THE NEW YORK TIMES: Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, celebrating her 70 years on the British throne, is above all a tribute to one of history’s great acts of constancy.
Her reign has spanned virtually the entire post-World War II era, making her a witness to cultural upheavals from the Beatles to Brexit, technological advances from wireless radio to Zoom, political leaders from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson.
From the sepia-tinted pictures of her coronation in 1953 to her emotional televised address to a nation in the grip of the pandemic in 2020, the queen has been an abiding presence in British life for as long as most Britons have been alive.
Her triumphs — history-making visits to South Africa and Ireland — have lifted the country. Her sorrows — the fraught days after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash, or the Covid-enforced isolation of her grieving for her deceased husband, Prince Philip — have become the nation’s sorrows. » | Mark Landler | Produced by Mona Boshnaq | Thursday, June 2, 2022
