Long Lived Our Platinum Queen

Many will find the idea of King Charles III a difficult notion to accept at first, not for reasons of personal disdain (although some will find his green ratbaggery, should it continue to be given public voice, a barrier to affection) but because Queen Elizabeth II reigned so long and was part of so many lives. In Quadrant’s February issue, Mark McGinness marked those 70 remarkable years with a tribute to an equally remarkable woman. That appreciation is reproduced below. — rf
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On February 6, bells rang from churches throughout Queen Elizabeth II’s united kingdom; a forty-one-gun salute at midday disturbed the peace of Hyde Park in London, with a further twenty-one guns in Windsor Great Park and sixty-two guns at the Tower of London to mark her seven decades as sovereign. It is already six and a half years since she broke the record of the longest reign by a British monarch formerly held by Queen Victoria (sixty-three years and 215 days). Of course, this Queen…