Queen Elizabeth smiles while receiving the President of Switzerland Ignazio Cassis and his wife Paola Cassis during an audience at Windsor Castle in April 2022.
(Picture: AP)In November 1951, Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip made their first visit to the United States, 12 years after the princess’s father King George VI had become the first reigning British monarch ever to set foot on American soil, colonial times included.
To help ensure a warm welcome for the young royals, President Truman had given all federal employees time off work and they obligingly lined the streets of Washington to cheer. “When I was a little boy,” declared Truman to the crowds, “I read about a fairy princess, and here she is!”
Though constitutionally sworn to repudiate the monarchical idea, Americans remained fascinated by British royalty throughout the Queen’s subsequent reign. After coming to the throne in 1952, she went on to meet a further 12 US presidents, a scarcely credible level of experience that no other world leader could match. And she and Prince Philip did more than anyone to foster Britain and America’s so-called “special relationship”, a term first used in 1946 by Winston Churchill, who served as the Queen’s first prime minister and remarked of her that “all the film people in the world, had they scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited to the part”.
As the British Empire disintegrated after the Second World War and Britain managed its transition from colonial superpower to middle-ranking nation, tending its ties not just to the US but also now to Europe and the Commonwealth, the Queen remained a skilful and invaluable exponent of soft diplomacy, while also demonstrating a progressive readiness to adapt the monarchy to the changing times. After becoming head of multiple newly independent states, her visits to these and other countries made her the most widely travelled leader in the world.
Born in the same year as Marilyn Monroe and Fidel Castro, the Queen was an extraordinary link with the past. She was old enough to remember clearly the Abdication Crisis of 1936, which placed her as a 10-year-old girl in the unexpected position of being heir to the throne. Had she lived until May 2024, she would have become the world’s longest-reigning monarch, surpassing the record of King Louis XIV of France, whose accession to the throne at the age of four gave him a huge head start over the future Queen Elizabeth II, who was 25 when she succeeded her father. Notwithstanding the many profound changes she witnessed during her life, she never wallowed in nostalgia, preferring to focus on the present and future. She proved adept at moving with the times, and over the course of her reign she subtly evolved (even gradually modulating her accent) as the country evolved. No one was better at changing yet appearing to remain the same.
Queen Elizabeth was the first to recognise how much her reign’s success owed to Prince Philip, who bolstered her confidence in carrying out public duties, letting her overcome her shyness in the same way the Queen Mother had with the stammering George VI before the King’s speech in 1939. He was also at the forefront of the drive to make the monarchy appear less stuffy and more relevant to the British people and citizens of the Commonwealth.
The Queen came to be regarded by many historians as Britain’s finest monarch. Perhaps her most impressive achievement was to maintain public support for the monarchy while a succession of controversies beset her family. Her popularity was underpinned by an excellent understanding of her role, and the fact that she kept her promises constantly reinforced her legitimacy. She also crucially gave the appearance of enjoying her responsibilities, an incredible notion to most people for whom the daily grind of her royal duties seemed unbearably monotonous. Calm, patient and dutiful, she never did anything to cause embarrassment or political controversy, and she served as a unifying national figure while democratic politics in Britain grew more and more divisive. She kept her opinions firmly to herself; no one could say with conviction where her political sympathies really lay.
Sustained by her Christian faith and belief that her coronation had a divine dimension, her entire reign was defined by the heartfelt pledge of lifelong service she had made on her 21st birthday in 1947, which she fulfilled impeccably and to an extraordinary degree, carrying out her duties until the end and swearing in the new prime minister only two days before she died.
