Her reign spanned Britain’s journey from the wireless to the smartphone, from social deference to egalitarianism, from empire to the EU — and out again. Through the dramas and vicissitudes of seven decades, with their wars and other woes, Queen Elizabeth II served as the nation’s figurehead, supremely able to hold her people together.
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Queen Elizabeth II: April 21 1926-September 8 2022
In 2015, she overtook Victoria to become the nation’s longest-serving monarch, but her final years were to prove among the most challenging, as she sought to bind together a nation divided by Brexit and stricken by the coronavirus pandemic.
