other hand, considered the institution expensive and increasingly irrelevant in modern life.

Her coronation in 1953 was the first in Britain to be broadcast on television almost from beginning to end, and she struggled throughout her life to balance the norms and traditions with 24-hour news cycles and a far more public age. All the while, she worked to keep intact the public consensus the monarchy needed to survive.

Here are nine books we recommend for a deeper understanding of Elizabeth, her family and her time as Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. — Elizabeth A. Harris

‘Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch,’ by Sally Bedell Smith

This thorough but deferential biography was published to coincide with the queen’s diamond jubilee. Smith — who has also written books about Princess Diana, Prince Charles and various American presidents — “curtsies before the British throne as deeply as a lady-in-waiting,” as wrote Alan Riding in The Times in 2012. Smith consulted public sources, friends and former courtiers of the queen who shared “intimate tidbits (all too often about horses and corgis). But despite that,” Riding goes on, “She faces a problem encountered, I suspect, by other royal biographers. Elizabeth has lived a remarkable life yet one that, quite frankly, is a bit dull to recount. Put differently, her somewhat dysfunctional family has provided far livelier copy.” — Elisabeth Egan

Read the review

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Queen Elizabeth II

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 25, 2023 | Original: May 23, 2018

Queen Elizabeth II served from 1952 to 2022 as reigning monarch of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and numerous other realms and territories, as well as head of the Commonwealth, the group of 53 sovereign nations that includes many former British territories. Extremely popular for nearly all of her long reign, the queen was known for taking a serious interest in government and political affairs, apart from her ceremonial duties, and was credited with modernizing many aspects of the monarchy.

Childhood and Education of a Princess

When Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, the elder daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was born on April 21, 1926, she apparently had little chance of assuming the throne, as her father was a younger son of King George V.

But in late 1936, her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. As a result, her father became King George VI, and 10-year-old “Lilibet” (as she was known within the family) became the heir presumptive to the throne.

Though she spent much of her childhood with nannies, Princess Elizabeth was influenced greatly by her mother, who instilled in her a devout Christian faith as well as a keen understanding of the demands of royal life. Her grandmother, Queen Mary, consort of King George V, also instructed Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret in the finer points of royal etiquette.

Educated by private tutors, with an emphasis on British history and law, the princess also studied music and learned to speak fluent French. She trained as a Girl Guide (the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts) and developed a lifelong passion for horses.

As queen, she kept many thoroughbred racehorses and frequently attended racing and breeding events. Elizabeth’s famous attachment to Pembroke Welsh corgis also began in childhood, and she owned more than 30 corgis over the course of her reign.

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth and Margaret spent much of World War II living apart from their parents in the Royal Lodge at Windsor Castle, a medieval fortress outside London. In 1942, the king made Elizabeth an honorary colonel in the 500 Grenadier Guards, a Royal Army regiment.

Two years later, he named her as a member of the Privy Council and the Council of State, enabling her to act on his behalf when he was out of the country.

In 1947, soon after the royal family returned from an official visit to South Africa and Rhodesia, they announced Elizabeth’s engagement to Prince Philip of Greece, her third cousin (both were great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) and a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. She had set her sights on him when she was only 13, and their relationship developed through visits and correspondence during the war.

Though many in the royal circle viewed Philip as an unwise match due to his lack of money and foreign (German) blood, Elizabeth was determined and very much in love. She and Philip wed on November 20, 1947 , at Westminster Abbey .

Their first son, Charles (Prince of Wales, then King Charles III ) was born in 1948; a daughter, Anne (Princess Royal) arrived two years later. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's third child and second son, Prince Andrew, was born in 1960 and the couple's youngest child, Prince Edward, was born in 1964.

Elizabeth and Phillip were married for an extraordinary 73 years, until the Prince died in April 2021 at the age of 99.

Behind‑the‑Scenes Photos of Queen Elizabeth’s 1947 Wedding

A tremendous amount of effort goes into planning a royal wedding.

Queen Elizabeth II: 15 Key Moments in Her Reign

Revisit some of the most historic moments in the reign of Britain’s record‑setting monarch.

Queen Elizabeth’s First Televised Broadcast Presented a New Type of Monarch

The 1957 Christmas Day address humanized the monarch and acknowledged a shift in the position's role from aloof ruler to accessible figurehead.

Queen Elizabeth's Coronation

With her father’s health declining in 1951, Elizabeth stepped in for him at various state functions. After spending that Christmas with the royal family, Elizabeth and Philip left on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, making a stopover in Kenya en route.

They were in Kenya on February 6, 1952, when King George VI succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 56, and his 25-year-old daughter became the sixth woman in history to ascend to the British throne. Her formal coronation as Queen Elizabeth II took place on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey.

In the first decade of her reign, Elizabeth settled into her role as queen, developing a close bond with Prime Minister Winston Churchill (the first of 15 prime ministers she would work with during her reign), weathering a foreign affairs disaster in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and making numerous state trips abroad.

In response to pointed criticism in the press, the queen embraced steps to modernize her own image and that of the monarchy, including televising her annual Christmas broadcast for the first time in 1957.

Elizabeth and Philip had two more children, Andrew (born 1960) and Edward (born 1964). In 1968, Charles was formally invested as the Prince of Wales , marking his coming of age and the beginning of what would be a long period as king-in-waiting.

Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, marking her 25 years on the throne, proved a bright spot in an era of economic struggles. Always a vigorous traveler, she kept a punishing schedule to mark the occasion, traveling some 56,000 miles around the Commonwealth, including the island nations Fiji and Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the British West Indies and Canada.

Royal Scandals

In 1981, all eyes were on the royal family once again as Prince Charles wed Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Though the couple soon welcomed two sons, William and Harry , their marriage quickly imploded, causing considerable public embarrassment for the queen and the entire royal family.

In 1992, Elizabeth’s 40th year on the throne and her family’s “Annus Horribilis” (according to a speech she gave that November) both Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson, separated, while Princess Anne and her husband, Mark Phillips, divorced.

A fire also broke out at Windsor Castle that same year, and amid public outcry over the use of government funds to restore the royal residence, Queen Elizabeth agreed to pay taxes on her private income. This was not required by British law, though some earlier monarchs had done so as well.

At the time, her personal fortune was estimated at $11.7 billion. In another modernizing measure, she also agreed to open the state rooms at Buckingham Palace to the public for an admission fee when she was not in residence.

Response to Lady Diana's Death

After Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, Diana remained incredibly popular with the British (and international) public. Her tragic death the following year triggered a tremendous outpouring of shock and grief, as well as outrage at the royal family for what the public saw as its ill treatment of the “People’s Princess.”

Though Queen Elizabeth initially kept the family (including Princes William and Harry) out of the public eye at Balmoral, the unprecedented public response to Diana’s death convinced her to return to London, make a televised speech about Diana, greet mourners and allow the Union Jack to fly at half-mast above Buckingham Palace.

