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The 'Nine Days Queen' is one of England's most controversial monarchs - here's why
Has history captured Lady Jane Grey’s story accurately? As her childhood home re-opens to the public, we investigate the misunderstood queen
In April 2026, Bradgate House – the childhood home of Lady Jane Grey – was reopened to the public after extensive conservation work, bringing with it a new wave of interest in the so-called ‘Nine Days Queen’. But what do we actually know about this enigmatic Tudor noble, who is often cast as a tragic victim? Who was Lady Jane Grey? In 1537, Jane was born into the noble Grey family. Her parents were the Duke of Suffolk, Henry Grey, and Lady Frances Brandon. As the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and great-niece of Henry VIII, Jane was orbiting the English throne from birth. However, as historian Nicola Tallis explains on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “she wasn’t ever raised as an heir to the throne. She was just this great-niece of Henry VIII who had been living in the countryside." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/dreamstimel173782772-53db152-e1777556403679.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A man dressed in ornate Tudor clothing stands against a dark backdrop, wearing a fur‑trimmed robe, a heavy gold chain set with jewels, and a black hat decorated with pearls and gold." title="A portrait of Henry VIII, modelled after Hans Holbein the Younger’s iconic depiction. Grey’s distant relation to the king meant she was never raised as an heir to the throne (Image by Dreamstime)" /> In 1553, that all changed. King Edward VI was in increasingly ill-health but, being the first English monarch raised as a Protestant, he was desperate for his Protestant legacy to live on. So, he issued his Devise for the Succession. This legislation barred both of Edward’s half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from succeeding to the throne. Read more | Edward VI: why the forgotten Tudor king had the makings of a monster “[Edward] didn’t want his Catholic half-sister [Mary] to be given the opportunity to reverse all of his good work in the cause of religion”, explains Nicola. “However, Edward realised that he couldn’t exclude one half-sister without also excluding the other. And so, he bars both Mary and his younger half-sister Elizabeth from the succession by reason of their illegitimacy." This catapulted Jane to first in line for the throne – a place she didn’t want to be. A reluctant queen On 6 July 1553, just a few weeks after the Devise for the Succession, Edward VI died at age 15. This officially made Lady Jane Grey the Queen of England. “She had no wish or desire to be queen whatsoever, but this was an impossible situation for Jane because she was pressured into accepting the throne," says Nicola. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/dreamstimel107873088-1e3f4b0-e1777556619751.jpg" width="1500" height="996" alt="A detailed stone relief depicts two elaborately dressed women surrounded by attendants, with one kneeling figure offering a crown on a cushion in a ceremonial scene." title="A frieze on the Supreme Court in Parliament Square, London, shows Lady Jane Grey being offered the crown of England. Jane was a reluctant queen, who was “pressured into accepting the throne” (Image by Dreamstime)" /> So, Jane reluctantly took to the throne and was publicly proclaimed Queen on 10 July 1553. Though, it would not last long; Jane would hold the title for a mere nine days. She was soon toppled by Mary I. Was she really queen? There has been some debate about whether Lady Jane Grey should be considered one of Britain’s monarchs, given the fact that the Devise for the Succession was never passed through parliament. But as Diarmaid MacCulloch, speaking to HistoryExtra, points out, “the monarchy has never descended by strict primogeniture, and Queen Jane had a perfectly good claim to the throne: the sort of claim that brought James VI of Scotland to be James I of England in 1603." Tudor historian Tracy Borman agrees. “Edward’s Devise for the Succession was legally binding, so Jane’s claim was entirely valid – and arguably more so than other monarchs who claimed the throne without being legally named." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-464447577-2a78898-e1777556709437.