COVER STORY
ELIZABETH ALEXANDRA MARY 21 APRIL 1926 – 8 SEPTEMBER 2022
In this Exclusive Collector’s Edition, MiNDFOOD celebrates the extraordinary life of Queen Elizabeth II. A towering presence on the world stage for decades during her reign, we take you behind the scenes to look at the important milestones in Her Majesty’s life, as well as precious memories with her family; the Royal wedding; her early life and rise to the throne; the public and private moments when her compassion and sense of duty touched others; the well wishes from world leaders and ordinary people alike; and the tears and emotions of her state funeral.
As well as being the longestreigning British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II will go down in history as one of England’s greatest sovereigns, giving counsel to many prime ministers as Head of State, and acting as a focus for national identity, unity and pride as well as building the Commonwealth.
Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London on April 21, 1926 as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth). Elizabeth’s only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930. Elizabeth’s parents had no reason to expect that she would one day be Queen as her father’s older brother, Edward, was heir to the throne. It was only on his abdication in 1936 that Elizabeth became heir presumptive. “I will be good,” said the Queen in waiting when told by her governess of her new elevated status. Her father acceded to the throne in 1936.
Educated at home, Elizabeth began to undertake public duties during World War II, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She married Prince Philip of Greece, who had been given the title Duke of Edinburgh before their wedding, in 1947. Queen Elizabeth said of Prince Philip at The Queen’s Golden Wedding Anniversary speech at Banqueting House, London, November 1997: “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”
Their son, Prince Charles, was born a year after the wedding. Princess Anne was born in 1950, Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964. When her father died in February 1952, Elizabeth, then 25 years old, became queen of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (known today as Sri Lanka), as well as Head of the Commonwealth.
The Queen customarily began each day by reading through state papers sent to her by government departments in the famous ‘red boxes’, approving and signing them where necessary. She then spent most days at a variety of engagements, including promoting the more than 600 charities of which she was patron.
In 2012, when Elizabeth became only the second monarch to reach a Diamond Jubilee, Britain and the Commonwealth joined in four days of celebrations. More than a million people turned out to cheer the Queen as she made her way downstream on the Royal Barge. Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, marking 70 years on the throne, was celebrated with numerous events over a four-day weekend in June.
During the coronavirus pandemic, she embraced technology including video calls from isolation in Windsor Castle. There she spent time with Prince Philip in his final months and enjoyed her pursuits of riding, walking the dogs and visiting her budgerigars. After the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in April 2021 at the age of 99, she resolved to continue her duties and resumed her public engagements. Charles gave a speech at the Platinum party in 2022 calling the Queen ‘Your Majesty’, before touchingly adding ‘Mummy’. Charles went on to say: “Your family now spans four generations. You are our Head of State. And you are also our mother.”
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away on 8 September 2022 at the age of 96 at Balmoral in Scotland. The Queen is survived by her four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. She has eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
THE CALL OF DESTINY
When Elizabeth was born, she was not destined to become queen. That all changed in 1936 when her uncle Edward VIII abdicated, leaving her father, King George VI, to rule. With no male siblings, she was set to rule, becoming Queen at just 25 years old when her father passed away. The transition from King to Queen was a significant one for the monarchy, Elizabeth being the first ruling queen in five decades, following in the footsteps of Queen Victoria. Her transition to the throne came at a time when Britain was overcoming postwar austerity, and entering into a new era for the Commonwealth. It also signalled a new era of media spotlight for the monarchy, with her coronation the first to be broadcast on television, reaching hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
SPECIAL SIBLING BOND
Queen Elizabeth II was known to be responsible and dutiful, while her younger sister, Princess Margaret was famous for her rebellious streak, and yet despite these differences, the two sisters held a strong bond until Margaret’s passing in 2002. “Lilibet is my pride. Margaret is my joy,” their father, King George VI, famously said of his daughters. For her very first public address, at the young age of 14, Princess Elizabeth sat by her 10-year-old sister as she addressed the children of the Commonwealth during the war. “My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all,” said Elizabeth, ending her speech by inviting Margaret to say “Goodnight, children”. The sisters also lent their support by knitting for the forces. Their relationship wasn’t without its ups and downs (such as during her sister’s relationship with the divorced Peter Townsend) but even amidst all the troubles, Margaret remained one of the Queen’s closest companions, said to have had a direct telephone line to the Queen in Buckingham Palace, which the two would use to “gossip and laugh”, family friend Reinaldo Herrera shared in Vanity Fair.
