Sue Baker's view...

The calm eye at the eye of the storm, Queen Elizabeth II has weathered huge changes in the Nation, the Commonwealth – and the World.  She has changed and modernised the role of the monarchy – and most people in this country will have known no other monarch. Sarah Bradford looks at how Queen Elizabeth II has managed all this, a Queen who has retained her crown when many others have fallen.

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Sixty Glorious Years: Queen Elizabeth II, Diamond Jubilee 1952-2012
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Synopsis

Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 11 US Presidents including JFK and Ronald Reagan, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, the last only ten years older than her grandson. Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years.

About the Author

Sarah Bradford is a historian and biographer. Her books include Cesare Borgia (1976), Disraeli (1982), winner of the New York Times Book of the Year, Princess Grace (1984), George VI (1989), Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen (1996) and Diana (2006). More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation