Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (1926)

Her Majesty the Queen was born in London on 21 April 1926, first child of the Duke and Duchess of York, subsequently King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Five weeks later she was christened in the chapel of Buckingham Palace and was given the names Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.

Princess Elizabeth, with her sister Princess Margaret born four years later, had her early education at home. After her father succeeded to the throne in 1936 and she became heiress presumptive, her studies were extended to include lessons on constitutional history and law. She also studied art and music; learned to ride (she has been an excellent horsewoman since early childhood); and enjoyed swimming (at the age of thirteen she won the Children's Challenge Shield at the Bath Club in London), and amateur theatricals. At the age of eleven she enroled as a Girl Guide, and later became a Sea Ranger.

As the Princess grew older she began to take part in public life; she was fourteen when she made her first broadcast, in a message given during the BBC's children's programme to the children of Britain and the Commonwealth in October 1940.

In 1944, shortly after her eighteen birthday, she was appointed a Counsellor of State during the King's absence on a tour of the Italian battlefields, and, for the first time, exercised certain of the functions of the Crown.

After the war, the Princess Elizabeth's public engagements grew in number and frequency. Her first official visit overseas took place in 1947, when she accompanied her parents and sister on a tour of South Africa. During this tour, she celebrated her twenty-first birthday, on which she made a broadcast address dedicating herself to the service of the Commonwealth, a dedication which she repeated five years later on her ascension to the throne, on 6 February 1952.

Shortly after the return of the Royal Family from South Africa came the announcement of the engagement of the Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, son of Prince Andrew of Greece and a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria, now His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whom she had known for many years. Their wedding took place in Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947. The Prince Charles, now the Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the throne, was born in 1948, and his sister, the Princess Anne, now the Princess Royal, in 1950. The third child of the Queen and the Duke, the Prince Andrew, now the Duke of York, was born in 1960, and their fourth, the Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex, in 1964. The Queen and the Duke celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in London in 1997.

After her marriage, the Princess Elizabeth paid formal visits with the Duke of Edinburgh to France and Greece and, in the autumn of 1951 the couple toured Canada. In 1952, when King George VI's illness made it inadvisable for him to carry out his projected visit to Australia and New Zealand, the Princess, accompanied by the Duke, took his place, and it was in the first stage of this journey, in Kenya, that she received the news of her father's death and her own ascension to the throne.

Her Majesty's coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953. The ceremony, which was attended by representatives of the peers, the Commons and all the great public interests in Britain, the Prime Ministers and leading citizens of the other Commonwealth countries and representatives of foreign states, was brought home to many hundreds of thousands of the Queen's subjects in a way never before possible: for the first time in history the coronation of a British monarch was marked by a television transmission as well as a radio broadcast throughout the world.

In autumn of the following year, Her Majesty set out to accomplish, as Queen, the Commonwealth tour she had begun before the death of her father and her accession to the throne.

In 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee was celebrated in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth. Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen travelled some 56,000 miles to share the anniversary with her people.

The Queen has six grandchildren.