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By the end of Elizabeth II's reign in 2022 – the longest in Britain’s history – the nation and its place in the world was markedly different. Sir David Cannadine guides Danny Bird through the contours of the Second Elizabethan Age.
When the late Queen acceded to the throne in 1952, Britain, though left bankrupt and reeling from the Second World War, was still a major global power. By the end of Elizabeth II's reign in 2022 – the longest in Britain’s history – the nation and its place in the world was markedly different. Sir David Cannadine guides Danny Bird through the contours of the Second Elizabethan Age – from 'de-Victorianisation' to deindustrialisation – and the ways in which the monarchy responded to such dizzying change.
Pageantry and politics: a history of British royal visits to the US
As transatlantic tensions swirled about King Charles III’s visit to Washington DC in 2026, Sam Edwards reveals how past royal tours have steadied the ‘special relationship’ in times of crisis
The April 2026 royal visit to the United States came at a particularly challenging moment for the US-UK ‘special relationship’. In the preceding months, President Donald Trump had repeatedly singled out prime minister Keir Starmer for blunt criticism, even going so far as to declare that Starmer as “no Churchill”. Meanwhile, the royal family similarly found itself caught up in transatlantic controversy: the Epstein scandal. If all that wasn’t challenging enough, King Charles’s visit to America also came at a time when the US-UK relationship was drawing even more scrutiny than usual. 2026 is year is the 80th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, which popularised the phrase ‘special relationship’, and it’s also the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The latter was of course the event that severed the connection between the American colonies and the British Crown and thereby put the transatlantic relationship onto a very different trajectory. In short, the visit came at a time of significant turbulence in the US-UK relationship. King Charles, however, might have been able to take some reassurance from the fact that several of his predecessors had similarly travelled to the United States during moments of challenge, change and upheaval... <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-1320405043big-566d798-e1777245347971.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large group of men and women in formal 19th-century dress gather outside a red-brick tomb set within a leafy landscape, their attention focused on a central meeting of figures. Women wear layered gowns with bonnets, while men in dark suits and top hats stand in lines, with trees and a distant sky framing the scene." title="A painting by Thomas Pritchard Rossiter captures the Prince of Wales’s historic visit to George Washington’s tomb in 1860. The young prince, who later ruled as Edward VII, can be seen standing with President James Buchanan to the right of the tomb’s entrance (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1860: The first royal visit The very first visit to the United States by a British royal came in 1860 and involved Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. Its origins lay in an invitation received by Queen Victoria from Canadian leaders keen that she see for herself “the progress and prosperity of this distant part of your dominions”. Citing duty, the queen declined. But she despatched her eldest son in her place. When President James Buchanan got wind of the situation, he then saw an opportunity and so extended an invitation for the prince to journey south of the border. The royal household happily accepted, and the man destined to become Edward VII thereby became the first British royal to visit the United States. Conscious of diplomatic protocol, his visit to the US was billed as ‘private’, and so he travelled under one of his many other titles, Lord Baron Renfrew. The prince landed in Canada in July 1860 and spent two months touring, during which he was frequently greeted by cheering crowds. No one was quite sure, though, how he would be received when he crossed the border into the United States. After all, it was only just over 40 years prior that British soldiers had marched on Washington and burned down the White House. Still more recently, in the 1840s, the relationship between Britain and its former colonies had again been fraught, this time due to American designs on the Pacific Northwest. Read more | When was the White House built – and why is it white? There was no need to worry, however, as just like in Canada the prince received a rapturous welcome. Travelling unofficially as ‘Renfrew’, he was met in Washington by President Buchanan and spent some time touring the capital. But the most celebrated moment came a few miles away, at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Here, Lord Renfrew laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington, the man who had of course defeated his great grandfather, George III, all those years ago. It was a powerful gesture, and it has been something of a royal rite of passage ever since. In 1970, for instance, the Prince of Wales – now King Charles III – laid his own wreath at Mount Vernon. Perhaps this month we will see his son, Prince William, do likewise. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3EU058443-a21ccb9-e1777245457912.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="George VI leans forward to place a wreath against a white stone tomb, his figure slightly bowed in a solemn gesture. Rows of uniformed servicemen stand rigidly at attention on either side, while a small group of onlookers watches from the foreground." title="King George VI lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, 1939. The king’s five-day visit to the US, in which he met with President Franklin D Roosevelt, was the first such trip by a reigning British monarch (Photo by Topfoto)" /> 1939: The storm clouds of war The 1860 visit of ‘Lord Baron Renfrew’ occurred just as internal tensions in the United States were threatening to tear the country asunder. Within a couple of weeks of the prince’s departure, a new president – Abraham Lincoln – had been elected, while just a few months later war had broken out between North and South. The fighting would rage for the next four years, only ending in 1865. Almost 80 years later, in the summer of 1939, another American tour by British royalty likewise unfolded amidst the gathering storm clouds of war, albeit this time in Europe rather than in the United States. The 1939 visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth was a real landmark occasion: the first ever by a reigning British monarch. It came, moreover, at a particularly challenging moment for the royal family. Just three years earlier, in December 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the British throne. His decision provoked a constitutional crisis, but it also had ramifications for the US-UK relationship because it was at root a consequence of the king’s desire to marry an American divorcée, Wallis Simpson. The 1939 visit was thus a chance for the British royal family to shift the narrative. Equally important, it also provided an invaluable opportunity to strengthen transatlantic ties just as the Nazi threat in Europe intensified. The visit unfolded in June and was keenly supported by the US president, Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR). Like Lord Baron Renfrew’s visit in 1860, the royal tour took in a number of famous American landmarks, including Mount Vernon, where the British monarch followed the example set by his grandfather and laid a wreath at the tomb of George Washington. Read more | Why was George Washington the pride of Victorian England? Other significant episodes included a visit to the New York World’s Fair, a tour of the Capitol, and another wreath-laying, this time at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps most famous of all, however, was the king and queen’s meeting with FDR at his Hyde Park home. To the delight of the American press, the king was seen enjoying typical American picnic fare: hot dogs! By all accounts, the 1939 royal visit was a success. One American observer later wrote that “Their Majesties’ hundred hours in the United States had given rise to an enthusiasm without parallel in American history”. Later, one US newspaper even declared that because of the King’s visit “the old bond between the democracies has taken on higher, warmer, yes friendlier qualities than it ever had before”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/4GettyImages-79655098-fcd4ee0-e1777245704830.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A long line of cars moves down a wide, tree-lined avenue beneath a large triangular banner reading “Welcome Queen Elizabeth II”. Dense crowds line both sides of the road, with flags, uniforms and police escorts creating a sense of ceremony and scale." title="A motorcade marks Elizabeth II’s state visit to the United States in 1957. The young monarch faced the task of mending the so-called ‘special relationship’, which had been strained by the Suez Crisis (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1957: The new Elizabethan era Despite the success of the 1939 visit, the Americans did not immediately commit themselves to the British cause when war broke out in Europe later that year. But once the United States had entered the war (in December 1941) an alliance of unprecedented closeness was indeed forged. For the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, this was the beginning of what he would call the “special relationship”, a transatlantic partnership built on shared history, culture, values, and sacrifice. Nonetheless, for all its undoubted closeness the special relationship was frequently tested during the Cold War, most famously during the Suez Crisis of late 1956. The crisis was precipitated by the decision of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser to seize the Suez Canal zone, a vital trade route. In response, the British and French (with Israeli support) launched a military operation to regain control, but they did so without first securing American approval. Their actions quickly met with vigorous criticism from Washington, with President Eisenhower demanding an immediate Anglo-French withdrawal on pain of severe economic sanctions. Chastened, the British withdrew their forces, and with his credibility damaged beyond repair, prime minister Anthony Eden duly resigned, albeit citing ill health. Read more | How significant was the Suez Crisis? Among the first key tasks of the new government of prime minister Harold Macmillan was therefore to restore trust with Washington. Fortunately ‘Super Mac’, as he was known, was very well-placed to do so – he knew President Eisenhower