Sunday February 6, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her seventy years of reign – her “platinum jubilee”. At 95, she becomes the first sovereign of the United Kingdom to achieve such longevity. In Europe, the French King Louis XIV is one of the very few sovereigns to have reigned longer: seventy-two years.
Wednesday February 6, 1952 marks what the British call theaccession day (“accession day”). The lifeless body of King George VI – Princess Elizabeth’s father is discovered by a valet at 7.30am at the royal residence in Sandringham, Norfolk. The monarch, very weakened by lung cancer, died in his sleep at the age of 56. At 10:45 a.m., The London Gazette, the oldest daily in the country, publishes an urgent message, announcing that “The King, who retired last night to rest, died peacefully in his sleep early this morning”. The information is broadcast by the BBC at 11:15 a.m.
Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, who have embarked on an official grand tour of the Commonwealth, find themselves in a remote part of Kenya that day. According to historian Ben Pimlott, quoted by the British Parliament’s research service, the princess’s private secretary, Martin Charteris, heard the news of the king’s death from his Kenyan hotel and warned Prince Philip’s private secretary, Mike Parker, who managed, for his part, to capture the waves of the BBC. Prince Philip alerts the Princess at 11.45 a.m. (London time).
She is declared queen immediately, as tradition dictates (“The King is dead, long live the King!” (or the Queen) »), and returns to London on February 7. She is 25, already has two children – Prince Charles, 3, and Princess Anne, 1. His coronation will take place a year later, on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey. “Her new charge was to take precedence over family life, with long tours abroad keeping her away [de ses enfants] for months at the time”, explains Buckingham Palace, on the web page dedicated to theaccession day.
“Jubilee Canopy” and Baking Contest
The birthday of theaccession day will be marked, Monday, February 7, by forty-one cannon shots, fired from Green Park (the park closest to Buckingham Palace, in central London), and sixty-one shots fired from the Tower of London. Multiple associations, schools, or municipal councils will plant their jubilee tree (jubilee tree), responding to the palace’s call to constitute a “jubilee canopy”. The French Embassy in London has planned to plant an apple tree from Normandy on Sunday February 6 in the gardens of the ambassador’s residence.
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