‘Annus Horribilis’: Why Queen Elizabeth II Called 1992 a Horrible Year

Marriage troubles for three out of her four children, humiliating press, a racy book and a fire at Windsor Castle all added to the year's misery.

Why Princess Diana’s 1995 BBC Interview Shocked the World

The interview, in which Princess Diana talked about her struggles with mental health and her marriage, rocked the royal family and generated empathy among the public.

Princess Diana’s Death

Lady Diana Spencer: From Teacher to Princess Diana was born on July 1, 1961, to Edward John Spencer and his wife Frances. At the time of her birth, in Britain’s peerage system, her father held the title of Viscount Althorp. Her parents were divorced in 1969, when she was eight, and her father won sole […]

A Modern Monarchy

The queen’s popularity, and that of the entire royal family, rebounded during the first decade of the 21st century. Though 2002 marked Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee—50 years on the throne—the death of her mother (the beloved Queen Mum) and sister early that year cast a pall on the celebrations.

In 2005, the queen enjoyed public support when she gave her assent to Prince Charles’ once-unthinkable marriage to his longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles.

In her seventh decade on the throne, Queen Elizabeth presided over the pomp and circumstance of another royal wedding at Westminster Abbey, that of Prince William to Catherine Middleton in April 2011. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are in line to become Britain’s next king and queen, continued the line of succession with their children, Prince George (born 2013), Princess Charlotte (born 2015) and Prince Louis (born 2018).

In September 2015, Elizabeth surpassed the record of 63 years and 216 days on the throne set by Queen Victoria (her great-great-grandmother) to become the longest-reigning British monarch in history. A consistent presence by his wife’s side and one of Britain’s busiest royals for much of her reign, Prince Philip stepped down from his royal duties in 2017, at the age of 96. That same year, the royal couple celebrated 70 years of marriage, making theirs the longest union in the history of the British monarchy. Philip died in 2021, at the age of 99. 

In May 2018, Prince Harry wed the American actress Meghan Markle , a biracial divorcée. The couple had a son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, in 2019, and a daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, in 2021. Harry and Meghan announced they would be stepping back from senior royal duties in January 2020 and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles.

Rumors swirled at various times that Queen Elizabeth would step aside and let Prince Charles take the throne. In 2017, she delegated some of her royal obligations, such as the official Remembrance Day ceremony, to him, fueling speculation that she was preparing to bequeath the throne to her eldest son. Instead, she remained a consistent, stable presence at the head of Britain’s reigning family until her peaceful death on September 8, 2022 at her beloved country residence, Balmoral Castle. 

In the final years of her reign, she continued many of her official duties, public appearances and spent plenty of time outside with her beloved dogs and horses. Two days before her death, she officially installed a new prime minister, Liz Truss.

HISTORY Vault: Profiles: Queen Elizabeth II

Chart the unexpected rise and record-breaking reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which unfolded in the turbulent modern history of the English monarchy.

Her Majesty the Queen, The Royal Household website . Sally Bedell Smith, Elizabeth the Queen ( Penguin Random House, 2012 ). Queen Elizabeth II – Fast Facts, CNN . “Will Queen Elizabeth Give Prince Charles the Throne in 2018?” Newsweek .

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Queen Elizabeth II: The Life of Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch

Facts, information and articles about Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch of the United Kingdom from 1952 to 2022.

Queen Elizabeth II, or Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of the House of Windsor, was the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom and the head of the Commonwealth. She was the longest-serving monarch in British history, having served for nearly 70 years. She had presided over some of the momentous changes in her country’s history, including the end of the British empire, a number of royal scandals, several wars, and the U.K. joining the European Union and then leaving it after the Brexit referendum. Her 70-year reign was the longest of any British monarch and the second-longest in the world after King Louis XIV, who took the French throne in 1643 at age 5 and ruled for 72 years.

April 21, 1926, London, England

Sept. 8, 2022, Balmoral, Scotland

Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

COuntries Where She Was Head of State

Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United Kingdom.

King Charles III

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Queen elizabeth ii’s early life.

Princess Elizabeth of York was born in 1926 during the reign of George V. Her father was the Prince Albert, the Duke of York, the second in line to the throne. Thus Elizabeth was not widely expected to assume the throne — her uncle, Edward, Prince of Wales, was the heir apparent, and her own father showed little inclination for public life. Elizabeth’s mother was Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of an earl, who was married to Prince “Bertie” in a love match. Elizabeth’s sister, Margaret, was born in 1930.

In 1936, George V died and Prince Albert became King Edward VIII.

The family’s hopes for a relatively quiet life were dashed later that same year, however, when Edward VIII’s affair with American socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Edward abdicated on Dec. 10, 1936, and Prince Albert became King George VI. Princess Elizabeth became the first in line to the British throne. George VI proved to be a capable leader during World War II , boosting morale and acting a symbol of British determination to defeat Nazi Germany.

During the war, Princess Elizabeth took part in public events to help the war effort, famously including training as a driver and mechanic for the Auxiliary Territorial Service at age 19. She earned the equivalent of the rank of captain.

On Nov. 20, 1947, Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. Their first child, Prince Charles, was born Nov. 14, 1948.

Coronation ANd Early Reign

In February 1952, King George VI died while Elizabeth and Philip were on tour in Kenya. Princess Elizabeth immediately flew back to London. On April 9, 1952, at the suggestion of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and her grandmother, Elizabeth announced that the name of the royal family would be the House of Windsor. She was formally crowned Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey.

After World War II, the British empire began formally dissolving, and several British colonies left the Commonwealth, and the organization struck “British” from its official name. As part of her Christmas speech in 1953, Queen Elizabeth said she envisioned a new role for the group, “an entirely new conception — built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace.”

During the early decades of Queen Elizabeth’s rule, the royal family endured a series of personal scandals as the royals started to become seen as fair targets of media attention. Princess Margaret’s life and failed marriages were frequent tabloid fodder, as was her husband’s infamously blunt tongue. In many ways, Queen Elizabeth II is arguably history’s longest-serving celebrity.

Princess Diana

In July 29, 1981, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a lavish wedding that created a worldwide media frenzy. Princess Diana quickly proved a popular royal, but the Princess Di fandom later proved to have consequences for Queen Elizabeth.

In 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher send British troops to a British island off Argentina in the Falkland Islands War. Elizabeth’s son, Prince Andrew, served as a military helicopter pilot. That same year, an intruder broke into Buckingham Palace and managed to get into the queen’s bedroom, where she kept him busy in conversation until security could apprehend him.

Meanwhile, as reports of animosity between Thatcher and the queen grew, the relationship between Prince Charles and Princess Diana grew strained, providing plenty of fodder for tabloids. Support for the royal family also dipped, with more and more Britons questioning whether it was an obsolete institution.

ANNUS HORRIBILIS

In 1992, which Queen Elizabeth dubbed her “horrible year,” a series of setbacks befell her, including personal tribulations and divorces among her children, a fire at Windsor Castle, and increased oversight over royal finances by the government.