from their service together during the Second World War, while his ties to ‘Ike’s’ successor, President John F Kennedy, were even closer: he was uncle-in-law to JFK’s younger sister Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy (tragically killed in a plane crash in 1948). These close ties would certainly pay dividends, but when it came to rebuilding the special relationship Macmillan also had a trump card to play – royalty. The chance to play it finally came a year after the Suez crisis, in October 1957. Crowned in 1953 in a televised ceremony watched on both sides of the Atlantic, Queen Elizabeth II was eminently suited for the job of mending the special relationship, so recently strained by Suez. After all, she and the president were well-acquainted from the war years, and she was also already familiar with America. She had first visited – while still a princess – in 1951, during which visit she met with Eisenhower’s predecessor, President Harry Truman. The Queen was also very aware of the diplomatic impact of her parents’ visit in 1939. In short, this was one monarch ready and able to meet the challenge of the moment. The extent to which the 1957 state visit represented a clear attempt to restore the special relationship is quickly apparent in the itinerary. This was full of evocative symbolism and included a visit to Jamestown – to mark the 350th anniversary of English settlement – as well as a state dinner at the White House and a ticker-tape parade in New York City. It was a resounding success and was followed during her reign by no less than three more state visits to the United States. The second, in 1976, occurred during another testing moment in the transatlantic relationship. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5GettyImages-57078933mod-0179412-e1777245939916.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Elizabeth II, wearing a sparkling tiara and sash, raises a glass as she smiles towards a suited President Gerald Ford returning the toast. A long table covered in bright flowers fills the foreground, with other formally dressed guests standing nearby." title="President Gerald Ford toasts Elizabeth II during the monarch’s 1976 state visit to the United States. The trip coincided with celebrations marking 200 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1976: The bicentennial The Queen’s 1976 state visit to the United States was purposefully timed so as to coincide with a major anniversary celebration – the bicentennial of the American Revolution. But like the visit of 1957 it also unfolded in the aftermath of significant transatlantic tensions, this time connected to the Vietnam War. The conflict in southeast Asia had dominated US foreign policy in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it also caused disagreements with European allies, including Britain. At the crux of the matter was the persistent refusal of the British government to send troops to fight alongside their American ally, a decision which drew pointed criticism from Washington. For both governments, the Queen’s 1976 state visit – which came at the invitation of President Gerald Ford – was thus an opportunity to reset the relationship after the recent disagreements. Read more | Queen Elizabeth II’s relationships with US presidents Like her 1957 visit, the details were worked out with an eye on the symbolism. The itinerary saw the Queen attend various bicentennial-focused ceremonies, and she also hosted her own reception at the British embassy in Washington. One of those in attendance declared that this was “the best diplomatic reception since King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited in 1939”. But the highlight was a speech the Queen gave on her arrival at Philadelphia during which she expressed her “sincere gratitude” to “the Founding Fathers of this great republic for having taught Britain a very valuable lesson”. The Americans were delighted, with all differences – historic and recent – now happily forgotten. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6GettyImages-117937786-1d6273a-e1777246001564.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Elizabeth II wears a pale green coat and wide-brimmed hat with a pink accent, leaning on a railing and looking ahead. Beside her, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and other spectators in formal attire watch the event, some holding binoculars." title="Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh watch the Kentucky Derby during the monarch’s fourth and final state visit to the United States, May 2007. Although the monarch was able to indulge her passion for horse racing, the trip came amid heightened tensions stemming from the War on Terror (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2007: A fond farewell The Queen’s fourth and final state visit to the US was in 2007, and like all its predecessors it occurred amidst geopolitical turmoil (it was the same with the third, in 1991, which came amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union and shortly after the Gulf War). This time the turmoil was tied to the ongoing War on Terror, which had seen British forces again fight side by side with the American ally. But although this suggested that the special relationship was back on a sure footing elsewhere the picture was rather more complicated. American unilateralism had in fact strained the transatlantic relationship, producing significant anti-war sentiment in Britain as well as vocal criticism of Washington from other European allies (especially the French). Frustrated by what they felt to be his slavish devotion to the Americans, some in the British press had even characterised the prime minister, Tony Blair, as President Bush’s ‘lapdog’. Just as after both Suez and Vietnam, therefore, the 2007 state visit offered a chance to use pageantry and ceremony to repair some of the damage. This objective was again very apparent in the itinerary, which, in homage to the 1957 visit, included a trip to Jamestown, then marking the 400th anniversary of English settlement. Other stopovers, all of which were well-reported in the US press, included attendance at the Kentucky Derby (the Queen was well-known for her love of horse racing) as well as a formal state banquet at the White House. It was the latter which also produced one of the trip’s most memorable moments: while giving a toast, President George W Bush had thanked the Queen for her role in the bicentennial celebrations, erroneously suggesting while doing so that this had occurred in 1776 (rather than 1976). The Queen raised her eyebrows in response, which in turn led the president to quip that she had given him “a look that only a mother could give a child”.
I went digging for buried Nazi gold – and this is what I discovered
In January 2023, the Dutch national archives released a map purporting to show where a cache of stolen treasure was buried during the Second World War. Guy Walters reveals how he tried to track it down – and the dark backstory that gave rise to the legend
I have been appearing in history documentaries for the best part of 20 years. Usually, they are something to do with the Third Reich and for the most part, the documentaries are weighty and serious, as indeed they should be. But nearly every year, I get a call – normally from a junior producer or researcher – who tells me they wish to make a documentary about Nazi gold, and if so, do I know where they might find some? It’s at that point that I ask them to think about their question very carefully. If – I say – I did know the location of a load of Nazi bullion, do they think I would tell them? For a day rate? Furthermore, wouldn’t I have gone and dug it up myself, and currently be speaking from my 20-bedroom mansion in the Maldives? The line invariably goes silent as the logic of my position seeps in. I then add that if they really want to find themselves some Nazi gold, they should just go to Zurich or Geneva and knock on the door of any Swiss bank and ask for a peek in the vaults. So far, so cynical. But then, in January 2023, my position changed with an intriguing release from the Dutch national archives: a real-life treasure map, hand-drawn by a Nazi paratrooper, revealing where he and his comrades had buried a load of loot they had stolen towards the end of the war. The map even had a red ‘X’ that marked the spot, outside a village called Ommeren, along what was the Allied front line of Operation Market Garden in 1944. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2-GettyImages-1458770332-473e6bd-e1776953190948.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A hand‑drawn map with labelled towns, a river running across the top, and a compass rose. At the bottom are two small inset drawings, including a terrain cross‑section and a landscape sketch." title="The hand-drawn map released by the Dutch national archives in January 2023, allegedly showing the site of a treasure trove near the village of Ommeren. But where does the map’s red ‘X’ sit within the modern landscape? (Image by Getty Images)" /> The story goes that during the military operation, a bank in Arnhem was hit by a bomb and a few German soldiers took what they could from the remains. As they retreated, they buried the treasure to keep it safe. So, this wasn’t technically Nazi gold, but it was close enough – actual treasure looted by actual Nazis! That would do nicely and might even make a good short film. And so, at 5am the following day, accompanied by my cameraman son William and his mate Magnus dragooned in to do the sound, I set off to the middle of the Netherlands from deepest Wiltshire, the boot of my creaking Land Rover loaded with picks and spades. All my grown-up historian’s wariness had melted away – I was literally on a hunt for Nazi gold. Digging for clues We arrived at the site at around lunchtime, not surprised to discover that others were hot on the trail too. We found a couple of teenagers uprooting a bush in someone’s front garden, but I was sure they were in the wrong place. Then we came across a man in his forties digging a very deep hole on the side of a road – he even had a professional metal detector – but he too was way out. After overlaying the rough treasure map on a Google Maps satellite view, we made our way to a spot near a wood, where we came across a retired businessman called Jan, who agreed that surely, we were pretty close to that tantalising red ‘X’. Read more | The strange story of the Nazi obsession with this legendary artefact still isn't over So out came my pick, and I dug. And dug. And dug. And – as I had subconsciously known would be the case all along – up came nothing. All I had to show for my labours were some very muddy jeans and a telling off from a policeman, who didn’t take kindly to a crazy Englishman excavating a significant part of his beat. With the light fading, we called it a day and rewarded ourselves with liquid gold in the form of the local brew. Despite my failure, I realised that the subject of Nazi gold might at least bring some TV treasure, rather than the actual stuff. The YouTube video we uploaded got a lot of views and was bought off William and turned into a streaming documentary by a production company. The Sunday Times even dedicated the whole third page of its news section to our adventures. All this attention convinced me there was a series in this, and soon the good folks at the History Channel had commissioned me to present and direct a six-part series called The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold. As well as looking for Nazi gold, my co-host Justine Ostrowska and I suspected it would be fun to broaden the remit, and so we included other treasures looted by the Nazis, such as the Amber Room (a gold-panelled chamber stripped from Russia’s Catherine Palace), the fabled Nazi gold train (an armoured locomotive stuffed with treasures, supposedly buried in Poland), and countless missing paintings. