Ahead Of The Coronation, Revisit Queen Elizabeth II’s Life In Photos
King Charles III made his formal debut in Vogue alongside his mother at just 18 months old. The magazine had dispatched Cecil Beaton to capture the then Princess Elizabeth with her son and infant daughter, Princess Anne, at Clarence House, where the future Queen had set up residence with the Duke of Edinburgh shortly after their marriage. Beaton’s aim, that spring day in 1950, was to capture the heir apparent at her most natural and relaxed – playing with Charles in the gardens and cradling Anne in her drawing room.
Not everything went according to plan, however: “The infant Princess… at last became thoroughly exasperated,” Beaton recalled with annoyance after the fact. “Prince Charles, too, was getting beyond control and the noise produced by the two children was quite ear-splitting.” Fortunately, a later session with the young family proved more successful. “On this second occasion, after a number of pictures had been taken, Prince Charles, who had been watching the proceedings with great interest, kissed the baby on the cheek, and thus was achieved the best picture of the afternoon, an infant version of the Sleeping Beauty.” The portraits would go a long way towards shaping the public’s perception of the Princess Elizabeth, then in the relatively rare position of being a working mother in midcentury Britain – positioning her as the embodiment of the monarchy’s allegedly “steadying” influence and a maternal figure who cared for both her children and the entire nation deeply.
Equally celebrated: the image that Beaton took of Elizabeth a few years earlier to commemorate Charles’s birth, commissioned to accompany a Vogue essay on the monarchy’s enduring power by historian Arthur Bryant. “A hundred-and-thirty years ago, it looked as if the British monarchy was doomed,” Bryant declared in the 1949 op-ed. “[Instead], what has happened is that the British – a people with a genius for political evolution, rather than revolution – have resuscitated an ancient and elsewhere discarded institution, and adapted it to suit the needs of a new age.” Central to that institution’s continued success: widespread adoration for the future Queen, whom Beaton photographed on a throne-like chair in front of a classical backdrop flanked by vases of chrysanthemums. “She is benevolent,” the Vogue photographer would later write warmly. “Her regard is unhurried and gentle, filled with human understanding and kindness; she is meek but not shy; assured and even proud – proud of her heritage. She has the strong and forthright virtues of Queen Victoria, and her reign may well become as famous.”
Ahead of the Coronation this weekend, revisit Queen Elizabeth II’s 96 years in 96 photos.
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The future Queen with her mother, the Duchess of York, at less than a month old.
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A cheerful image of the young Princess ran in the pages of Tatler in 1927.
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Winston Churchill met the future Queen at the age of two, later noting that she had “an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant”.
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Even before the abdication of Edward VIII made her the future monarch, Princess Elizabeth fascinated the public both at home and abroad; at the age of three, she covered Time magazine under the headline “Princess Lilybet”.
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The Duke and Duchess of York welcomed the future Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, in 1930, whose dramatic character would serve as a foil to Her Majesty’s own measured personality. As their father, the King, often repeated: “Lilibet is my pride, Margaret is my joy.”
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As a girl, Princess Elizabeth would frequent her mother’s ancestral home of Glamis Castle; here, she holds court, aged five, during a summer garden party.
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Princess Elizabeth joined her grandparents, King George V and the famously severe Queen Mary, for a carriage ride back to Balmoral after attending a church service.
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An off-duty moment with her doll in the Welsh House – a wendy house gifted to the Princesses by the people of Wales, which the royal family installed near the Royal Lodge in the grounds of Windsor Great Park.