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A woman in a richly embroidered dark Renaissance gown sits in a red and gold upholstered chair, holding a red carnation in one hand and gloves in the other, framed by a dark backdrop." title="A portrait of Mary I of England, 1554. Originally barred from the succession due to her Catholicism, Mary would take the throne from Jane Grey after just nine days (Image by Getty Images)" /> So, why is Jane often left off the list of British monarchs? “Mary I [Edward VI’s half-sister who took the throne from Lady Jane Grey] had to ensure that her subjects saw her – not the woman she had supplanted – as the only true queen," explains Tracy. The dismissal of Lady Jane Grey was, therefore, a form of propaganda. Read more | Mary I: your guide to the life and rule of Henry VIII's daughter – plus a timeline and 7 little-known facts In the battle over religious belief, Catholic Mary I had many supporters following the intense Protestantism of Edward VI’s reign, and that meant Lady Jane Grey – as a devout Protestant herself – made many enemies. As soon as Mary came to the throne on 19 July 1553, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Why was Bradgate House so important? Within the tumultuous story of Lady Jane Grey’s life, Bradgate House was the place that defined her childhood and provided the environment that shaped her. “Jane would have grown up in an elite Protestant setting at Bradgate and, during the reign of Edward, some star Protestant preachers such as Bishop Hugh Latimer were welcome guests there," says Diarmaid. This moulded Jane’s Protestant beliefs, which made her such a good candidate to follow in Edward’s footsteps. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/dreamstimexl106240335-ce8e09c-e1777556805118.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The reddish‑brown stone ruins of a hilltop castle rise above large moss‑covered rocks, set against dark, dramatic clouds." title="The ruins of Bradgate House, Lady Jane Grey’s childhood home. Growing up here strengthened Jane’s Protestant beliefs and allowed her to have an education (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Living at Bradgate also gave Jane the opportunity to be educated, in a world where women were still often limited in this regard. Speaking to HistoryExtra, biographer James D Taylor explains that Jane’s scholarly abilities and intellect were nurtured in an environment where education was encouraged: “at a time when schools that we know of now did not exist, [growing up at Bradgate] allowed Jane to read and study with the guidance of tutors." What can we learn from the story of Lady Jane Grey? Whether or not Jane is considered a true queen, she was a certainly a definitive figure of the Tudor period, and representative of the era’s religious tensions. “She’s a great symbol of historical might-have-beens,” says MacCulloch. Of her short reign, Taylor adds, “though ill-prepared to rule, she did the best she could in the short amount of time she sat on the throne." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-113494497-b8b07ab-e1777556907324.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A blindfolded woman in a white gown kneels on straw, reaching for an execution block with the help of an older man, while an executioner with an axe stands nearby and two distressed onlookers sit to the side." title="Lady Jane Grey is led to the block on the day of her execution, as depicted in this 1833 painting. Grey’s death means she is “a great symbol of historical might-have-beens” (Image by Getty Images)" /> Jane refused to have her husband, Lord Guildford, proclaimed king without an Act of Parliament and, as Tallis explains, “the odds did seem to be very much stacked in Jane's favour to begin with. Even Mary's supporters were urging her to flee abroad for her safety because they were convinced that Jane's reign was going to be secure.” Read more | The curse of the nine-day queen But despite her best efforts, Jane couldn’t compete with a vengeful Mary I, who, after being denied her birth right once before, was not willing to let it happen again. When Jane’s father was revealed as a key conspirator in Wyatt's rebellion – a 1554 uprising that aimed to prevent Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain – Jane’s fate was sealed. On 12 February 1554, Jane was executed at the Tower of London. But perhaps she shouldn’t be remembered solely as a victim. “Jane's story vividly illustrates how powerless women could be in the face of ambitious male relatives," says Borman. “Yet it also provides an inspiring example of a young woman with unshakeable religious convictions and principles – one who might, if history had turned out differently, have proved an excellent queen.” Nicola Tallis was speaking to Isabel King on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, available soon.
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.