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/4CatherinePalaceAmberRoom-USED-8b43007-e1776953341999.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="An opulent baroque room with amber‑toned wall panels, gold mouldings, framed paintings, chandeliers, and elegant furniture including draped chairs and display tables." title="The Amber Room in Russia’s Catherine Palace, 1931. A decade later, the advancing German army would dismantle and reconstruct the chamber in Königsberg Castle in what was then Prussia. No trace of the room was found at the end of the war" /> Gangsters and Monuments Men All of these are, in a sense, Nazi gold. The tone of the show, as you shall see, is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and we have as much fun meeting the wonderful – and sometimes weird – characters who are obsessed that such-and-such a spot contains billions of pounds of treasure, as we do in doing the digging ourselves. But despite all the jocularity and my wariness of actually finding any treasure, the story of Nazi gold is a serious one. The Third Reich was undeniably a gangster state, and like all gangsters, the Nazis stole – and stole big time. Every country they invaded was plundered, its gold, silver, and other priceless treasures taken to Germany. Read more | Bitter end: Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich This is not to forget the gold stolen from the Jews, often gruesomely wrenched out of the mouths of so many corpses. It is hard to give a precise figure, but in today’s money, it is estimated that the Nazis stole some £8.5 billion worth of gold, of which some £1.5 billion to £3 billion was taken from Jews. This does not count the other treasures stolen, the value of which runs into the hundreds of billions. The first obvious question is this: where did it all go? The good news is that a lot was recovered. About half the bullion was found by the Americans in a massive mine called Merkers in Thuringia, while much other gold – and indeed silver – was found in banks in Berlin and throughout Germany. Another billion pounds’ worth was unearthed in the hills above Lake Walchensee in southern Bavaria, where it had been taken by mules led by Nazi soldiers at the end of the war. Many artworks were discovered in a salt mine above the village of Altaussee in Austria by the Americans and their unit of ‘Monuments Men’ – a team of art experts seconded into the army and later the topic of a 2014 George Clooney movie. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5-GettyImages-542415475-806ecf7-e1776953439625.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="An underground storage cavern with rough rock walls, lined with rows of tightly packed sacks and stacks of crates. A narrow rail track runs through the centre under overhead lights." title="Hundreds of sacks of bullion sit in the Merkers mine, Thuringia, 1945. Around half of the bullion looted by Nazis during the Third Reich was found here (Image by Getty Images)" /> And now for the next obvious question: how much is missing? It is impossible to give a reliable answer. Most sensible historians suspect the figure is very low, and if any gold is missing then it is extremely likely to lie in bank vaults in Switzerland. It is well known that many senior Nazis spirited their wealth into the country towards the end of the war, but thanks to the notorious secrecy of Swiss banking laws, to establish just how much is there – if any – is very difficult, to put it mildly. But Switzerland was not the only country where the Nazis sent their plunder, with countries such as Spain and Argentina also receiving Nazi wealth, which was often laundered through a system of dummy companies. Those of a more conspiratorial bent firmly believe that many millions of pounds worth of gold and artworks still lie hidden, and it is these characters that Justine and I decided to meet on our month-long road trip around central Europe over the summer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/7-GettyImages-2238480486-abbd109-e1776953562783.jpg" width="1500" height="996" alt="Four uniformed soldiers stand on stone steps outside a large building. Three hold framed artworks, and a fourth stands behind them writing on a notepad." title="Four of the American ‘Monuments Men’ retrieve stolen paintings from Neuschwanstein Castle, c1945. The art experts were tasked with protecting and recovering cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis (Image by Getty Images)" /> Treasure hunters Armed with proper treasure-hunting equipment, including pickaxes and metal detectors, we joined forces with those who have been hunting Nazi gold and treasure for decades. Some of those we met more than raised our eyebrows, while others were far more plausible and made me reevaluate my scepticism. Among the latter was the charismatic Cornelia Ostler, who has been treasure hunting across Germany nearly all her life, a passion imbued in her by her late father, who was also a fanatical treasure hunter. Cornelia’s speciality is looking for the gold that she believes is still missing above Lake Walchensee. While many believe that it was all recovered, Cornelia is adamant that there is still some to be found, and her copious documentation and archive material is undoubtedly impressive – and pretty convincing. Also plausible was a friendly German chap called Jürgen Proske, with whom we spent a sweltering day high up a mountainside in a secret location in southern Germany. Like Cornelia, Jürgen has been hunting all his life, and while he may not have found any gold, he has certainly found all sorts of Nazi-era relics, some of which are of much historical interest, and even have some monetary value. Lending Justine his far more professional metal detector, I am delighted to report that we did indeed find something, and we found it quickly. I am not going to give away any plot spoilers, but all I can say is that Justine has not yet replaced her old Porsche. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/PXL20250814100051129crop-aa8bb9e-e1776953670954.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Two people stand among tall trees and dense greenery. One holds a metal detector, and the other, wearing a backpack, holds a walking stick." title="Lifelong treasure hunter Jürgen Proske shows Justine Ostrowska, co-host of The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold, how to use sophisticated metal detecting equipment (Image by Guy Walters)" /> What was refreshing about the likes of Jürgen and Cornelia is their acknowledgement that their chances are very slim indeed, but they both share a gut conviction that if there’s even a small chance of any Nazi gold still being out there, then it has got to be worth an effort. At the very least, treasure hunting is fun, good exercise, and as their spouses often comment, at least it’s a hobby that gets them out the house at the weekend. A dark legacy But then there are the hunters whose tales are just a little too tall for my taste. One of our ports of call was Wałbrzych in southwest Poland, where it is said that a whole train of Nazi gold is hidden in a hillside. The leading proponent of this theory is Piotr Koper, who says that he has spent the value of a second home in looking for the train. He has commissioned extensive ground radar surveys, and while the endless readouts and bits of data all seem very impressive, I’m not sure they scream ‘Nazi gold train’ at me. Read more | Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was Winston Churchill’s shocking plan for Nazi war criminals Nevertheless, we did go and have a look, and unfortunately all Justine found was the existence of a place which truckers seem to regard as an open-air lavatory, a discovery that meant we had to keep the windows open when Justine got back in the Jeep. Then there was Burkhardt List, a historian and inveterate treasure hunter, who is absolutely determined that a stash of artwork worth hundreds of millions is located deep beneath a clearing in a wood near the Czech-German border. I liked Burkhardt, but as the show reveals, I didn’t care much for his theory. When I asked him what was stopping him from trying to arrange an excavation, he looked at me darkly and informed me that the ‘Fourth Reich’ was against him, and that agents of this nefarious network of neo-Nazis had even gone so far as to attempt to poison him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/PXL202508141119070082-9c15a00-e1776953836350.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="Four people stand close together outdoors, smiling in front of a wooden structure and greenery. They wear casual clothing, including grey, yellow, light green, and black shirts." title="Guy Walters with treasure hunters Jürgen Proske and Sebastian Eberle, and the programme’s co-host Justine Ostrowska (left to right). “If there’s even a small chance of any Nazi gold still being out there, then it has got to be worth an effort,” says Walters (Image by Guy Walters)" /> Ultimately, the biggest lesson I learned from The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold was that you never know. It is easy to be sceptical, and to be honest, I largely still am, but there are enough sensible people who think there might be a bar or two of gold kicking around some Mitteleuropean mountainside. And of course, if they find it, then perhaps they will end up in their very own mansion in the Maldives. But then again, the decent thing to do would be to give it back to those from whom it was stolen. What’s important to remember is that the story of Nazi gold, while entertaining on one level, is also very dark indeed. Guy Walters is a historian, author and journalist. He is the co-host of The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold, a Sky History documentary
What happens when popes and politics collide?
