Elizabeth of 23,227 Days…and Counting

On February 5, 1952, Elizabeth Windsor climbed a mgugu tree as a princess and the following morning came down a queen. She and Prince Philip were in Kenya en route to Australia, staying at the famous Treetops Hotel. On February 6, she was watching the sun rise from a platform in the trees as an eagle soared above them—it was thought that, at that moment, her beloved father, George VI, died in his sleep at Sandringham.

A day later the twenty-five-year-old monarch arrived in London, dressed in black, and descended the stairs of her plane to be greeted by Prime Minister Churchill, who had served as a soldier in the reign of her great-great grandmother, Victoria. And it is Victoria whom Elizabeth II will eclipse on September 9 as the United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch. And, of course, Australia’s longest-serving sovereign. Sixty-three years 216 days of dutiful discretion and extraordinary control. Day after day, week after week since Wednesday, February 6, 1952.

Her…