A history of the world in 7 faces: from Tutankhamun to the Virgin Mary
From a Stone Age Venus and an Egyptian death mask to an unflinchingly challenging 21st-century sculpture, Fay Bound-Alberti introduces seven depictions of the face that track humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with creativity, hierarchy and self-image
1. The art of darkness This enigmatic head is a 25,000-year-old testament to the innate urge to capture the essence of a person in art In 1894, an archaeologist called Édouard Piette walked into a cave in the village of Brassempouy in south-west France and came face-to-face with humanity’s distant past. Lying in the darkness was a fragment of mammoth-ivory carved to depict a head. That head was tiny – so small that it could nestle in the palm of Piette’s hand – and yet it had survived for 25,000 years, carved by an artist deep in the Palaeolithic period. Piette couldn’t have been aware of it at the time, but he had just discovered one of the earliest known representations of a human face in art. That representation is both awe-inspiring – and deeply enigmatic. It would soon be known as ‘The Venus of Brassempouy’ – there were other Venuses in the same cave, with those rounded hips and breasts associated with fertility symbols – and yet we can’t even be sure if it depicts a woman. Despite these uncertainties, the fact that this rare and portable object exists at all tells us that it was important for the artist to capture something of the essence of a person – and with a level of detail that is unusual for a Venus figurine. That depth of detail is most evident in the intricate, chequerboard-patterned hair – possibly a wig or hood – from which the object derives its nickname, ‘La Dame à La Capuche’ (Lady with the Hood). The face, by comparison, is a blank canvas. It has a prominent forehead, nose and brow, but it lacks a mouth. Was this artistic decision influenced by convention? Religion? Personal style? Time? We do not know. What we do know is that the Venus of Brassempouy stands as a symbol of how representations of the face have evolved over 25,000 years. Today, we take it for granted that our face represents us – a phenomenon I have termed ‘facehood’. It is marked on our passports and unlocks our mobiles; it is captured in photographs countless times over our lifetimes. It has become a shorthand for a unique, individual person in a way that simply wasn’t the case with the Venus of Brassempouy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/dreamstimel48080984-74bcdd9-e1777286681457.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun with blue‑striped headdress, inlaid eyes, and royal cobra and vulture emblems." title="Tutankhamun’s golden burial mask presents an idealised, godlike face symbolising divine transformation in the afterlife (Image by Dreamstime)" /> 2. From death to deity Tutankhamun’s dazzling mask was designed to transform a mortal man into a god In ancient Egypt, memorialising people did not mean remembering what they looked like. It was wealth, power and similarity to the gods that mattered. For proof, look no further than one of the world’s most recognisable objects: Tutankhamun’s golden burial mask. Revealed in 1925 by British archaeologist Howard Carter, three years after he discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb, this dazzling artefact measures 54cm high – a fit for an average adult’s head. Weighing over 10kg, the mask is made of solid gold, with intricate inlays of lapis lazuli and carnelian. Yet the most intriguing feature is its 2.5kg golden beard. That beard, which is long and plaited, extends down from the chin with a formal, geometric appearance and rectangular shape. Look at the mask in profile and you’ll see that it is not intended to look naturalistic; the beard is held in place with a band beneath the chin – as it would have been in a ceremony. Tutankhamun died c1323 BC, aged just 18 or 19 – too young to grow such a beard. This – coupled with the fact that the mask has pierced earlobes, the preserve of women and children – has led some Egyptologists to argue that it was never intended to be used by Tutankhamun at all. It was, they argue, designed for his stepmother, Nefertiti. Yet for ancient Egyptians, faces had symbolic rather than literal, gendered meanings. Eyes, for instance, had mystical connotations – as illustrated by the ‘Eye of Horus’ and the ‘Eye of Ra’ (representing wellbeing, healing and protection). Both male and female rulers wore fake beards in ancient Egyptian ceremonies and art – to display divine power and royal authority. The principle was practical, but the practice was genderless. Hence Tutankhamun’s mask resembles the gods Osiris and Ra, whose bodies were made of gold and lapis lazuli. An inscription on the mask reads: “Your forehead is Anubis, your right eye is the night boat [of Ra], your left eye is the day boat, your eyebrows are in the company of nine gods.” The mask was intended to be seen by the gods, not by humans. Such images were theological objects that transformed a corpse into a deity. Read more | Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun: was the tomb really cursed? 