Regular panellists Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter look back at other points of tension between politics and religion. Plus, following Viktor Orbán's seismic election defeat in this month's elections in Hungary, what parallels can we meaningfully draw from this moment in the nation's political history?
A high-profile spat between Pope Leo and leading figures in the US administration has made headlines in recent weeks, after United States president Donald Trump and vice-president JD Vance disagreed with comments the pope made about US-Israeli actions in the war with Iran. But it's far from the first time that the papacy and other powerful figures have butted heads. In this episode, regular panellists Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter look back at other points of tension between politics and religion. But first: following Viktor Orbán's seismic election defeat in this month's elections in Hungary, what parallels can we meaningfully draw from this moment in the nation's political history? And what's the unsung contribution that Hungarians have made to culture here in the UK? Want to hear more from History Behind the Headlines? Listen to all episodes now
Long to reign over us: how did Queen Elizabeth II survive seven decades of dizzying change?
When Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, she could barely have conceived the currents – imperial retreat, multiculturalism, de-industrialiation – that would transform the nation during her reign. On the centenary of the Queen’s birth, David Cannadine explores how she navigated seven decades of dizzying change
When I was born in September 1950, King George VI had just over a year to live. I have no memory of him or his reign, and my first royal recollection was of the coronation of the second Queen Elizabeth – or, more precisely, of images of her state coach and horses, which I cut out of a souvenir magazine. My parents did not own a television set, and did not know anyone who did, so it was only in 2012, the year of Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee, that I watched the remastered version of the original coronation broadcast from Westminster Abbey. Richard Dimbleby’s reverential commentary, suffused with ardour and optimism, did indeed belong to that earlier time. When the Queen celebrated her platinum jubilee in 2022, few people in the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth could remember when she had not been on the throne. Like Queen Victoria, Elizabeth II had become part of what Victoria’s biographer Lytton Strachey called the “indissoluble” scheme of things, which made it impossible for many people to imagine the world without her. Apart from just over a year at the beginning, and (thus far) four years at the end, my own life has coincided exactly with the 70 years of her reign. I was no part of her life, and never met her, but she was certainly a part of mine, as she was of millions of people in the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and far beyond. Joining Shakespeare I never imagined it would one day fall to me to tell Queen Elizabeth’s life story, but in 2014 I was appointed editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and it seemed likely that the Queen would die on my watch. The convention established for the ODNB’s predecessor, the original Dictionary of National Biography, was that when the monarch died, the editor would contribute the entry on him or her, and it duly fell to me to write the life of Elizabeth II. I did so in two forms: as a short book of 50,000 words, published late in 2025 by Oxford University Press; and as her entry in the ODNB, available online from April this year, which was cut to 35,000 words, putting the late Queen in the company of her namesake Queen Elizabeth I, along with Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. The ODNB entry is a tightly written biography, while the longer book historicises the Queen by setting her more fully in the context of her times. Read more | Buckingham Palace was the height of royal power – so why did Queen Victoria and Albert hate it? Producing these two different versions reminded me how biographers and historians take different approaches when writing individual lives. Some of the most outstanding recent biographies have been by historians – among them Ian Kershaw on Hitler, Jonathan Steinberg on Bismarck and Diarmaid MacCulloch on Thomas Cromwell – but it is a genre about which many scholars remain sceptical. The political and constitutional historian Geoffrey Elton spent his life determined not to produce a biography of Thomas Cromwell, even though he greatly admired him; and in writing his life of Hitler, Ian Kershaw noted that biography ran the risk of “over-emphasising the role of the individual in shaping and determining events”, and “ignoring or playing down the social and political context in which those actions took place”. These risks most certainly apply to biographies of monarchs, though they are less acute when dealing with kings and queens who proactively make history. But sovereigns who reign reactively, rather than rule proactively, create serious expositional challenges, anticipated by Karl Marx, when he observed that “men [and women] make their own histories, but they do not do so under circumstances of their own choosing”. Elizabeth II was just such a circumscribed monarch, living out her life against trends and trajectories in many ways far from friendly. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-120520595webready-f7c08c2-e1776683608167.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a person seated at a table with a BBC microphone in front of them, wearing a light blouse and a pearl necklace while holding a sheet of paper." title="In a speech broadcast to mark her 21st birthday – while she was touring South Africa – Princess Elizabeth pledged herself to a life of duty (Image by Getty Images)" /> Decline and fall One indication of this hostile 20th-century environment is that many monarchies were history’s victims rather than its victors. By the end of the First World War, the great-power thrones of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany had disappeared. The Second World War led to a further royal conflagration, as the Yugoslavian, Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian crowns were subsequently abolished, while the survival of the Japanese emperor was the exception that proved the rule. Thereafter the king of Egypt was driven out, the king of Iraq was murdered; Libya, Afghanistan, Greece, Abyssinia and Iran dispensed with their sovereigns, and only the return of a Spanish monarch in 1975 bucked that trend. This widespread royal retreat was accompanied by imperial dissolution, as the maritime empires of Portugal, Belgium the Netherlands and France disappeared during the second half of the 20th century. And so did the British empire, which had been the biggest of them all. Kipling had anticipated this retreat at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, when his poem Recessional stressed the ephemerality of empire and the transience of global dominion. Between the partition of India and the return of Hong Kong to China 50 years later, the British empire went into full recessional mode. Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was the last British monarch to be Emperor of India, and she ‘gave away’ even more territory than George III. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-613457692webready-3319b3d-e1776682784658.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white portrait shows six people in formal ceremonial dress. At the centre stand a man in a decorated military uniform and a woman in a gown with a long train and veil. Two seated figures and two standing figures wear military uniforms with medals or elegant gowns and jewellery. Draped curtains and a carpeted floor form the backdrop." title="A family portrait from the wedding day of Elizabeth II’s parents, 26 April 1923. (From l to r): the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, the Duchess and Duke of York (the future Queen Mother and George VI) and Queen Mary and George V (Image by Getty Images)" /> A royal rebranding Such was the broader, confining global context against which Princess Elizabeth, born in 1926 as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, lived out her life. One further indication of these changing and challenging times was that only one of her parents was royal. Before the First World War, Europe’s ruling houses constituted an international, inter-connected elite, as exemplified by Queen Victoria’s children, most of whom wed their continental (especially German) relatives. But the First World War, which ranged the British and German royal dynasties against each other, put an end to that, and in 1917 George V rebranded the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as the House of Windsor, and decreed that his descendants might select marriage partners from among British families, by which he meant members of the aristocracy. Read more | The young Elizabeth II: life before she was Queen The Duke of York duly wed Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Scottish grandee the Earl of Strathmore, which meant Princess Elizabeth was only ‘semi-royal’, whereas both the parents of Prince Philip of Denmark and Greece, whom she would later marry, were royalty. Philip may have belonged to the rootless and impoverished interwar diaspora of minor princelings, but his lineage was grander than Princess Elizabeth’s. At the time of her birth, there was no realistic likelihood Elizabeth would become the queen regnant of the United Kingdom. Like all Europe’s remaining royal houses, the British monarchy was patriarchal and patrilineal, which meant that if the Duke and Duchess of York produced a son, he would immediately leapfrog his elder sister and become first in the line of succession. And Princess Elizabeth’s uncle, the Prince of Wales, who would accede to the throne on the death of his father, George V, might yet marry and father a boy who would eventually follow him as king. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-514080420webready-b1c182a-e1776682680633.