A QUEEN AND HER CORGIS
Corgis and dorgis (dachshund and corgi mixes) were in Queen Elizabeth II’s family from the time she was a little girl. For her 18th birthday, Princess Elizabeth received her very own corgi, named Susan, sparking a lifelong love affair. She owned more than 30 dogs over the course of her life, the majority of which were Pembroke Welsh corgis.
The Queen’s pups were always close by, making themselves at home at Buckingham Palace, travelling with her and Prince Phillip wherever they went (Susan even accompanied them on their honeymoon), and even featuring in some of her official photos and portraits. They became an emblem of her reign. Throughout her life the dogs served as steadfast companions and a source of comfort. In 1940, when she and Princess Margaret were evacuated to Windsor Castle at the start of World War II, the family’s dogs were sent with them to keep them company. More recently, during her husband Prince Philip’s hospitalisation during the pandemic, the Queen’s spirit was lifted when she was gifted two corgi puppies by her son, Prince Andrew, and her granddaughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
THE QUEEN AND HER MOTHER
Like the Queen, the Queen Mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, was a resilient woman who lived a long life until her passing at age 101. She was widowed at 51, leaving her daughter to ascend the throne. The Queen Mother remained a public figure throughout her life, conducting over 40 official visits abroad after the King’s death. Mother and daughter were said to have shared a strong connection, bonding over their shared love for racing horses, even sharing a winning race horse together named Monaveen. When her mother died, Queen Elizabeth II gave a rare televised address to the nation, recalling both her mother’s joie de vivre and her duty to service. “Over the years I have met many people who have had to cope with family loss, sometimes in the most tragic of circumstances,” she said. “So I count myself fortunate that my mother was blessed with a long and happy life. She had an infectious zest for living, and this remained with her until the very end. I know too that her faith was always a great strength to her.”
THE GRANDCHILDREN AND GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN
While known to the world as ‘Her Majesty’, the Queen was simply ‘Grannie’ to her eight grandchildren, with whom she shared special bonds. “I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real,” shared William, the Prince of Wales upon her death. “She was by my side at my happiest moments. And she was by my side during the saddest days of my life.” Princess Beatrice, daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, also had a tight-knit relationship with her grandmother. For her wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, she wore a vintage ivory dress by Norman Hartnell that was worn by the Queen in the 1960s to open parliament. In 2021, Beatrice welcomed her first child – and the Queen’s 12th great-grandchild – naming her Sienna Elizabeth, after her grandmother. Her grandson Harry, the Duke of Sussex, also paid tribute to his grandmother in naming his second child, Lilibet Diana.
A LIFELONG LOVE OF FLOWERS
On ascending to the throne, Queen Elizabeth II became Patron of the Royal Horticultural Society. She visited their showpiece event, the Chelsea Flower Show, many times with her parents as a child, before attending for the first time as Queen in 1955. She went on to attend the floral showcase more than 50 times over the course of her reign.
This year, to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, the show featured displays celebrating her 70 years on the throne. The Queen attended in a buggy, and witnessed a floral reconstruction of her postage stamp silhouette in regal hues, as well as an installation intended to transport visitors to one of Her Majesty’s favourite places. With a canopy of flowers including fresh delphiniums, the garden emulated the colours and planting of the Scottish landscape near the Royal Family’s Balmoral residence in Aberdeenshire.
In a lovely tribute, flowers from the Queen’s Balmoral garden were placed on her coffin in a traditional circular wreath. Dahlias, phlox, white heather and pine fur sat alongside cuttings of fragrant sweet peas, said to be one of the Queen’s favourite flowers. Sweet peas are said to have a particularly poignant double meaning, representing thank you for a lovely time” and “goodbye”.
COMPASSION IN ACTION A war surgeon has shared a deeply touching moment between himself, the Queen and her corgis.
During his visit to Buckingham Palace in 2014, the Queen came to the aid of Dr David Nott, one of Britain’s top vascular surgeons, as he suffered from an episode of PTSD as a result of working in war zones. “She must have detected something significant,” Dr Nott told BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs. “She picked all this up and said, ‘Well, shall I help you?’ I thought, ‘How on earth can the Queen help me?’ All of a sudden the courtiers brought the corgis, and the corgis went underneath the table. She went to one of the courtiers and said, ‘Can we open up that, please?’ So she opened up this lid and there was a load of biscuits. So she got one of the biscuits and broke it in two and said, ‘Okay, why don’t we feed the dogs?’ And so for 20 minutes during this lunch, the Queen and I fed the dogs ... the humanity of what she was doing was unbelievable.”