3. Age before beauty The Romans believed that wisdom – and, therefore, fitness to rule – was etched in the lines of the face We do not know the identity of the artist, or indeed the subject, of this ‘Head of a Roman Patrician’. So what do we see when we look at it? We might conclude, from the richness of the drapery, that this was someone important. After all, plebs and slaves were not sculpted in marble. He is a serious man, with a poker-straight posture and a solemn expression, whose face and neck are wizened by age. The skin on his forehead and balding brow is deeply lined by years of thinking – and, perhaps, by responsibility. Earlier scholars suggested that the sitter was Cato the Censor, the famously austere Republican statesman. Yet we should beware making the mistake of thinking the sculptor aimed at realism, or likeness, as we understand it. This bust is an example of ‘verism’, a style of Roman portraiture that sought symbolic rather than literal truth. Roman sculptors and philosophers followed the rules of physiognomy that meant character was revealed in the lines and structure of the face. Why? Because Romans needed a visual language that demonstrated political legitimacy in a system where power was contested. In later centuries it would be important for monarchs to have individually recognisable portraits for propaganda and coinage. But their rule was assured by blood or war. In the Republic of Rome, rulers showed their fitness in the experience, wisdom and expertise etched on their faces. Women – wives and daughters of those rulers – were not depicted as aged and wise, because female value, then as now, was too often based on beauty, not intellect. Men could also be subject to gendered idealism. Since a Republican politician often needed to embody not only the wisdom and experience of age, but also the physical prowess of a warrior, some sculptural portraits had wizened faces but youthful, vigorous bodies. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-463895209-ee1b31f-e1777286825978.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A seated Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, surrounded by haloed saints and angels against a gold architectural backdrop." title="The medieval church developed a visual code that the entire population could recognise, as exemplified by Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Why the long face? In the Middle Ages, religious portraiture relied on symbolism rather than realism to spread the word of God Patricians symbolising leadership in ancient Rome were concerned principally with their peers – the literate elite who read character in wrinkles. The medieval church faced a different problem: it needed to communicate to vast populations, most of them illiterate, many of them poor, none of them experts at what faces meant. So the church developed a visual language of symbols in portraiture. These symbols told viewers instantly who Jesus and the saints were, as well as religious martyrs, local landowners and wealthy donors who invested in the church fabric. Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned is one of the most famous examples of a symbolically laden portrait. Here, the Virgin Mary’s image lacks the emotionality and fleshiness of later artworks such as Raphael’s Madonna del Granduca (c1506–07). Painted around 1310, Giotto’s work was influenced by Byzantine tradition, which dominated Italian art, though he began introducing more naturalism. Gold leaf, bright colours, formal poses and slender, otherworldly faces were what people expected from divine images. What made Mary instantly recognisable were her symbols: the dark blue mantel, the white headscarf, the Christ child on her lap, the throne, the surrounding saints with their haloes and attributes, the gold trim and background. She might also be shown with a crown of 12 stars, roses, rosary beads and a heart pierced by a sword. In a world before consumer capitalism, bureaucracy and mass urbanisation, personal portraiture that showed an ordinary person simply wasn’t necessary. Read more | Medieval family planning: meet the strong-willed women who redefined motherhood in the Middle Ages 5. The man in the mirror By the 17th century, symbolism was being swept aside by portraits that sought to reveal the unvarnished truth In 1659, the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn sat before a mirror to capture his reflection. Unlike the Roman patrician, Giotto’s Madonna – or indeed Hans Holbein the Younger’s portraits of Henry VIII a century earlier – there is nothing idealised about Rembrandt’s self-portrait. What he produced was unflinchingly realistic. Rembrandt wears a dark coat and a black beret, and stares out from a dark, featureless canvas. Nothing distracts from the face, the centre of emotion, humanity and the self, with a posture and expression that reveals emotion in the creases round the mouth and eyes. His skin is weathered, his features irregular, his nose is prominent, his jowls sagging. This is a man who has suffered – Rembrandt was care-worn from a recent bankruptcy. His eyes meet ours, offering an invitation to connect. Unlike earlier self-portraits – Rembrandt created almost 100 during his lifetime – there are no elaborate symbols on display here: no artist’s palette, no jewels signalling status, no books to indicate learning or hourglass to warn of time’s passing. Self-portraits of his era reflect the fact that the status of the artist was becoming more important, as well as the idea of interiority and psychological individualism. Rembrandt’s portrait is an archetype of modern portraiture – it betrays a feeling face. We can see what he looked like as a specific, unique person, and the same face ageing across different self-portraits. In medieval portraits, faces had been more stylised and generic, and painters often re-used faces, because they were not the focal point of the painting. With its radical approach to symbols, identity and the face, the Renaissance changed all that. From now on, artists would seek to portray their subjects as distinctly individual and recognisable. Portraiture, then, did not only reflect a growing interest in the face, but also encouraged and perpetuated it – much as photographic portraits did in the 19th century. 