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows two people standing together: one wearing a light dress with a brooch and a fur‑trimmed hat, the other in a dark suit with a patterned tie, light vest, and a flower pinned to the lapel. A stone wall with a metal window grille is behind them." title="The former Edward VIII marries Wallis Simpson in June 1937 after abdicating the throne. In doing so, says David Cannadine, he put “self and love before service and duty” (Image by Getty Images)" /> This meant there was every initial expectation that Princess Elizabeth would live out her life as a minor member of the royal family, marrying a British aristocratic landowner, doing good works in the local community, and enjoying the company of her horses and dogs. But she would not be the first member of the British royal family in modern times to inherit the throne unexpectedly. The same had been true of Victoria, of George V, and of her father, George VI. All three, like Elizabeth, were unanticipated monarchs who became successful sovereigns – as she would do to an even greater extent. This unexpected turn in Elizabeth’s life took place in 1936, when she was 10 years old. Her uncle, who had succeeded George V as Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, putting self and love before service and duty. But this obliged Elizabeth’s father to put service and duty before self and love, by becoming the sovereign, as George VI, he had never wanted to be. Having sired no son, this meant his elder daughter became heiress presumptive, and she fully assimilated her parents’ ethos of duty and service. In 1947, on her 21st birthday, when she was accompanying her parents on a tour of South Africa, Princess Elizabeth delivered a broadcast, pledging her life, “whether it be long or short”, to the service of the empire and Commonwealth, and it was a pledge she honoured and kept all her life. But that was not the only reason why 1947 was so important a year. India became independent, and was partitioned, portending the end of the British empire and its evolution into the voluntary community of association known as the Commonwealth. That same year, Elizabeth wed Prince Philip, beginning a more than 70-year union that would be perhaps the greatest royal marriage in history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-613465636webready-d118ece-e1776682342956.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a bride in a lace wedding gown, tiara, and pearl jewellery holding a bouquet, smiling at a man in a formal military uniform with medals. Dark curtains form the background." title="Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten on their wedding day, 20 November 1947. Their 73-year union was, writes David Cannadine, “perhaps the greatest royal marriage in history” (Image by Getty Images)" /> British revolution Thereafter there were many milestones in Elizabeth’s long life and reign, extending across an astonishing 70 years. Here are just a few of them. 1952: the death of her father, her accession as the second Queen Elizabeth, and the widespread belief that a ‘new Elizabethan age’ had dawned. (Due to Britain’s diminishing status in the world, that belief would prove to be mistaken.) 1960: Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change speech’ delivered in South Africa, portending the end of what remained of the British empire. 1964: the advent of the Queen’s first Labour government, led by Harold Wilson. 1965: Winston Churchill’s state funeral, both the last rites of the great man and a requiem for Britain as a great power. 1979: Margaret Thatcher took office, as the Queen’s first female prime minister. 1997: the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, delivered a jolt to the monarchy and the nation. 1999: the Queen opened devolved legislatures in Wales and Scotland. 2011: she visited Ireland and expressed sympathy for “those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past”. 2016: 43 years after Britain joined the EEC, an EU Referendum ended in Brexit. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1450414706webready-b13781c-e1776682235671.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a group of formally dressed people standing on steps outside a building. Some wear military uniforms, others fur coats or ceremonial robes. One naval officer salutes while others hold programs." title="The State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill" /> Significantly, none of these events were initiated by Elizabeth II, but she had to adapt to all of them. That is what monarchs who reign but not rule must do. At the same time, there were many milestones in her own life, as she celebrated a unique grand slam of four jubilees. 1977: her silver jubilee (25 years) – not yet even halfway through the Queen’s long reign, taking place during James Callaghan’s premiership, nearing the end of a difficult decade. 2002: her golden jubilee (50 years) – initially anxious, following the dismal 1990s and the deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, but turning out to be an unexpectedly successful amalgam of royal tradition and Blairite ‘cool Britannia’. 2012: her diamond jubilee (60 years) – perhaps the happiest of them all, following the marriage of William and Kate Middleton, preceding the successful opening of the London Olympics, and instantiating the Queen’s own hard-won apotheosis. 2022: her platinum jubilee (70 years) – inescapably elegiac, as the Queen was largely absent from the celebrations, and her last years had been hard, with Covid, the death of Prince Philip and the departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to the US. But she made a final appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where she had first been glimpsed as a baby in her mother’s arms 95 years before. The Queen’s long reign meant her closest relatives were obliged to adapt in unprecedented ways. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother became a dowager queen for half a century. Prince Philip gave up a promising naval career and subordinated his life to supporting hers. Prince Charles had to wait until his early 70s before he became king. Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, found neither personal happiness nor a fulfilling public role. In different ways, this must have been difficult for all four of them. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-3335882webready-e52ecc4-e1776682455805.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a woman in a light outfit, hat, gloves, and pearls holding a bouquet as she interacts with a crowd of adults and children waving flags." title="The Queen meets children during her silver jubilee celebrations, 1977. Despite the smiles, Britain was suffering a crisis of confidence at this point in her reign (Image by Getty Images)" /> Unlike their parents, but like their Aunt Margaret, three of the Queen’s children – the Prince of Wales, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew – divorced, which meant the (dysfunctional) royal family increasingly became a scandal-ridden soap opera. Prince Andrew’s excessive sense of entitlement, and his close friendship with the convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, were deplorable displays of bad behaviour and demonstrated still more deplorable and damaging lapses of judgment. The Duke of Sussex denounced his father in public for being cold and aloof, while his wife branded members of the royal family as uncaring, unsympathetic and racist. “Recollections may vary,” was the Queen’s response. As someone who belonged to the generation that had gone through the Second World War, she was ill at ease with the emotional incontinence that had become widespread during the closing decades of her reign. Total transformation During her 70 years on the throne, Britain changed significantly. In the early 1950s, the traditional aristocracy still counted in the corridors of power, the middle classes were closely linked to the empire, the military and the civil service, and working-class men were overwhelmingly employed in such heavy industries as coal mining, steel making and ship building. Except for the Queen, women knew their (subordinate) place, social mobility was limited, higher education was restricted to a minority, Britain was, to a large extent, ethnically homogeneous, the Church of England was a significant force, and the Victorian moral code still prevailed. Read more | The royal family and their right to privacy: who should have access to the records? But by the end of the Queen’s reign, the aristocracy was no longer the power elite, the middle class sought alternative employment, and the de-industrialisation of Britain meant most men no longer undertook hard manual labour. Rising standards of living and the expansion of universities made the country a more mobile and less deferential society, women occupied prominent positions in public and professional life, the influence of the Church of England had declined, the Victorian moral code had been dismantled, and the influx of immigrants from the dissolving empire meant Britain became an increasingly multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multicultural society. To all this the Queen adapted, slowly and not always enthusiastically, but overall, wisely and well. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-530137388webready-eab239c-e1776682946240.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Three people at a formal event: one in a sequined gown with a tiara and jewellery, one in a patterned dress with gloves and pearls, and one in a light traditional outfit. They appear to be conversing in an ornate indoor setting." title="With Margaret Thatcher at a Commonwealth meeting in Zambia, 1979. The Queen placed great store on Britain’s membership of this association of more than 2.7 billion people (Image by Getty Images)" /> As the United Kingdom diversified, the British empire diminished, until by the end of her reign it had almost completely disappeared. However much she cared about it, and however hard she worked at it, being Head of the Commonwealth was scarcely the same as being Empress of India. In 1952 Britain was still – just – a great global power; 70 years later, it was a middle-sized nation that had sought to compensate for the loss of empire by joining the European Economic Community, a venture that was abandoned following the referendum of 2016. It thus fell to Elizabeth to preside, not only over domestic devolution, diversification and de-industrialisation, but also over imperial retreat and international withdrawal. This meant that although in later life she became, like Victoria before her, a justly venerated matriarch, the uplifting, expansive narrative widely proclaimed in 1887 and 1897 found no echoes in 2002, 2012 and 2022. Queen Elizabeth II’s greatest achievement was, perhaps, to make recessional majestic. These were not circumstances of her own choosing, but she made history, all the same. Sir David Cannadine is the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. His latest book is Queen Elizabeth II: A Concise Biography of an Exceptional Sovereign (OUP, 2025) This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
How did the world change during Queen Elizabeth II's reign?
Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth II remained a constant presence in an era of vast social, technological and geopolitical transformation. Anna Whitelock charts an era in which Britain, but not its queen, changed beyond recognition
Never before has Britain changed so dramatically during the reign of one monarch. The second Elizabethan age was defined by unprecedented transformations in every facet of life, the effects of which rivalled those of the industrial revolution more than two centuries earlier. Queen Elizabeth II witnessed significant changes in society, technology, transport and geopolitics, which created what most people would recognise today as the modern British state. The very fact that the monarchy has survived and, indeed, thrived against this backdrop owes much to the late Queen and her constant, unchanging presence over 70 years. Before the Queen’s coronation on 2 June 1953, few people owned a television. The decision to broadcast the ceremony live prompted many to buy their first set, and well over 20 million people in the UK watched Queen Elizabeth II being crowned at Westminster Abbey in London. The BBC, then the only national broadcaster, transmitted on just one (black-and-white) television channel and three radio stations. It approached the coronation filming with reverence and deference. The director general’s views were clear: “There ought to be an absolutely rigid policy that so far as the BBC is concerned [the royal family] can be guaranteed complete privacy.” Royal Women with Kate Williams Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens. From Cleopatra to Elizabeth II, we’ll explore how royal women navigated power, politics, and expectation and how their legacies were shaped long after their deaths. Watch now Over the following 69 years, the media changed beyond recognition. Countless terrestrial television channels are now available, plus many more via streaming subscriptions. At the same time, the media industry has become global, with rolling 24-hour news channels, newspapers viewed online, and social media posts visible almost anywhere on the globe. Much of this was made possible by the world wide web, just one key innovation in an age marked by rapid changes in communication. At the start of the Queen’s reign, communication was primarily via letters, telegrams and newspapers. Just two and a half decades later, in 1976, she sent her first email; she uploaded her first YouTube video in 2008, sent her first tweet in 2014, and uploaded her first Instagram post in 2019. By 2022, print newspapers reached just 24 per cent of the British public, down from 40 per cent just four years previously. Also by 2022, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube had all overtaken the BBC as the prime source of news for British teenagers. Appliances of science It’s not just in the realm of computer science that Britain has witnessed immense technological change over the past 70 years. In 1952, when Elizabeth came to the throne, only a small minority of homes had central heating, fridges, washing machines or telephones. There were just 2.5 million cars on the roads, and for most people owning such a vehicle was a distant aspiration. Today, most households own at least one car – there are 32.9 million on the roads. The young Queen ruled over a less-populous, younger country. Of the UK’s 50.6 million people in 1953, 21.6 million were under the age of 30, and 8 million were 60 or older – a ratio of 2.7 to 1. The population has since grown to more than 68 million and also aged. The ratio of young to old is 1.4 to 1 and falling. This ageing society is another feature of the second Elizabethan age that increasingly puts pressure on the celebrated National Health Service (NHS) – which was just four years old in 1952. Part of the explanation for the rise in life expectancy in the UK has been local scientific excellence. The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 by James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, together with Robert Edwards’ IVF (in vitro fertilisation) revolution, which led to the birth of the first “test-tube baby” in 1978, played their part in changing the face of science, medicine, education and preventative treatments. The importance of these advances will never be forgotten, and these individuals proved themselves pioneers comparable to the great explorers and inventors of the Victorian period. Read more | In pictures: Queen Elizabeth II through the decades UK society has also become vastly more diverse year on year since 1952, when few Britons would have seen a non-white face in their daily life. Over the past seven decades, immigration has created a multi-faith and multi-ethnic society, and “Britishness” has declined concurrently as the default national identity. The instinctive, 1950s sense of British nationhood – forged through two world wars, a Protestant faith and an imperial project that elided any sense of internal UK differentiation – has come to an end. Now identities are more fragmented or multiple: many people in the UK consider themselves primarily Scottish, Welsh, English or even European. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-912522140-1a7c000-e1776764601902.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph shows children playing together in a playground at a junior school in north London. Several children are captured mid-jump while others follow behind in a line drawn on the ground. Low school buildings frame the open play area." title="Children play in a north London junior school in 1971. Britain has evolved into a multi-faith and multi-ethnic society over the past seven decades (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The fact that London has a Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, is indicative of the scale of change. None of this was a possibility in 1952. Then, women comprised just 32 per cent of the employed population. By 2022, they made up 48 per cent of the workforce. The Queen joined that workforce herself during the Second World War when employed as a truck mechanic in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. More than 70 years later, in 2015, she noted the great strides that women have taken over the course of her reign during a speech to mark the centenary of the Women’s Institute. “In the modern world, the opportunities for women to give something of value to society are greater than ever, because, through their own efforts, they now play a much greater part in all areas of public life,” she observed. Freedom and failure The hierarchy and deference of the 1950s has given way to a more liberal or “permissive” society. Birth control, abortion reform and the Equal Pay Act 1970 all helped combat the gender inequality of the 1950s. The Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts between men; 46 years later, gay individuals won the right to marry in England, Scotland and Wales (though not until 2020 in Northern Ireland). Notwithstanding, gender equality and the battle for LGBTQ rights became huge issues in the latter years of the Queen’s reign. Despite the optimism that bloomed at the time of the coronation, the past 70 years have been characterised by the relative decline of the UK, perhaps most markedly in its economy. “There is a lot of talk about the new Elizabethan age, but whether it will be implemented will depend on all ranks in industry,” Brigadier Ralph Rayner told parliament in 1952. “The British industrialist and merchant, if given half a chance, will wipe the floor with any other industrialist in the world. The British working man, if given a good lead, will certainly beat any other working man in the world.” Yet, misogyny aside, that wasn’t to be. British business failed repeatedly to invest in infrastructure, or to innovate or market at the same rate as their American, Japanese or European competitors. So the “never had it so good” coronation boom years of full employment, high growth and low inflation could not be sustained. UK industry, management and labour relations have proved increasingly uncompetitive on a global stage, despite political rhetoric advocating, both politically and economically, “Global Britain”. The Elizabethan era has, overall, been defined by deindustrialisation and economic decline – though, of course, some individuals have become super rich. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-639614552-e1776764655267.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph shows members of the Blyth miners’ wives support group marching with adults and children through a residential street. A large banner reading “COAL NOT DOLE” is held at the front of the procession. The image documents community protest during the UK miners’ strike." title="A sponsored walk to raise money for families affected by the miners’ strike, Northumberland, 1984. Postwar Britain witnessed dramatic industrial decline (Photo by Getty Images)" /> In 1952, the UK was the world’s second-biggest economy, behind only the US, with a GDP of £247bn. At the start of September 2022, it was the world’s sixth biggest after the US, China, Japan, Germany and India. At the same time, the economies of continental Europe have grown from their low postwar base at a much faster pace than that of the UK. When Elizabeth II assumed the throne, Winston Churchill was UK prime minister, Josef Stalin was leader of the Soviet Union, Harry Truman was US president, and Mao Zedong was the mainland Chinese leader. The Korean War was still being fought, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was little over two years old. The UK was just about to join the US and the Soviet Union as a nuclear power, with Churchill announcing the atomic bomb project a week after the coronation. Today the PRC is an emerging superpower with the second-largest economy in the world; the Soviet Union long ago disappeared from the geopolitical landscape; and the UK has transitioned to a “lesser power”. To many, the UK’s global reputation was indelibly tarnished in the bloody aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But fantasies about a second Elizabethan age were already fading long before then. It’s hard to overstate the humiliation generated by the Suez crisis of 1956, when Britain, France and Israel conspired together in an unsuccessful attempt to wrench back control of the Suez Canal from