"In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an 'annus horribilis.' I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so."
"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure," she said in the speech, 40 years after she ascended to the throne and four days after the Windsor fire. In 1979, her art advisor, Anthony Blunt, was unmasked as a communist spy, and Prince Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb. Paul's Cathedral and witnessed by nearly a billion television viewers around the world.Įlizabeth's reign was also marked by crisis, including two assassinations attempts, in 19 in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. The storybook wedding of her son Charles to Lady Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981, was attended by 2,650 guests at St. She celebrated six jubilees, her 25th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 65th and 70th years on the throne, as well as the marriages of her four children and the births of eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Upon the October 2016 death of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, ending his 70 years on the throne, she became the world's longest-reigning monarch and head of state. In 2015, Elizabeth overtook her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria to become the oldest and longest-reigning British monarch. A son and heir, Charles, was born in 1948, followed by Anne, Andrew and Edward. Philip was broke and foreign-born, but nonetheless they received 2,500 wedding gifts from around the world. His family name was changed to Mountbatten from Battenberg during World War I because of anti-German sentiment. Philip, the princess' third cousin, had served with the Royal Navy during World War II. "For a brief moment the pace of the strident terrible twentieth century was slowed to the trot of cavalry horses and the rumbling of coaches and pageantry evoked bitter sweet memories of this island's old, heroic past," The New York Times' Drew Middleton wrote in a dispatch from London. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets along the route from Buckingham Palace. Thirteen years later, Elizabeth and Philip married at Westminster Abbey in an uplifting ceremony - two years after the end of World War II. Princess Elizabeth met Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1934 at the wedding of his first cousin, Princess Marina, to Prince George, Duke of Kent.
#Colorful wave logo driver#
Later during the war, the teenage princess served as a driver for the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
When peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place."
"For God will care for us and give us victory and peace. "We know, every one of us, that in the end, all will be well," she intoned in a delicate soprano to the BBC "Children's Hour" audience. At 14, she made her first radio broadcast in 1940, addressing children who had been evacuated to the countryside and abroad to avoid the bombings of British cities. Soon after the coronation of Elizabeth's father, the U.K. "Lilibet" and her younger sister, Margaret, born in 1930, were educated at home by tutors, including a governess. She was the 32nd great-granddaughter of King Alfred the Great, England's first monarch, who reigned from 871 to 899. Born April 21, 1926, Elizabeth was the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, who became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 following the abdication of Edward VIII.