By the end of the year, Prince Charles and Princess Diana had separated, but public scrutiny of their relationship only intensified. Revelations of affairs on both sides emerged, and in 1996, they divorced. The following summer, August 1997, Diana died after a Paris car crash with her boyfriend, Egyptian billionaire scion Dodi Fayed.

What followed was a crisis for the royal family as it and the British government struggled to find a way to deal with the death of a popular figure who held an entirely new place in the history of the royal family — the estranged former spouse of the heir apparent. Queen Elizabeth’s initial response was widely seen as cold and insensitive, but she managed to assuage public anger with an unprecedented live television address about her former daughter-in-law.

21st Century Queen

Enjoying revived popularity, the queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee, the 50th anniversary of her reign, in 2002. In 2007, she became the country’s longest-serving monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria.

Starting in 2013, increasing health issues meant she could no longer attend many official events, including as head of the Commonwealth, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, she moved to Windsor Castle and limited her contact with people to protect her health. On April 9, 2021, Prince Philip died, and the queen sat alone at his funeral service because of COVID precautions

Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee officially started in February 2022, but she tested positive for the coronavirus later that month and was forced to isolate. She recovered but began making even fewer public appearances since.

Marriages of William and Harry

Further turning a global spotlight on the British monarchy, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry stepped outside of tradition when choosing their brides. In April 2011, Prince William, the elder son of Charles and Diana, married Catherine Middleton, who was a commoner. Despite her less-pedigreed family history, however, Kate, now the duchess of Cambridge, did come from wealth. Her parents were self-made millionaire business owners. William’s younger brother, Prince Harry, went a step further in breaking the mold. In May 2018, he married American actress Meghan Markle, who starred in the legal drama series “Suits.” Meghan, now duchess of Sussex, was also previously divorced and part Black, both being unusual in the royal family.

In 2020, Meghan and Harry spurred controversy by stepping down as working members of the royal family and moving back to America. The following year, Meghan gave a bombshell interview to Oprah Winfrey in which she said she felt mistreated and subjected to racism by the royal family.

Waning Health and Death

Despite Markle’s claims, public support for the British monarchy remained strong. Prince William spoke out in defense of his family, and asserted that its members were “very much not racist.” Queen Elizabeth II remained an enduringly popular figure.

In early September of 2022, it was announced that the queen was under medical supervision at Balmoral Castle, and that her children and Prince William, Prince Harry and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (Prince Charles’ second wife) had traveled to Scotland to be with her. Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8, 2022, in Balmoral Castle. Upon her death, King Charles III ascended to the throne.

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20 of the Best Books About Queen Elizabeth II

From exhaustive biographies, to illustrated coffee table books, and dishy accounts from former palace staffers.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

On the one year anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's passing, you may find yourself wanting to deepen your knowledge of the longest-reigning female monarch in world history. There's a wealth of books out there to delve into. From exhaustive biographies, to illustrated coffee table books, to dishy accounts from former palace staffers, here are 20 of the best books you can read about the queen.

Sally Bedell Smith Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

Angela Kelly The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe

To be fascinated by the Queen is to be fascinated by her wardrobe, and The Other Side of the Coin is a must-read for anyone wanting the inside scoop on those impeccably coordinated suits. Angela Kelley is the Queen’s personal dresser , and was given permission to share this exclusive glimpse into the royal costuming process, complete with never-before-seen images.

Hearst Home Town & Country: The Queen: A Life in Pictures

This carefully curated coffee table book from T&C was created by longtime royal reporter Victoria Murphy. The photographic tribute to Queen Elizabeth II features more than 300 photographs from the seven decades of her reign, spotlighting significant moments from both her public and private spheres, all accompanied by commentary and context from Murphy. The collection encompasses her coronation, her marriage to Prince Philip, her numerous royal tours around the world, her evolving wardrobe through the years, the births of her children and grandchildren, and much more.

Ingrid Seward My Husband and I: The Inside Story of the Royal Marriage

If you were gripped by season two of The Crown ’s deep dive into Elizabeth and Philip’s once-troubled marriage , you’ll want to prioritize this one. Seward delves into the couple’s 70-year long marriage with a lightness of touch, detailing their courtship and ups and downs as well as their formidable bond.

Robert Lacey The Crown, The Official Companion

If while watching The Crown , you're simultaneously fact-checking each episode, this is the book for you. Written by the show's historical consultant, Robert Lacey, it offers an in-depth look at the true story behind the drama. While this volume only addresses seasons two and three, hopefully Lacey will offer a season four version soon.

Elizabeth and Philip: A Royal Love Story

Similar to Seward's text, this special edition of Town & Country centers on the Queen and Prince Philip's romance, and features the true story of their courtship and 70+ year marriage alongside rarely seen photos of the royal couple.

Sali Hughes Our Rainbow Queen: A Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and Her Colorful Wardrobe

This beautiful coffee table book by Welsh journalist Sali Hughes offers a photographic voyage through nine decades of the Queen’s wardrobe, and more importantly her color schemes .

Brian Hoey Not in Front of the Corgis: Secrets of Life Behind the Royal Curtains

Admit it, this one had you at the title. Though this book isn’t exclusively about Queen Elizabeth’s famous collection of corgis (disappointing), it’s still a fun, deliberately lightweight collection of trivia and tidbits about royal life.

Sarah Bradford The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI, 1895-1952

In order to fully understand Queen Elizabeth, and the turbulent circumstances of her ascension to the throne, you need to understand her father, King George VI. Now most famous as the subject of 2010's The King's Speech , George was forced to become King after his brother abdicated the throne, a saga which Sarah Bradford chronicles in fascinating detail.

The Queen Mother: The Official Biography

As important as King George VI is to Queen Elizabeth's story, the Queen Mother played a far more central role in her daughter's reign, having lived to see its first five decades. William Shawcross’s official biography, published seven years after the Queen Mother's death in 2002, is a weighty tome packed with details and insight into her daily life.

Carol Ann Duffy Jubilee Lines: 60 Poets for 60 Years

Though not technically a book about Queen Elizabeth at all, Jubilee Lines is nevertheless an evocative portrait of her reign. In this collection, published in 2012 for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, 60 poets are each assigned one of the 60 Jubilee years, and write a poem related in some way to the events or reality of that year.

Ben Pimlott The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II

Originally published in 1996, this definitive and acclaimed biography of Queen Elizabeth was updated in 2002 to mark her Golden Jubilee. Written by the late, highly respected historian Ben Pimlott, The Queen was described by The Independent newspaper as “the standard work on its sovereign subject, while The New York Times Book Review called it a “superbly judicious biography of Elizabeth II.”

Pegasus Books Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

Veteran royal chronicler Robert Hardman focuses his 2019 biography on a specific aspect of Queen Elizabeth – her role as the head of Commonwealth of Nations—and thus avoids retreading familiar ground. Queen of the World was described by the BBC as “an intimate portrait of the Royal commitments at home and abroad.”