Egypt. The evolving empire During her Christmas Day broadcast from 1953, Elizabeth II declared: “The Commonwealth bears no resemblance to the empires of the past. It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace.” A month earlier, the Queen had set off with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on a marathon tour of the Commonwealth nations lasting five-and-a-half months. Pathé newsreels back home showed the scenes of wild enthusiasm that greeted the royal couple wherever they went, from Bermuda to Gibraltar by way of Jamaica, New Zealand, Australia and Uganda. But the world was changing fast, and nowhere more obviously than in the empire. That process had begun in earnest when India became independent in 1947, five years before Elizabeth took the throne, but accelerated rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s. In the first two decades of Elizabeth’s reign, 32 countries achieved independence from Britain. Hong Kong, the last major holding of the empire, was given back to China in 1997. Read more | The Queen and the Commonwealth: a force for international change? As the empire fractured, the Commonwealth rose. Under the Queen’s leadership, this global alliance grew from a group of eight founding nations in 1952 into a voluntary association of 56 independent countries comprising 2.5 billion people. However, some commentators have argued that the benign face of the Queen disguised Britain’s complicated history of violence and bloody conflict, citing, for example, the brutal counterinsurgencies in what are now Kenya, Malaysia, Yemen and Cyprus in the latter days of the British empire. These imperial misdeeds have only belatedly led to a reckoning in the UK, with the government paying compensation to some victims of its colonial policies. The push by activists for the removal of statues, the revision of school curriculums glorifying Britain’s empire, and further calls for apologies and reparations demonstrates how the consequences of the rapid decolonisation of the first decades of the Elizabethan era are still reverberating. Apologies and reparations That said, the break-up of the empire could have been more rancorous without the Queen’s presence. Throughout Britain’s transition from an empire to post-imperial power, she made it clear that she was determined to build a new relationship with Britain’s old imperial possessions – based on friendship rather than post-imperial bitterness. In 1961 she visited Ghana and danced with President Kwame Nkrumah, who had been one of Africa’s most prominent anti-colonial leaders and had been briefly imprisoned by the British. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-613471398-8d02775-e1776764717315.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colour photograph shows Queen Elizabeth II walking past troops of the Nigeria Regiment lined up at attention. The soldiers wear coordinated uniforms and stand in two rows, while accompanying officers walk nearby. The scene takes place outdoors during a formal military inspection." title="During her Commonwealth tour of 1956, Queen Elizabeth II inspects the men of the newly renamed Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Certainly, Elizabeth defined this era of unprecedented global transformation by becoming a rare unifying figure; notably, she retained the affection of Commonwealth leaders even when they were hotly opposed to her government’s policies. As long as she was alive, many knotty issues were shelved; now she has died there will be much to reappraise. The Commonwealth must plot a new path and decide where its future lies. The organisation has grown of late, welcoming countries that had never actually been under British rule. It’s one of the few groups in which mature and emerging economies come together with a common agenda. And there are obvious issues in which it could still play a part – climate change and vaccine diplomacy being two examples. The final years of the new Elizabethan age saw a movement among Caribbean nations to remove the Queen as the titular head of state and to press for reparations for the abuses of the colonial era. The process was accelerated when Barbados became a republic in 2021. Belize has announced a constitutional review of the question, while Jamaica and Antigua & Barbuda have both indicated their intentions to become a republic. Confused identities A defining characteristic of the United Kingdom, throughout Elizabeth’s reign and today, remains the need to accept and define its changed position in the world. Back in 1962, former US secretary of state Dean Acheson noted in a speech, to the anger of the British press, that “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”. He suggested that the country was confused about its future identity – focused on its “special relationship” with the US one moment, then looking toward Europe or the Commonwealth to give it greater meaning and influence the next. These words ring as true today as they did then. Now, Britain is acutely uncertain about its place in the world and facing the repercussions of the scale and pace of change that has defined the second Elizabethan era. Read more | Queen Elizabeth's relationships with US presidents As much as the Queen was a stabilising force for many people, the UK appears to be increasingly divided on geographic lines. Doubts have been growing about whether its four nations can hold together as a United Kingdom. There are growing calls for political change in Northern Ireland, and increased pressure post-Brexit for independence in Scotland, reflected in The Herald on Sunday’s headline above a picture of Charles: “Union’s Saviour or Last King of Scotland?” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-539560540-d80d116-e1776764820433.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colour photograph shows Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip standing in an open-top vehicle as it travels along the Mall. Union flags line the avenue, with large crowds gathered behind barriers on both sides and Buckingham Palace visible in the distance. The image reflects a ceremonial procession during a public celebration." title="The Queen greets well-wishers gathered on the Mall in London to celebrate her 90th birthday, 2016. She has left behind a nation profoundly uncertain about its place in the world (Photo by Getty Images)" /> Elizabeth II’s reign encompassed the transformation of culture and class; rapid technological expansion and socio-political change; the end of deference and a distinctive sense of Britishness. Yet the Queen was successfully able to navigate these changes – embracing advances in technology and communication, while also representing a reassuring bastion of tradition and age old values and virtues. She was in the world of change but somehow at once apart from that world. US President Joe Biden described her as “a stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy”. That constancy belied the epochal shift experienced by her country – the consequences of which are, with her death, only now coming into full view. This article first appeared in the December 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
Chess, space and medieval monks: this spring’s overlooked historical headlines
In this special episode, regular panellists Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter catch up with some of the headlines we’ve missed over the past few months
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has dominated news coverage, and episodes of this podcast, in recent weeks – and because we chose to focus on those pressing events, some other stories have taken a back seat. So, in this special episode, regular panellists Hannah Skoda and Rana Mitter catch up with some of the headlines we’ve missed over the past few months, from new theories about the ninth-century Book of Kells to a fresh take on how chess was regarded in the Middle Ages. Want to hear more from History Behind the Headlines? Listen to all episodes now
8 weird stories from the Space Age: from hungry tortoises to gorilla suits
As the Artemis II mission prepares to send humans around the moon, Jonathan Wright explores the stranger side of space history – from UFO sightings to Cold War curiosities and beyond
Exploring space is a serious business. To use the term employed by Tom Wolfe in his 1979 book about the first US test pilots to enter astronaut training, you need the “right stuff” to sit atop an enormous firework leaving the protection of our atmosphere. But space travel is also a human endeavour. In the heavens as on Earth, that means it throws up stories that can be bizarre, funny or melancholy. As Nasa prepares to send astronauts back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time since 1972, here are eight strange-but-true tales from the ongoing history of the Space Age. 1. Ballistic legacy At the end of the Second World War, the USSR and the US competed to snaffle up as much German rocketry expertise and kit as possible. So it was that, despite his Nazi past, V-2 co-designer Wernher von Braun became chief architect of the Apollo programme’s Saturn V rocket. Less well remembered is the role of the V-2 itself in space exploration. In 1945, US Army Special Mission V-2 recovered parts and equipment needed to make the missiles from an underground factory in eastern Germany. Subsequently, much of the haul was taken to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, where initial work resulted in the assembly of 25 rockets. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/1aGettyImages-544605263-d284276-e1775049918462.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A mid-20th-century photograph of a suited man seated at a desk, holding a pen and looking towards the camera. In front of him are several model rockets and a black rotary telephone. Behind him, a large illustration shows a spacecraft flying past the moon." title="Wernher von Braun - director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center" /> The first flights from the US followed in the spring of 1946. By October, the grandly named Upper Atmosphere Research Panel was expert enough in launching missiles to use one to capture the first photograph of the Earth from space. A terror weapon had found a more noble purpose. 