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
Daniel Craig was honoured to have worked with the Queen. “I was just very lucky to be part of something, the Olympics, and to get to work with her on something that I think a lot of people enjoyed and liked and laughed at,” Craig said on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival. He performed with her in a famous sketch as alter ego James Bond for the 2012 London Olympics. He followed the Queen into a helicopter before both seemingly jumped out and landed via parachute in the stadium. Sebastian Coe from the organising committee for the Olympic Games said: “A whole heap of people still believe that she actually did jump from that helicopter, genuinely.”
A CLOSE-UP WITH HISTORY
Queen Elizabeth II’s long-standing reign saw her become one of the most recognisable figures in the world. Her face was not only emblazoned on currency and memorabilia, but displayed throughout the years in portraits. She has been photographed by some of the world’s most famous artists, including Annie Leibovitz, Cecil Beaton and Lord Snowden. The images have ranged from the grand and illustrious, such as Beaton’s famous coronation portrait in her regalia, to intimate photos where she was beaming to the camera with one of her beloved corgis. In 1969, the Queen made the bold move to invite documentary filmmakers into her home, to depict her family and domestic life for a series called Royal Family. She was filmed working in her office, eating with her family and driving to the shops. One of the last portraits released of the Queen was captured by photographer Henry Dallal, showing the Queen smiling next to her two home-bred ponies, Bybeck Nightingale and Bybeck Katie, taken in the grounds of Windsor Castle to celebrate her 96th birthday.
HATS OFF TO YOU, MA'AM
When we think of the Queen’s style, particularly in her later years, we will remember her in an array of bright colours and perfectly matched hats. The Queen’s senior dresser Angela Kelly revealed in her 2019 book The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe that many of Queen Elizabeth II’s outfits were designed and made in-house, and explained that “colour is key”. “The colour chosen must suit the Queen and the occasion,” Kelly wrote. “Vibrant colours work well in the daytime: they allow her to stand out from the crowd and be visible to the well-wishers who have come to see her.” Kelly also disclosed that the Queen liked to choose her hats according to the type of event. “For example, when Her Majesty visits a school or a children’s centre, she is always dressed in a bright, jolly colour, and her hat has the kind of details that will appeal to children – feathers, twirls, twists, flowers and ribbons,” said Kelly. “When she visits a nursing or residential home for older people, she prefers to wear a strong, well-defined colour, with a structured hat, to help those who are visually impaired to see her.”
HER DEAR FRIEND
There are few people who can say they were part of the Queen’s inner circle, but Angela Kelly is undoubtedly one of them. Kelly’s official title – Personal Assistant, Advisor and Curator to Her Majesty The Queen (Jewellery, Insignias and Wardrobe) – belies a close friendship with the Queen that spanned almost 30 years. Kelly, who came to be the Queen’s dresser despite humble beginnings growing up in a Liverpool council house, was one of the monarch’s most trusted staff members and somebody the Queen would turn to for a cup of tea and a natter. “We are two typical women,” Kelly told The Telegraph. “We discuss clothes, makeup, jewellery … But we also have a lot of fun together. The Queen has a wicked sense of humour and is a great mimic. She can do all accents – including mine.” It’s believed Kelly is being allowed to keep her grace-and-favour home not far from Windsor Castle following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
A BEDROCK OF FAITH
During her 2000 Christmas broadcast, the Queen spoke of Christ’s teachings and how they “provide a framework in which I try to lead my life.” Faith was important to her. As a child, she attended church with her parents, the Queen Mother and King George VI, and when she ascended the throne, she was officially the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. After her husband died, the Queen spoke of how her faith helped her through her grief. “Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year, especially, I understand why,” she said. “It is this simplicity of the Christmas story that makes it so universally appealing: simple happenings that formed the starting point of the life of Jesus – a man whose teachings have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been the bedrock of my faith.”
SCONE, ANYONE?
The Garden Parties at Buckingham Palace are celebrated every year, with guests enjoying classic cakes, sandwiches and tea (including the famous Victoria Sponge Cake). Fruit scones were a favourite of Queen Elizabeth II. The Royal Pastry Chefs have shared the Queen’s fruit scone recipe: you can recreate them at home by visiting mindfood.com/fruit-scone
HER FRIEND DAVID
Sir David Attenborough recalled his friend's sense of humour, saying she was always “quick to see the joke” in things. “Yet not for one second could you forget that you were in the presence of someone who had willingly accepted enormous responsibility and dedicated her life to serving the nation,” he said.