Andrew Marr The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and Her People

Scottish journalist Andrew Marr has a unique perspective as royal biographer, having once been a diehard republican (i.e. opposed to the existence of monarchy). Now an admirer of the Queen, Marr argues in this biography that “Britain without her would have been a greyer, shriller, more meagre place."

Sarah Bradford Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life In Our Times

In this relatively recent biography of the Queen—published in 2012—Sarah Bradford places the Queen’s life in a broader historical context. Per The Telegraph , the book represents “a familiar story being sparked into new life by a skilled practitioner.”

Marion Crawford The Little Princesses

For a truly one-of-a-kind perspective on the Queen’s formative years, look no further than this extraordinary biography by Marion Crawford, who was governess to the young Elizabeth and her sister Margaret for 17 years (they called her “Crawfie”). The 1950 publication of The Little Princesses caused a stir, and Crawford was reportedly shunned by the royal family for writing it.

Gyles Brandreth Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage

Another option for those fascinated by the Elizabeth/Philip dynamic, this biography by Gyles Brandreth is unusual for being focused primarily on Philip’s perspective.

Catherine Ryan The Queen: The Life and Times of Elizabeth II

This beautifully presented coffee table book takes a photo-centric approach to chronicling Queen Elizabeth’s life and reign.

Dickie Arbiter On Duty With The Queen

In his part-autobiography and part-royal biography, former palace spokesman Dickie Arbiter recounts how he went from working in broadcast journalism to being appointed as press secretary to the Royal family in 1988. Given Arbiter’s unparalleled access to the Queen—not to mention Princess Diana—it’s no surprise that this is a compelling, if restrained, read.

Cecil Beaton Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton

Society photographer Cecil Beaton was chosen to take the official photographs of the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, and his portraits became some of the most iconic images from her entire reign. Along with the pictures themselves, this book offers insight into Beaton’s long relationship with the royals, and the role his work played in their public image.

Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.

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Home > New Materials > Book Lists > Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life and Reign

Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life and Reign

Queen Elizabeth II, who died September 8, 2022, at the age of 96, was the longest-serving monarch in British history. While she was not in direct line for the throne at birth, she became heir apparent at the age of 10 when the abdication of King Edward VIII, her uncle, made her father the monarch. A devotion to service—which began before she ascended the throne—was the hallmark of her reign. As a teenager during WWII, she made radio broadcasts to boost the morale of the British public, and after turning 18, she joined the women’s branch of the British army, where she was trained to become an auto mechanic. In a speech marking her 21st birthday Elizabeth said, "I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."

When Elizabeth II traveled the globe, although she did not make political pronouncements, her official presence at events had the force of diplomatic statements. She participated in approximately 300 public events each year. She held weekly meetings with prime ministers, fifteen during the course of her reign, beginning with Winston Churchill and ending with Liz Truss just two days before her death.

There were some light-hearted events, too, like the queen’s tea with Paddington Bear. And she opened the 2012 Olympics with an elaborate video showing her being whisked away to a helicopter by Daniel Craig, portraying James Bond, where a stunt double dressed like Elizabeth parachuted into the opening ceremonies.

Queen Elizabeth II did not cut back on her appearances and duties until her final year, and then only on medical advice. For her Silver Jubilee in 1977, she reflected on her early promise of service: "Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I do not regret nor retract one word of it.”

All titles in this minibibliography can be requested from your local cooperating library. The digital talking-book titles can be downloaded through BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) . Contact your local cooperating library to register for BARD. Registered users can also download titles on iOS and Android devices using the BARD Mobile app. To find your local cooperating library, go to www.loc.gov/nls/braille-audio-reading-materials/find-a-local-library or call toll-free 888-NLS-READ (888-657-7323)

Queen Elizabeth II

Prince philip, king charles iii, other family members, elizabeth: a biography of britain's queen by sarah bradford.

An in-depth portrait of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. Offers inside views--including scandals--of her parents and other forebears, sister, husband, and four children. Tells how she copes with the pressures of being head of state, wife, and mother in an era of tumultuous political and social change. 1996. Download DB51345

Royal Sisters: Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret by Anne Edwards

This dual biography intertwines the lives of Elizabeth II, who would become queen, and Margaret, who would forever remain in her shadow. Edwards shows how quickly they developed different personalities. Elizabeth became serious and reserved, while Margaret retained her feisty spirit. It also discusses the sisterly loyalty that has sustained them throughout life. 1990. Download DB33196

Queen of the World by Robert Hardman

A biography of Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of the United Kingdom, that focuses on her active role in international affairs as a diplomat, stateswoman, pioneer, and peace-broker. 2019. Download DB104603

Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II by Robert Lacey

Overview of the monarchy of Great Britain from Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century to Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee in 2002. Explores the crown's uneasy relationship with the press and Elizabeth's endurance of criticism over the misbehavior of members of her family. 2002. Download DB54923

The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II by Ben Pimlott

The author describes how Elizabeth II, who was never expected to become queen, was thrust toward the role after her uncle's abdication as king. Pimlott suggests that through no fault of Elizabeth's, political and social upheavals and scandals involving her children have come to threaten the existence of the monarchy since she began her reign in 1952. 1997. Download DB47203

Queen and Country: The Fifty-Year Reign of Elizabeth II by William Shawcross

British historian recounts the life and times of Great Britain's queen from her 1952 ascent to the throne to her 2002 Golden Jubilee. Describes how Elizabeth II adjusted to modern times the ancient monarchy she inherited, surviving notable challenges, among them the tabloid reports of her family's affairs. 2002. Download BR14333

Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith

Biography of Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (born 1926) by the author of Diana in Search of Herself (RC 48833). Covers her childhood, coronation, and work ethic. Includes anecdotes about palace intrigues and her relationships with family, friends, and politicians. Concludes with Queen Elizabeth II's 2012 Diamond Jubilee. Bestseller. 2012. Download DB74430

Young Elizabeth by Kate Williams

An account of Queen Elizabeth II's life as a young adult, her public life, her work with the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, and her forward-looking thinking upon rising to the crown. Examines how the young queen carved out a role distinct from that of her parents and grandparents. 2012 Download DB84815

Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II by Philip Eade

Biography of Great Britain's prince consort Philip (born 1921), the grandson of King George I of Greece. Describes Philip's childhood in Greece, France, Nazi Germany, and England. Continues through his 1947 marriage to Princess Elizabeth II of England and her 1952 ascension to the throne. 2011. Download DB76642

Philip, the Man Behind the Monarchy by Unity Hall

Analyzes and documents the difficult life of Prince Philip, husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II. Hall views Philip, as an intriguing mix of ambition and dedication who decided early on to marry Elizabeth, thus carving out a career for himself. Hall also asserts that while Elizabeth and Philip are very different personalities, they are, and always have been, devoted to each other. 1987. Download DB28905

Prince Charles by Anthony Holden

Heir to the world's only surviving major monarchy and to one of the greatest fortunes on earth is viewed as a complex, conservative figure who has become an accomplished ambassador for Britain overseas. Download DB14027