6. What lies beneath Photography forced artists to look beyond the skin to the sitter’s core, with often unsettling results This Head of a Woman was crafted in 1909 by the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is modelled on Fernande Olivier, an artist in her own right. Olivier is usually credited as Picasso’s muse, yet flattery was clearly not a consideration in this particular portrayal of her. Picasso’s ‘Head’ is roughly constructed, with no attempt at realism. But why? To answer that question, we need to consider the dramatic technological changes that had convulsed the art world between the ages of Rembrandt and Picasso. When Rembrandt plied his trade, artists could make a good living. Their success came from their ability to capture some essential truth about appearance – to reproduce the world as it really was. But between the 1840s and the 1870s, with the invention and popularisation of photography, everything changed. Once a camera could capture likeness with mechanical precision, the project of realistic portraiture became obsolete. If a camera could do in a few minutes what took a painter months, what was the job of the artist? For artists such as Picasso, the answer lay in achieving in their paintings what a photograph could not: penetrating the core of a person to capture what the mind feels. Picasso’s Cubist work embodies this approach. For all the head’s lack of realism, skill is not an issue here. Picasso was accomplished at realism in painting and sculpture. Rather, the focus was different. The face was now a problem to be solved and understood – a structural puzzle, rather than an object to be copied. For artists that followed, such as Francis Bacon and the surrealists, the artist’s job was to ferret out what could only be discovered through their special insight. In such hands, and increasingly after the crisis of confidence caused by the First World War, the portrait was a tool for psychological investigation rather than social documentation. Read more | Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-489164501-21e92a2-e1777287214373.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large white sphinx-like sculpture with human features inside a vast industrial hall, with people standing nearby for scale." title="Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby features a towering sugar sphinx that confronts racism, exploitation and the politics of visibility (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. Sweet scents and rotting flesh This installation serves as a reminder that, over the history of portraiture, not all faces have been equal Today, the question is less how faces are portrayed, but rather, whose faces. For centuries, the canon of western portraiture has, for the most part, not included black people. And where they were included, it was as servants, slaves, exoticised presences in paintings made by, and for, white subjects. There are exceptions: Juan de Pareja, enslaved and painted by Velázquez; Frederick Douglass, photographed repeatedly after achieving freedom. But these instances are rare. For most of history, black people have appeared as exhibits, in the margins, in the background, or not at all. However, in the 21st century artists such as Kara Walker have begun to subvert Victorian artistic styles, such as the silhouette – a medium historically associated with genteel portraiture – to critique the racist depictions of black faces found in art and culture, from slavery advertisements to blackface. In 2014, Walker created A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, a monumental installation in the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. At the centre of that artwork stands a sphinx coated with 8 tonnes of sugar – the commodity that built American wealth on the backs of slaves. The face of the statue invokes that mammy archetype, Aunt Jemima, while the gaze stares straight ahead, as impassively as the Great Sphinx of Giza, on which it is modelled. But the body is exposed and sexualised, as black women’s bodies have been in history. Around the sphinx are smaller figures: molasses-covered children, whose bodies are deteriorating, some with missing limbs and empty eye sockets. The sweet smell of sugar gives way to the acrid stench of rotting flesh. What is beneath the surface here is not some secret interiority – as was the case for Bacon or Picasso – but the question of who is being looked at, and who is doing the looking. It is the nature of artistic production and consumption itself that takes centre stage. Fay Bound-Alberti is professor of modern history, and director of Interface at King’s College London. Her new book, The Face: A Cultural History, was published by Allen Lane in February This article was first published in the April 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
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
Kate Williams looks back on Elizabeth II's personal and public life to reveal the woman behind the crown
This April marks the centenary of the birth of Elizabeth II. In this special episode of our Life of the Week series, historian Kate Williams guides Charlotte Vosper through the late Queen’s life, picking a key moment from each decade that illuminates the monarch's personality, public role, and private life. How did she feel when she unexpectedly became heir apparent to the throne? What did she really think about the media furore that surrounded her and her family? And how should we look back on her reign, almost four years on? Join Professor Kate Williams for a six-part HistoryExtra series uncovering the little-known stories behind some of history’s most famous queens.
