Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in the relatively modest surroundings of 17 Bruton Street in London's Mayfair on 21 April 1926, daughter of the then duke and duchess of York (later George VI and Queen Elizabeth). The future Elizabeth II seems to have been aware of her position from a very young age. She gave the Windsor wave in her pram, was curtseying to her grandparents by the age of two and wore a Norman Hartnell dress to her first state function at nine.
In contrast, her education – in the hands of devoted governesses – was modest and undemanding. Outside experts were brought in only for lessons in history, French and, most successfully, riding. The latter, along with dogs, became a life-long passion. Books, on the other hand, remained alien: reading was for state papers.
Surrounded by doting parents and younger sister Margaret Rose, it was a happy, secure upbringing that produced an orderly, conformist child. It was soon to become a lot more exciting when, in December 1936, Elizabeth's uncle Edward VIII abdicated the throne and her father unexpectedly became king and she was transformed into heir presumptive. One result was that Lilibet, as she was known in the family, began attending lessons in constitutional history at Eton, just across the river from Windsor Castle.
With the outbreak of war in 1939, the princess took over some of her father's work, especially after her 18th birthday in 1944 when she performed many official duties as stand-in head of state. Then, in the final year of the war, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services as a driver, eventually rising to junior commander.
When peace came, the princess began to travel further afield on the crown's behalf, visiting South Africa in 1947. It was in November of that year that she married the man who would be the love of her life: Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, a distant cousin. It was, and perhaps remains, a marriage of opposites. Almost exactly a year later, she gave birth to Prince Charles and, two years later, Princess Anne (followed in 1959 by Andrew and in 1964 by Edward).
On 6 February 1952, her beloved father died and Elizabeth became queen. At that moment, she was up a giant fig tree watching big game, acting as his replacement in East Africa on the first leg of an imperial tour. On the flight back, she got up once or twice to relieve her feelings in private, but in general, she calmly accepted the job that she had been born to do: to be not just a queen, but a Windsor queen. And the rituals and values of the House of Windsor – established by her father and, before him, her grandfather George V – were unrolled once more.
Her father lay in state in Westminster Hall, in the ceremony invented by George V for his father Edward VII. Her mother was given the title of 'queen mother', first conferred by George V on his widowed mother Queen Alexandra. Above all, and against the furious protests of Prince Philip, she announced that the name of the royal house would remain the 'House of Windsor', as George V had decreed in 1917 (although she later relented when it came to the surnames of her children: see Proclamation of 1917).
To soothe Philip's feelings, she appointed him head of the committee to plan the coronation. He was eager for 'some features relevant to the world today [to] be introduced', but his was a lone voice on a committee whose collective memory stretched back more than 50 years. The result was that the coronation of 1953 was a polished replay of the pageantry of the Windsor coronations of 1910 and 1937.
But there was one hugely important innovation: television. The queen was firmly opposed to the broadcasting of her being crowned, but a press campaign quickly forced a retreat. The result was that, on 2 June 1953, countless millions watched the coronation.
It was the apotheosis of the Windsor monarchy. The ceremony was perfect, the empire seemed more or less intact and the queen, with her youth and sincerity, was the most attractive embodiment yet of the Windsor values of family, service and duty. And television had proved itself to be the most effective means for their dissemination.
For three decades, Elizabethan sailed serenely on, following the royal script written by her parents and grandparents. Each year was much like the previous one, with a round of engagements as regular as clockwork. Each individual event was invested with a broader symbolic meaning, performed in a special esoteric costume and choreographed to within an inch of its life.
These events matter profoundly to the queen. Yet they have become opaque, even meaningless, to the vast majority of her subjects. Above all, they have been upstaged by the behaviour of the younger members of her family, particularly the breakdown of Prince Charles' marriage to Diana Spencer.
Appalled at the damage this was doing, not only to the couple but to the monarchy itself, the queen, in one of her rare interventions in family affairs, effectively required them to divorce. But by then it was too late. Not only was the Wales's marriage dead, so too was the 'family monarchy'.
In the face of the tide of sentiment that swept the country (and the world) when Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997, Elizabeth's determination to stick to the monarchy of her father and grandfather, with its unshowy values of duty, service and self-restraint, looked more and more out of touch. However, following fierce criticism from her subjects, she relented and expressed more openly her regret at Diana's death.
2002 was the turning point of her reign. In February, her wayward but deeply loved sister Margaret Rose died, followed only six weeks later by the Queen Mother. That summer, the queen, now the undisputed matriarch of her clan, celebrated her 76th birthday and the 50th anniversary of her accession.
Then in 2006, she received Hollywood stardom by proxy. The film The Queen, with Helen Mirren winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth, dealt sympathetically with the monarch's dilemma during the crisis surrounding Diana's untimely death. It seemed to set the seal on the public's critical reaction towards the monarchy, which had reached an all-time low at that time. A year later, Forbes.com nominated the queen as the 23rd most powerful woman in the world, right behind Margaret Whitman, president of eBay.
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 Elizabeth II, painted in 1996 by Susan Ryder. A Windsor whose coronation was made all the more effective by television, but whose reign has had to survive difficult personal and constitutional problems
Royal Automobile Club, London/Bridgeman Art Library
 British Monarchy
www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp
The queen's own official website, which contains a huge amount of information.
1953: Queen Elizabeth takes coronation oath
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates
/stories/june/2/newsid_2654000/2654501.s
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Part of the BBC News 'On this day' site: a news article about the queen's coronation. Contains a timeline with lots of links to articles about other events in the queen's life.
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The Queen: Elizabeth II and the monarchy by Ben Pimlott (HarperCollins, new ed. 2002)
Well-reviewed blockbuster by an eminent political biographer and academic.
Get this book
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