Prince Charles by Sally Bedell Smith

A biography of Prince Charles. Using years of research and hundreds of interviews, the author sheds light on the death of Diana, Charles's marriage to Camilla, and his preparations to take the throne. Begins with his lonely childhood, follows his years at school, his many pursuits, and his complicated familial relationships. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. 2017. Download DB88248

Diana's Boys: William and Harry and the Mother They Loved by Christopher P. Andersen

Portraits of the princes William and Harry, with and without their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. Andersen describes the boys' development from hellions to seemingly well-adjusted adolescents, and the roles of Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II, and Camilla Parker Bowles after Diana's death. He also looks at the women in William's life. Bestseller. 2001. Download DB52908

Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

A portrait of the famous English royal, sister to Queen Elizabeth II, drawn through interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues, and essays. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2017. Download DB91978

Spare by Harry, Prince. Duke of Sussex

"It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love. Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple’s cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief." -- Provided by publisher.; Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2023. Download DB112017

Battle of Brothers: William and Harry–The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult by Robert Lacey

The biographer who wrote Sir Walter Raleigh (DB11467) explores the relationship between Prince William and Prince Harry throughout their childhood and as adults. He reflects on their former closeness and later estrangement, as well as the role that their vastly different futures may have played in their dynamic. 2020. Download DB103291

Diana, William, and Harry by James Patterson and Chris Mooney

"From the moments William and Harry are born into the House of Windsor, they become their young mother's whole world. I've got two very healthy, strong boys. I realize how incredibly lucky I am, Diana reminds herself every morning. But even the Princess of Wales questions, Am I a good mother? Diana's faced with a seemingly impossible challenge: one son destined to be King of England and another determined to find his own way. She teaches them to honor royal tradition, even while daring to break it. "Sometimes I'd like a time machine..." Diana says as William and Harry grow up, never imagining they'd have less than a lifetime together. Even after she's gone, her sons follow their mother's lead—and her heart. As the years pass and William and Harry grow into adulthood and form families of their own, they carry on Diana's name, her likeness, and her incomparable spirit." -- Provided by publisher.; Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2022. Download DB110618

Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne by Christopher P. Andersen

An examination of the lives, loves, and relationships among the women of the early twenty-first century British royal family—Queen Elizabeth II, Camilla Parker Bowles, and Kate Middleton. Discusses their backgrounds and both the similarities and differences in the trajectories of their lives. 2016. Download DB88655

Royal Service: My Twelve Years as Valet to Prince Charles by Stephen P. Barry

The man who traveled around the globe with Prince Charles for twelve years prior to the royal marriage takes readers into Buckingham Palace and reveals what it was really like to be a commoner living and working side-by-side with royalty. His candid memoir details the differences with clarity, humor, and affection. 1983. Download DB19617

Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

A memoir from a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, who was a friend of Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth II since childhood. Describes her experiences witnessing landmark moments in royal history and shares intimate stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020. Download DB98917

HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by Elizabeth Holmes

Journalist examines the lives and fashion choices of members of the British royal family—Queen Elizabeth II; Princess Diana; Catherine, The Duchess of Cambridge; and Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex. Holmes analyzes the ways the royals use fashion to convey messages about values, interests, and priorities. 2020. Download DB101938

At Home with the Royal Family by Paul James and Peter Russell

Russell, a former butler to the royal household, and James, a "veteran chronicler of the members of royalty," offer details of behind-the-palace-walls life. This is not a sampler of royal gossip, but an informed account of the day-to-day running of the court explained with thorough knowledge and ingratiating humor. 1986. Download BR07326

The Other Side of the Coin by Angela Kelly

"When Angela Kelly and The Queen are together, laughter echoes through the corridors of Buckingham Palace. Angela has worked with The Queen and walked the corridors of the Royal Household for twenty-five years, initially as Her Majesty's Senior Dresser and then latterly as Her Majesty's Personal Advisor, Curator, Wardrobe and In-house Designer. As the first person in history to hold this title, she shares a uniquely close working relationship with The Queen. In The Other Side of the Coin , The Queen has personally given Angela her blessing to share their extraordinary bond with the world. Whether it's preparing for a formal occasion or brightening Her Majesty's day with a playful joke, Angela's priority is to serve and support. Sharing charming anecdotes of their time spent together, this revealing book provides memorable insights into what it's like to work closely with The Queen, to curate her wardrobe and to discover a true and lasting connection along the way. 'The book documents the unique working relationship between Her Majesty The Queen and the woman who has been her Personal Assistant and Senior Dresser for more than two decades: Angela Kelly. It gives a rare insight into the demands of the job of supporting the Monarch, and we gain privileged insight into a successful working relationship, characterized by humor, creativity, hard work, and a mutual commitment to service and duty. Angela is a talented and inspiring woman, who has captured the highlights of her long career with The Queen for us all to share.'" -- Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2019. Download DB112661

The Queen & Her Court: A Guide to the British Monarchy Today by Jerrold M. Packard

A close look at the royal family, their lives, personalities, associates, and residences. Also explains various titles and ranks and what they signify, how to address members of the nobility, and customs surrounding the royal family and the court. 1981. Download BR05279

The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor by A.N. Wilson

According to Queen Elizabeth II, 1992 was an "annus horribilis." In that year, the family that was supposed to represent the ideal family of stability, to which the British could look for example, suffered many changes. Wilson looks at the House of Windsor in its crisis by examining the influence of the press, royal marriages, religion, and the Constitution. 1993. Download DB37913

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New biography uncovers Queen Elizabeth II's view of Donald Trump as 'very rude'

The book also claims that queen elizabeth speculated about trump's relationship with his wife, melania, suggesting they might have had "some sort of arrangement" that she couldn't quite understand..

Queen and Donald Trump (Photo: Victoria Jones X)

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Queen Elizabeth II: A Biographical Reading List

The life and reign of the UK's Queen Elizabeth II , who died today, spanned a period of enormous social and political change. Ascending the throne at the age of 25 and reigning for more than 70 years, the Queen was a steadfast presence in the lives of Britons and a major presence on the world stage. She navigated the evolving role of the monarchy, guiding both her family and the nation through changing, often challenging times. These biographies delve into the Queen's upbringing, personality, and private life—and examine her impact and legacy at the head of a modern royal family and as Britain's head of state.

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by   Deborah Hart Strober & Gerald Strober

A revelatory oral history of Queen Elizabeth II's reign featuring interviews from diverse sources including Buckingham Palace staff, family friends, and international figures such as Nelson Mandela, and containing a broad spectrum of views on the Queen—her story, her personality, and how her life has intersected and impacted others.

Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II

by Robert Hardman

A portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne at the age of 25. Hardman, using unpublished papers from the royal archives and photographs and personal stories from other world leaders, distills Elizabeth's complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal.

Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters

by Andrew Morton

A biography of Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, Princess Margaret, examines their early idyllic youth as the closest of sisters as well as their relationship after their father's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne.