How did three very different royal women set a new course for women in power? In the final episode of her HistoryExtra Academy series on royal women, Kate Williams shares the stories of Boudica of the Iceni, Queen Liliʻuokalani of Hawaii and Princess Grace of Monaco
In the final episode of her Academy series on royal women, Kate Williams explores the theme of woman ruling at the edge of collapse, and the moments in history where power was fragile, contested and often slipping away. This episode takes a closer look at Boudica, whose story is often told as one of fiery resistance – her tale, says Williams, serves as reminder that even defeated queens can reshape the future. You'll hear about Queen Lili'uokalani, both the first and last queen of Hawaii, whose power and legacy has endured even though her throne was taken. Finally, there's Grace Kelly, who represents a different kind of royal power – one shaped not by rebellion, but by a Hollywood image. View Green Video on the source website Discover all videos in this Academy series on royal women, and explore our previous series on royal residences Professor Kate Williams is a historian, presenter the author of several books including Regina: A New History of Women and Power (June 2026)
Coming to the throne as a young and inexperienced royal, Queen Victoria faced a society that was both sceptical of women’s power and rigid in its expectations of gender roles. So how did she come to be a figurehead of imperial progress? In the fifth episode of this of her HistoryExtra Academy series, Professor Kate Williams explains more
Queen Victoria’s life spanned an era of extraordinary change. During a period of industrial growth, political reform and imperial expansion, she became a symbol of Britain’s 19th-century might. But at the time of her accession, she was an unlikely figurehead. In episode five of her HistoryExtra Academy series on royal women, Professor Kate Williams reveals a deeply personal figure whose relationships, grief and convictions shaped the monarchy in new ways. View Green Video on the source website Want more from Kate? Find more episodes of the academy series on royal women, and explore our previous series on royal residences Professor Kate Williams is a historian, presenter the author of several books including Regina :A New History of Women and Power (June 2026)
Mary I: England’s most misunderstood queen?
In the fourth episode of her HistoryExtra Academy series on royal women, Kate Williams explores the life and reign of Mary I, England’s first crowned queen regnant, whose rule has long been overshadowed by her reputation for religious persecution
Born into the tumultuous politics of the Tudor court, Mary I saw her mother abandoned by King Henry VIII, her brother enact religious persecution with fresh zeal and, when she was crowned, faced the pressures of a divided nation. So does she deserve her reputation as ‘Bloody Mary’? Or has history judged her too harshly? In episode four of her HistoryExtra Academy series, Professor Kate Williams weighs up the actions of the woman crowned first queen regnant of England. View Green Video on the source website Enjoyed this episode? Find more in episode five of the academy series on royal women, and explore our previous series on royal residences Professor Kate Williams is a historian, presenter the author of several books including Regina :A New History of Women and Power (June 2026)
Marie Antoinette: the French queen who became the target of a revolution
Few historical figures have been as vilified – or as misunderstood – as Marie Antoinette. In episode three of her HistoryExtra Academy series on royal women, historian Kate Williams explains how the cards were stacked against this young queen
From the glittering world of Versailles to the growing unrest of revolutionary France, Marie Antoinette’s life was shaped by politics, public perception and relentless scrutiny. In episode three of her HistoryExtra Academy series, Professor Kate Williams explores the life of young woman thrust into power, who had to navigate a hostile court and a changing world – all in the face of growing unrest. View Green Video on the source website Enjoyed this episode? Find more in episode four. Discover more episodes episodes of the academy series on royal women, and explore our previous series on royal residences Professor Kate Williams is a historian, presenter the author of several books including Regina :A New History of Women and Power (June 2026)