LONDON (Reuters) – Sixty years after she ascended to the throne in an austere Britain still facing post-war rationing, Queen Elizabeth marked the milestone yesterday with a new website that showed just how much the world has changed during her reign.
The 25-year-old princess was on tour in Kenya when she became queen on February 6, 1952, following the death of her father, King George VI. She immediately flew back to Britain where she was welcomed by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The royal family has been through tumultuous times since then. Three of the queen’s four children have divorced and every personal crisis has been dissected by world media.
The most extreme case was the 1997 death of Princess Diana, ex-wife of the queen’s eldest son Prince Charles, a rare moment of mass unpopularity for the monarch who was criticized for not showing enough emotion amid a national outpouring of grief.