Queen: A Life in Pictures

by Victoria Murphy

More than 300 extraordinary photographs, along with insightful commentary by royal journalist Victoria Murphy, showcase the most historic moments of the Queen’s life—as well as more intimate occasions—first as a young princess and then as the longest-reigning British monarch.

The Last Queen: Elizabeth II's Seventy Year Battle to Save the House of Windsor

by Clive Irving

A timely and revelatory new biography of Queen Elizabeth II and her family exploring how the Windsors have adapted as the modern world has changed around them.

Princess: The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II

by Jane Dismore

Dismore examines the early life of the future queen, including her happy childhood, relations with her younger sister Margaret, wartime experiences as a teenager, her marriage to Prince Philip, and her ascension to the throne at the age of 25.

Young Elizabeth: The Making of the Queen

by Kate Williams

Williams chronicles the early life of Queen Elizabeth II, who, after her accession to the throne at the age of 25, carved out a lasting role for herself amid the changes of the 20th and 21st centuries.

My Husband and I: The Inside Story of the Royal Marriage

by Ingrid Seward

A revealing insight into the marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, who made a formidable partnership throughout her record-breaking reign.

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.

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A New Biography of Queen Elizabeth II is Among the Very Best Books to Read This Month

Hotels, high rises, mansions—Richard Mishaan has seen them all. The in-demand designer has worked on stunning projects both residential and commercial around the world, and in this gorgeous new book shares not only some of his most impressive projects but also notes on his process, making this book a delightful blend of eye candy and inspiration that'll be at home on any design aficionado's coffee table.

A story of risk, reward, power, money, celebrity, and the fate of modern media so delicious that it could be pulled straight from a Sunday-night prestige drama–no wonder, it's the no-hold-barred history of HBO . In this fascinating look at one of the defining entertainment juggernauts of our time, John Koblin and Felix Gillette get to the heart of what made HBO the towering success it became, how that success was almost thwarted by the very people who built it, and what the future holds for one of the most recognizable brands in culture.

Legendary royals biographer Andrew Morton turns his focus to the late Queen Elizabeth II in this comprehensive new look at her life and reign. From the moment the young princess ascended to the throne at 25 years old, she had a distinctive take on using her power, and here Morton charts the way she wielded her influence and built a legacy that will last for generations to come.

There's more to every Broadway show that just what an audience sees on stage—and no hit demonstrates that better than Pippin . In her revealing new book, T&C contributor Elysa Gardner marks the 50th anniversary of the influential musical with a deep dive into how it got made, the clashing personalities behind it, and what really went on behind the curtain. It's a dishy, fascinating look at how creative powerhouses can change the world, and the dirty work it can take to produce truly meaningful art.

Misty Copeland, the first African American principal ballerina at the American Ballet, will tell you that success is a joint effort. Throughout her rise to the top, Copeland had the support of her mentor Raven Wilkinson, a former ballerina of the 1950s who broke through glass ceilings as Black woman. The Wind at My Back is a beautiful memoir that captures the friendship between Copeland and Wilkinson, and shares the impact that their stories continue to have on the world of dance.

A must-read for any lover of art, Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Saltz’s Art is Life documents a tumultuous history of the art world across two decades. Through the use of surveys, Saltz’s chronicles a variety of perspectives and illustrates how incredible artists have used their work to create a continuous dialogue with culture.

The highs and lows of life as a celebrity art forger are front and center in Tony Tetro's engrossing, delicious memoir about his life behind a paintbrush. The artist—who made headlines when some of his works were discovered in King Charles III's collection—recounts the hard living, fast cars, and big money that came from knocking off Chagall, Dalí, and Picasso.

The late Bunny Mellon was particularly allergic to the spotlight, which was unfortunate given her noteworthy contributions to the realms of design, gardening, and philanthropy —not to mention her close connections to some of the world's best-known people. This new biography from Mac Griswold gets to the heart of who Mellon truly was, how she built the incredible life she did, and why her legacy has (sorry, Bunny!) made her an ongoing subject of fascination for so many of us.

What's better than one society scandal? Two! In Roseanne Montillo's delicious book, she tells the dual stories of Ann Woodward (who shot her husband, whom she claimed to mistake for a prowler, to death) and Truman Capote (who thinly fictionalized Woodward's story in the short story "La Côte Basque," which effectively had him evicted from New York's most rarefied circles), and examines the similarities between the two tragic figures. It's a fascinating read even for those who know the sordid tale, and paints a thrilling picture of a secretive world and two msifits who found their way in and paid a staggering price.

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History Cooperative

Queen Elizabeth II Family Tree: Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Lineage

Table of Contents

Ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II ‘s ancestry is deeply rooted in the British royal family tree , connecting her to both the House of Windsor and the House of Hanover. Her great-grandfather, King George V, was the first monarch of the House of Windsor, changing the family name from the German “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” during World War I .

This change marked a significant shift, aiming to distance the British royal family from its German roots amid anti-German sentiment. King George V and his wife, Queen Mary, were key figures in stabilizing the monarchy during tumultuous times.

Their legacy was carried on by their son, King George VI, who took the throne after the abdication of his brother, King Edward VIII. King George VI’s leadership during World War II further solidified the public’s trust and affection for the royal family, setting a strong foundation for Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.

Queen Elizabeth II’s lineage also ties her to the House of Hanover, a German royal dynasty that ruled Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Her ancestors include King George I, who became the first Hanoverian king of Britain in 1714. The Hanoverians were crucial in shaping modern Britain, overseeing the country’s expansion and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. This lineage highlights the historical connections between British and European royalty , emphasizing the intertwined nature of royal families across the continent. The House of Hanover’s legacy of stability and governance was a significant influence on the House of Windsor and, subsequently, on Queen Elizabeth II’s approach to her royal duties.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Grandparents

Queen Elizabeth II’s grandparents played significant roles in shaping the royal family’s legacy and traditions. They provided a strong foundation for her reign, and their influence is evident in her dedication and commitment to her royal duties on behalf of the nation.

Maternal Grandparents

• Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne : Claude Bowes-Lyon was an important figure in the Scottish nobility, holding the title of Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. He played a key role in local governance and was well-respected in Scottish society.
• Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck : Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck married Claude Bowes-Lyon in 1881. She was known for her strong character and influence within the family. As a member of the royal family, she supported her husband’s roles and helped maintain the family’s status in society. Together, the couple had two children, one of whom was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth II’s mother.

Paternal Grandparents

• King George V: King George V, Elizabeth II’s paternal grandfather, reigned from 1910 to 1936. His reign was marked by significant events , including World War I and the changing landscape of the British Empire. His decision to change the family name to the House of Windsor in 1917 was a strategic move to solidify the royal title and distance the monarchy from its German ties during a time of anti-German sentiment.
• Queen Mary : Queen Mary, the queen consort to King George V, was a significant figure in her own right. She was deeply involved in the charitable work and social responsibilities of the monarchy. Her support and partnership with King George V were crucial in maintaining the stability and public image of the royal family during turbulent times.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Parents

Queen Elizabeth II’s parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, were important in shaping her life and preparing her for the responsibilities of being a monarch.