MEETING ICONS WHO SHAPED HISTORY
From hosting a reception for Nelson Mandela at Buckingham Palace to numerous other events, the Queen had interactions with cultural icons and world leaders throughout her lifetime. While some were one-off encounters, others developed into lifelong friendships.
THE QUEEN & RONALD REAGAN
If there was ever an image that summed up the Queen’s sense of humour, this would be it. The Queen was known for approaching her duties with equal parts dedication and wit. Here we see US President Ronald Reagan in stitches after a joke delivered deadpan by the Queen.
FLORAL FAREWELL
The Queen will be fondly remembered for her love of bright colour. It’s thus fitting that she had a wreath of bright blossoms adorn her coffin for her funeral. Nestled among lush green foliage were roses, hydrangea, dahlias and more in blush pinks, burgundies and hints of gold. The flowers and plants were taken from royal properties.
WORLD LEADERS PAY RESPECTS
The Queen’s funeral was the largest gathering of world leaders seen in decades. It’s estimated 500 heads of state and other dignitaries representing 200 nations attended, with Sky News reporting this included nearly 100 presidents and heads of government, and more than 20 royals. Among the guest list were the New Zealand and Australian prime ministers.
A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
Arguably the most striking moments of the Queen’s funeral came from the procession comprising the military, the Royal Family and others who have dedicated their lives to service of the Queen. The Queen had a special personal relationship with the military, serving as head of the armed forces and as their commander-in-chief. Thousands from the armed forces were involved in the proceedings: 4,000 in total, with 3,000 military personnel in central London and 1,000 in Windsor. These included regular and reserve soldiers, sailors, marines and aviators, as well as musicians from armed forces bands, marching along the route.
PRINCE GEORGE AND PRINCESS CHARLOTTE
Nine-year-old Prince George and sevenyear-old Princess Charlotte’s roles in their great-grandmother’s funeral represented a significant break from tradition. It was revealed the two young heirs to the throne would stand alongside their parents and other senior members of the Royal Family as they walked behind the Queen’s coffin in Westminster Abbey.
A TRIBUTE IN PEARLS
The Princess of Wales paid tribute to the Queen’s fondness for pearls with her choice of jewellery for the funeral. The Princess wore a simple black coat dress with black hat fitted with a netted mourning veil which she paired with a Japanese pearl choker necklace. The four strings of pearls were joined with a diamond clasp in the centre, a gift to the Queen from Japan in the 1970s. Many members of the Royal Family have worn the necklace before, including Princess Diana on a trip to the Netherlands in 1992. The new Princess of Wales also wore the choker to the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral in 2021.
THE CORGIS SAY GOODBYE
Amid all the ceremony of the Queen’s funeral, a number of personal moments shone through. The Queen’s affection for her corgis and horses was well known and her beloved pets stood by until her last departure. As the monarch’s funeral procession passed by the grounds of Windsor Castle, her black fell pony Emma stood by, held by head groom Terry Pendry, with whom the Queen often rode. Her two corgis, Sandy and Muick, waited patiently at the Windsor Castle entrance as her coffin was brought in.
Tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of London to pay their respects to the late monarch and watch the procession. Some camped for days to secure a spot along the front row to view the procession, while others flooded pubs and parks to watch the service. From army veterans wearing military uniforms to schoolchildren clutching Paddington Bears, members of the public travelled far and wide to witness the historic event. Marion King told The Guardian that she “cried buckets” during the service.
“We were emotional when the children went past in the cars on the way to Westminster and when we listened to the service over the speakers,” said the 59-year-old. “There was not a sound in the two minutes’ silence, you could hear a pin drop over here.”
A large proportion of the service was dedicated to music that had a special significance to Queen Elizabeth II. Many of the choices also had a long association with Westminster Abbey. One of the hymns, ‘The Lord's My Shepherd’ was sung at the wedding of the Queen and Prince Philip at the Abbey in 1947. The arrangement of ‘Love Divine, All Loves Excelling’ was first heard at the wedding of William and Catherine in 2011, and the anthem ‘O Taste and See’ was composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.
Two new pieces were specially composed for the service: ‘Like as the Hart’, a setting of Psalm 42 by the Master of the King’s Music, Judith Weir; and ‘Who Shall Separate Us?’, by Sir James MacMillan.
It was estimated that more than four billion people may have watched the Queen’s funeral on television, making it the most watched broadcast in history, surpassing even the Moon landing in 1969.