2. The dog who died In the early years of spaceflight, it was far too dangerous to send humans into the great beyond. Instead, scientists sent animals. As early as 1946, the Americans blasted fruit flies into space. Monkeys and mice followed in their wake. But perhaps the most famous creature to leave Earth was Laika (‘Barker’). A stray mongrel, she was taken off the streets of Moscow by biologists working for the city’s Aviation Institute – the idea being to find animals that were friendly yet also tough, streetwise. And female, so they wouldn’t need to cock their legs to pee. On 3 November 1957, Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. Listen now | Animals in space: the creatures who paved the way for human travel beyond Earth Sadly, at a time when re-entry technology had yet to be developed, she died of hyperthermia. But her journey aboard Sputnik 2, nicknamed ‘Muttnik’ by the US press, captured the public’s imagination. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2GettyImages-515031406-bdd929d-e1775048742214.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph of a small dog seated inside a cramped, capsule-like apparatus. The dog is strapped into a harness, with its head and front paws visible through an open front panel. The surrounding structure appears metallic and enclosed, with wires, bolts and curved casing." title="Laika, Russian Astro Dog" /> 3. Space pup détente Unlike the ill-fated Laika, Belka (‘Squirrel’) and Strelka (‘Little Arrow’) survived spaceflight. In August 1960, aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, the two dogs circled the Earth for 27 hours in the company of 40 mice, a couple of rats, a grey rabbit and some flies. The serious point of the exercise was to understand how time in zero gravity would affect the creatures. Strelka had six puppies. In 1961, Nikita Khrushchev sent one of the puppies, Pushinka, ‘Fluffy’, to President John F Kennedy. Once the FBI had checked out Pushinka for surveillance bugs, she joined the First Family. Less suspicious was the Kennedys’ pet dog Charlie, who fathered four ‘pupniks’ in June 1963. Although JFK wrote to Khrushchev to thank him for the gift, he was allergic to Pushinka, who made him sneeze and brought him out in a rash. 4. Aliens ahoy? Considering the rigorous psychological evaluations required to become an astronaut, it’s unsurprising that few spacefarers have reported seeing UFOs – when they have sighted odd objects, they have offered rational explanations for what they saw. The template for this approach was set by astronaut Jim McDivitt. Read now | How UFOs conquered the world – without firing a shot Aboard Gemini IV in 1965, he reported spotting an object that was “like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it”. He never saw this as an example of an alien visitation. Rather, he thought he was probably looking at a piece of ice or insulation that had broken off his craft. That hasn’t stopped more lurid stories of UFO sightings spreading, including one involving Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 and fake “secret moon transcripts”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/62HJCPDX-9d175f4-e1775049594902.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colour photograph showing two astronauts seated side by side inside a spacecraft cockpit. Both wear white space suits and large, clear-visor helmets, with one astronaut in the foreground looking down and the other slightly behind, facing forward. The interior is tightly packed with metal panels, wiring and controls, conveying the confined, technical environment of an early space mission." title="Astronauts Edward H. White II (left) and James A. McDivitt inside the Gemini IV spacecraft wait for liftoff. The objective of the Gemini IV mission was to evaluate and test the effects of four days in space on the crew, equipment and control systems. Pilo" /> 5. The tortoises who survived The Nasa astronauts heading for the moon in April will be following not just their predecessors aboard Apollo missions, but those who journeyed on the Soviet Union’s Zond 5 spacecraft. This left the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 15 September 1968. Its payload included fruit fly eggs, plants and two tortoises, the first creatures to fly beyond Earth orbit and circle the moon. They returned on 21 September 1968. Despite splashing down in the Indian Ocean rather than landing back in Kazakhstan as planned, the tortoises lived through the experience, albeit they had lost 10 per cent of their bodyweight and were subsequently dissected. The mission was also notable in providing high-quality photographs of the Earth from 90,000km out in space. 6. Posthumous Explorer The death of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1991 robbed the world of the Space Age’s greatest optimist, a man whose work suggested humanity’s future would be spent zipping around the cosmos. And, in the case of James T Kirk, fighting aliens, bickering with his crewmates and kissing any willing women in his vicinity. Boldly going where few have gone before, Roddenberry requested his remains be sent into space. In 1992, his wish was partially honoured when astronaut James Weatherbee carried a portion of Roddenberry’s ashes with him aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Although the remains were brought back to Earth, this is widely thought to have been the first space ‘burial’. Founded in 1994, Houston-based “memorial spaceflight” specialists Celestis have turned off-Earth undertaking into a business by buying ‘secondary payload’ slots on launch vehicles. They have twice taken small portions of Roddenberry’s ashes aloft, most recently in January 2024 when Roddenberry and his wife, actor Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, were among those fired into deep space as part of the maiden mission of the Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle – marketed as the Enterprise Flight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/102WD95N4-c2109b7-e1775049710517.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A night-time photograph of a rocket launching from a pad, brightly illuminated as flames and exhaust billow beneath it. Tall gantry structures and towers frame the rocket, while thick clouds of smoke spread across the ground. The surrounding area is dark, with the launch creating a dramatic contrast against the night sky." title="A portion of Gene Roddenberry's cremated remains were fired into space as part of the inaugural Vulcan Centaur launch in January 2024 (Photo by Alamy)" /> 7. Sitting in a tin can, far above the sky At midnight on 31 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to be a sovereign state. This put cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev in a tricky situation. The country that had put him aboard the Mir space station no longer existed and nobody seemed in any massive hurry to bring him home. Another issue was Russia’s dire financial situation. While other countries paid for places on missions to and from the station, Krikalev stayed in situ. Plus, had he left, the station would likely have had to be abandoned because it would have been without a flight engineer. Read now | The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the moon Ten months after he had departed terra firma, a man dubbed “The Last Soviet Citizen” at last went home. His mission had lasted twice as long as planned. But he doesn’t hold the record for the longest single stay in space. This belongs to Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days aboard Mir in 1994–95. Returning to Earth, he said he wanted to prove humans could cope with travelling to Mars. 8. Silly ape In 2016, future senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly sent a gorilla suit to his identical twin brother, Scott. An unusual gift, especially as Scott was at this point resident on the International Space Station and the suit was smuggled aboard via a SpaceX cargo mission. The result of this tomfoolery was a viral video showing Scott, dressed as an ape, chasing around British astronaut Tim Peake. The Kellys built on a rich tradition of taking contraband into space that dated back to March 1965, when Gemini III astronaut John Young carried a corned beef sandwich into orbit. According to Young, it seemed like “a fun idea at the time”. Nasa bigwigs, worried about crumbs damaging delicate equipment, were not amused. Lead image by Nasa/Ben Smegelsky
Peter Ricketts on diplomacy, Trump and Iran
Lord Peter Ricketts – former chair of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee – talks to David Musgrove about the changing nature of international relations, and whether the post-WW2 consensus is now a thing of the past.
Recent US actions in the Middle East have challenged the established world order, and called into question existing diplomatic and political norms. But how different is today’s diplomacy from that of the Second World War or the Cold War? And what does history tell us about the best way to deal with convention-busting figures such as President Trump. In this bonus episode of History Behind the Headlines, Lord Peter Ricketts – former chair of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee and author of books including the upcoming Peace Makers: Shaping the Modern World – talks to David Musgrove about the changing nature of international relations, and whether the post-WW2 consensus is now a thing of the past. Want to hear more from History Behind the Headlines? Listen to all episodes now
What happens when war puts oil supplies at risk?
Almost a month in, the Iran conflict has begun to have an impact on the world’s supplies of oil and gas. In this episode, Rana Mitter and Hannah Skoda discuss the ways in which energy has shaped the human story – and reveal how the Strait of Hormuz was a contested region centuries before the current war
Almost a month in, the Iran conflict has begun to have an impact on the world’s supplies of oil and gas – particularly as a result of Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest shipping channels. But what’s the longer story of our reliance on particular resources? And what have the historical consequences been when they’re jeopardised? In this episode, regular panellists Rana Mitter and Hannah Skoda discuss the ways in which energy has shaped the human story – and reveal how the Strait of Hormuz was a contested region centuries before the current war.