Father: King George VI

King George VI, born Albert Frederick Arthur George on December 14, 1895, was the second son of King George V and Queen Mary. He was not initially expected to become king, so he trained for a military career. George VI served in the British Royal Navy during World War I and later attended the Royal Naval College. His life took an unexpected turn when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in December 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American. As a result, Albert became King George VI on December 11, 1936.

King George VI’s marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who became the Queen Consort, was significant in shaping the future of Queen Elizabeth II. They married on April 26, 1923, and their partnership provided a stable and loving environment for their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Their bond was especially crucial during World War II when King George VI’s leadership helped boost national morale. King George VI’s reign ended with his death on February 6, 1952.

Mother: Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother

Queen Elizabeth, known affectionately as the Queen Mother after her husband’s death was born Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon on August 4, 1900. She came from a prominent noble family, the Bowes-Lyons, and her background connected her to many influential figures in British society.

Her marriage to Albert, Duke of York, in 1923, brought her into the heart of the royal family. As the Duchess of York, she was known for her warmth and dedication to her family. Her influence on her daughters, especially Elizabeth, was profound, instilling in them the values of service and duty.

During World War II, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother played a crucial role in supporting the British public. She famously refused to leave London during the Blitz, insisting on staying with King George VI at Buckingham Palace despite the bombings. She remained a beloved figure until her death on March 30, 2002, at the age of 101.

Birth, Early Life, and Siblings

Queen Elizabeth II was born on April 21, 1926, at 17 Bruton Street in London. Her birth was a significant event in British history, as she was born into the House of Windsor, which was established by her grandfather, King George V, to emphasize the monarchy’s British identity. Elizabeth was born during a period of change and modernization for the British monarchy, which had recently navigated through the turmoil of World War I and the subsequent societal shifts. Her birth marked a new generation in the royal family, and she was seen as a symbol of hope and continuity.

From a young age, Elizabeth was prepared for a life of public service. Her early years were spent in the care of her parents, then Duke and Duchess of York, who later became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

She was affectionately called “Lilibet” by her close family. Elizabeth had a close relationship with her younger sister, Princess Margaret, who was born on August 21, 1930. The two princesses were often seen together and shared a strong bond throughout their lives. Growing up, they enjoyed a relatively normal childhood, albeit one with unique royal privileges and responsibilities.

Elizabeth’s upbringing was carefully managed to prepare her for her future role. She received a private education at home under the supervision of her mother and a governess, Marion Crawford. Her curriculum included history, language, literature, and lessons in constitutional law, which were vital for her future duties. Elizabeth also learned French, a skill that would prove useful during her reign.

Her early education was supplemented by her interactions with various members of the royal family and prominent figures of the time, providing her with a well-rounded understanding of her country’s history and governance.

Significant events during Elizabeth’s early years included her first public appearance at the age of 11, when she attended the wedding of her uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, in 1935.

This event marked the beginning of her public life, where she began to be seen as a figure of interest and importance. In 1936, when Elizabeth was 10, her grandfather, King George V, passed away, and her uncle, Edward VIII, ascended to the throne. However, his abdication later that year dramatically changed her life, propelling her father to become King George VI, and placing Elizabeth directly in the line to the throne.

Elizabeth’s childhood also included wartime experiences that shaped her character and sense of duty. During World War II, she and her sister were evacuated to Windsor Castle for safety. Despite the war, Elizabeth’s education and preparation for her future role continued. In 1940, at the age of 14, she made her first radio broadcast during the BBC’s Children’s Hour, addressing other children who had been evacuated from their homes.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Accession to the Throne and Reign

Queen Elizabeth II became queen on February 6, 1952, following the sudden death of her father, King George VI. She was in Kenya at the time with her husband, Prince Philip, on a royal tour. Elizabeth immediately returned to Britain, and her accession was formally proclaimed on February 8, 1952.

At the age of 25, she took on the immense responsibility of leading the nation. Her coronation took place on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey, an event that was broadcast worldwide and marked the beginning of a new era for the British monarchy.

The early years of Elizabeth’s reign were marked by significant challenges and adjustments. The death of her father was a profound personal loss, but she had to quickly step into her role as queen. One of the immediate challenges was establishing her authority and gaining the trust of her advisors and the public. Her youth and gender were initially seen as potential obstacles, but she quickly demonstrated her dedication and competence.

One of the most significant aspects of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign was the decolonization of Africa and the Caribbean. During the 1950s and 1960s, many countries in these regions gained independence from British rule.

Elizabeth’s role was to oversee this transition and maintain strong ties with these new nations as they joined the Commonwealth. This period was a time of great change and sometimes tension, but Elizabeth navigated it with diplomacy and grace.

The Commonwealth itself transformed significantly during Elizabeth’s reign. Initially composed of a few countries, it grew to include over 50 member states by the 21st century. Elizabeth played a crucial role in fostering unity and cooperation among these diverse nations . Her regular visits and meetings with Commonwealth leaders helped strengthen these ties .

During her reign, major political and social changes happened within Britain. The 1960s and 1970s brought a wave of cultural and social revolutions, and the monarchy had to adapt to remain relevant. Elizabeth’s ability to modernize the institution while preserving its traditions was key to maintaining public support. Events such as the investiture of her son, Prince Charles, as Prince of Wales in 1969, and the celebration of her Silver Jubilee in 1977, reinforced her connection with the British people.

Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth II faced various crises and challenges. Her role during events like the Falklands War in 1982, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and the response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 demonstrated her ability to provide stability and continuity. In her later years, Elizabeth continued to adapt to the modern world. She embraced new technologies and social media, ensuring that the monarchy remained accessible and relevant.

Marriage and Children

Queen Elizabeth II married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on November 20, 1947. Elizabeth and Philip first met in 1934 at the wedding of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark to Prince George, Duke of Kent. Their relationship blossomed over the years, with Philip proposing to Elizabeth in 1946. Their engagement was officially announced on July 9, 1947.

Throughout their 73-year marriage, Prince Philip was a steadfast partner to Queen Elizabeth II . His support was crucial during her reign, offering guidance and stability as she navigated the challenges of being a monarch. Philip, a retired Royal Navy officer, adapted to his role with dedication and a sense of duty.

He took on numerous public engagements and was involved in various charitable organizations, often accompanying Elizabeth on state visits and royal tours. Despite stepping back from public duties in 2017, Philip remained a vital figure in Elizabeth’s life until his death on April 9, 2021.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip had four children together and these children played significant roles during Elizabeth II’s reign.

