On Coronation Day, 2 June 1953, Churchill hailed Elizabeth as ‘the gleaming figure whom Providence has brought to us’, seen here, with Philip, on the palace balcony after the ceremony.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
‘Mummy, she sparkled,’ said a little girl, who saw Elizabeth at close quarters. Here, a sparkling Elizabeth is photographed by Cecil Beaton holding the orb and sceptre, in front of what Beaton called ‘my Abbey background’.
© Cecil Beaton / Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
In 1955, critics applauded Pietro Annigoni’s depiction of Elizabeth as ‘regal, natural and the essence of youthful dignity’. A picture she herself admired, it has proved enduringly popular.
Annigoni Portrait / Camera Press London.
On Suva Wharf in Fiji, Adi Kainona curtsies after presenting Elizabeth with a bouquet of Fijian flowers, during Elizabeth’s epic 173-day tour of the Commonwealth, 1953–4.
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Elizabeth was joined on the Royal Yacht Britannia by Charles, Lord Mountbatten and Anne, for a review of the Western Fleet, 30 July 1969.
TopFoto.
Elizabeth broke the old miner’s superstition of not allowing a woman to visit a pit when she donned a white boiler suit and hard hat to visit the Rothes Colliery in Fife, 1 July 1958.
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In 1956, Elizabeth took Charles, Anne and a brace of corgis to watch Philip play polo in Windsor Great Park.
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Elizabeth and Philip during a visit to Schefferville, Quebec, during a tour of Canada in 1959.
PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo.
The strength of Elizabeth’s affection for her sometimes difficult younger sister is evident in this photograph of Elizabeth with Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones, 1960s.
Wikimedia Commons.
This dazzling photographic portrait, by Anthony Buckley, from October 1960, bears out a journalist’s verdict of Elizabeth: ‘She looks a Queen and obviously believes in her right to be one. Her bearing is both simple and majestic – no actress could possibly match it.’
© Estate of Kenneth Hughes / National Portrait Gallery, London; on loan from American Friends of the National Portrait Gallery Foundation, Inc.; Gift of Mr Ford Hill.
‘The person on whom all the traditional ritual converged’, in the words of a courtier’s wife: above, Elizabeth leaving the State Opening of Parliament in 1964 and, below, two years later, uniformed and mounted side saddle to take the salute at the Trooping the Colour ceremony.
PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo; Ray Bellisario / Popperfoto / Getty Images.
Sovereign, dynast and mother: Elizabeth presents Charles to the people of Wales following his investiture as Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle, 1 July 1969.
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Elizabeth as Head of the Commonwealth, visiting the Bahamas in the spring of 1966. Seven years later, Elizabeth became queen of the newly independent Bahamas, one of fifteen overseas Commonwealth realms of which she is monarch.
Lynn Pelham / The Life Picture Collection / Getty Images.