• Prince Charles : Taking birth on November 14, 1948, Prince Charles is the heir apparent to the throne. He was married to Diana Spencer from 1981 to 1996, with whom he had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. After Diana’s tragic death in 1997, Charles later married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. Charles is known for his extensive charitable work, including founding The Prince’s Trust in 1976, which supports young people in need.
• Princess Anne (Princess Royal) : Born on August 15, 1950, Princess Anne is renowned for her equestrian achievements, including competing in the 1976 Olympics. She married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973, and the couple had two children, Peter and Zara, before divorcing in 1992. Anne remarried Timothy Laurence later that year. She is dedicated to numerous charitable organizations.
• Prince Andrew : Being Welcomed to the world on February 19, 1960, Prince Andrew had a notable military career in the Royal Navy, serving as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands War. He married Sarah Ferguson in 1986, and they had two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, before their divorce in 1996. In recent years, Andrew has faced significant controversies , leading to his stepping back from public duties in 2019 amid allegations and legal issues related to his associations and conduct.
• Prince Edward : Born on March 10, 1964, Prince Edward pursued a career in the arts, working in theatre and television production before taking on more royal duties. He married Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999, and they have two children, Louise and James. As the Earl of Wessex, Edward has been actively involved in various royal responsibilities and charitable activities, particularly focusing on the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which was founded by his father, Prince Philip.

Extended Family and Dynastic Influence

Queen Elizabeth II’s family is deeply connected to other European royal families through a complex web of marriages and ancestry. These connections have historically played significant roles in European politics and diplomacy.

One key connection is through Queen Victoria, Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother, known as the “grandmother of Europe.” Victoria’s children married into numerous European royal families, including those of Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Greece. These marriages linked the British royal family with other significant dynasties. For instance, Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born into the Greek and Danish royal families. His family ties included connections to King Constantine II of Greece and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

The marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip further strengthened these ties. Philip’s lineage provided additional links to the German aristocracy, despite the political tensions following the World Wars. This union was a symbol of reconciliation and unity, demonstrating how royal marriages could transcend political divides. Their children continued this tradition, with Princess Anne marrying Captain Mark Phillips, a commoner, which modernized the royal image, and Prince Andrew marrying Sarah Ferguson, whose lineage also connected back to European nobility.

For instance, the marriages of Queen Elizabeth II’s grandchildren, such as Prince William to Catherine Middleton and Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, have attracted global attention and media coverage, influencing public perception and cultural diplomacy. These unions have also brought a renewed interest in the monarchy, bridging traditional royal protocols with contemporary values.

Grandchildren and Other Descendants of Queen Elizabeth II

Prince William: Prince William, born on June 21, 1982, is the elder son of King Charles III and Princess Diana. He attended Eton College and later trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, serving with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. William is known for his commitment to charitable causes, particularly those related to mental health, homelessness, and conservation. In 2011, he married Catherine Middleton, now known as the Duchess of Cambridge, and they have three children: Prince George of Wales, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, and Prince Louis.

Prince Harry: Prince Harry, born on September 15, 1984, is the younger son of King Charles III and Princess Diana. Like his brother, Harry attended Eton College and trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He served in the British Army for ten years, including two tours in Afghanistan, and his military service earned him widespread respect. In 2018, he married Meghan Markle, an American actress, and they have two children: Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor and Lilibet Diana. The couple’s decision to step back from their roles as senior royals in 2020 marked a significant shift.

Princess Beatrice: Princess Beatrice, born on August 8, 1988, is the elder daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Beatrice attended Goldsmiths, University of London, where she studied history and the history of ideas. In July 2020, Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, a property developer, and the couple welcomed their daughter, Sienna Elizabeth Mapelli Mozzi, in September 2021.

Beatrice is involved in numerous charitable activities, focusing on education and children’s welfare. She is a patron of several organizations, including the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity, drawing from her own experiences with dyslexia to support others .

Princess Eugenie: Princess Eugenie, born on March 23, 1990, is the younger daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. She attended the University of Newcastle, where she studied English literature and the history of art. Eugenie works in the art world, currently serving as a director at the Hauser & Wirth art gallery in London. In October 2018, she married Jack Brooksbank, and the couple has a son, August Philip Hawke Brooksbank, born in February 2021.

Peter Phillips: Peter Phillips, born on November 15, 1977, is the eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and the son of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips. Peter does not hold a royal title and has pursued a career in sports management and marketing. He attended the University of Exeter, where he studied sports science. Peter married Autumn Kelly in 2008, and the couple has two daughters, Savannah and Isla. Sadly, they divorced in 2021.

Zara Tindall: Zara Tindall, born on May 15, 1981, is the daughter of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips. An accomplished equestrian, Zara won a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics as part of the British eventing team. She married former rugby player Mike Tindall in 2011, and they have three children: Mia, Lena, and Lucas. Zara balances her sports career with her role as a member of the royal family, participating in charitable activities and supporting various organizations.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Death and Succession

Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8, 2022, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. She was 96 years old. The days leading up to her death were marked by concern for her health, as she had been experiencing mobility issues and had canceled several public appearances.

On the morning of September 8, Buckingham Palace released a statement noting that doctors were concerned for the Queen’s health and that she was under medical supervision. Her family, including her son Charles, now King Charles III, and grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry, rushed to be by her side.

The Queen’s death was officially announced later that day, and it was met with an outpouring of grief and tributes from around the world. Prime Minister Liz Truss, who had been appointed by the Queen just two days prior, delivered a statement expressing the nation’s sorrow and honoring the Queen’s lifetime of service.

The royal family’s reaction was one of profound sadness, as they gathered at Balmoral to mourn their matriarch. Prince Charles, now King Charles III, issued a heartfelt statement, reflecting on his mother’s legacy and the deep loss felt by the family and the nation.

The Accession of King Charles III

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, her eldest son, Charles Philip Arthur George, immediately ascended the throne as King Charles III . His accession marked the first change in the British monarchy in 70 years . The official proclamation of Charles as king took place on September 10, 2022, at St. James’s Palace, in a ceremony that adhered to centuries-old traditions. King Charles III, accompanied by his wife, Queen Camilla, expressed his commitment to continue his mother’s legacy of dedicated service.

The transition to King Charles III’s reign involved numerous ceremonial and practical adjustments. He moved from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, the traditional royal residence of the monarch. His role as king entails a continuation of many of his previous duties, along with new responsibilities and engagements.

The Future Role of Prince William and His Children

As the new heir apparent, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, assumes an even more prominent role in the royal family. Born on June 21, 1982, William has been preparing for his future as king his entire life. He has taken on a range of royal duties and has been involved in significant charitable work, including mental health advocacy through the Heads Together campaign. William’s role as Prince of Wales places him directly in line to succeed King Charles III.

William’s children, particularly Prince George Alexander Louis, born on July 22, 2013, represent the future of the British monarchy. George, as the eldest son, is now second in line to the throne, followed by his siblings Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana and Prince Louis.

Wrapping Up Queen Elizabeth II Family Tree

Long, historic, transformative.. Queen Elizabeth II’s reign can indeed be described by these traits.

In ode to her presence and permanence, Queen Elizabeth II’s family remains a stronghold for the House of Windsor and is sure to remain so for countless years to come.

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