![]() ![]() Conveyed aboard Britain’s last great battleship, HMS Vanguard, the tour took in Bechuanaland, Basutoland, the Rhodesias and South Africa. The trip afforded her a vivid preview of the Commonwealth duties that lay ahead. She accompanied them on the 1947 southern Africa tour, her debut as a royal performer on the international stage. As a girl, Elizabeth observed her parents embarking on royal tours, such as the 1939 visit to North America. In that interwar autumn of British power, against the backdrop of a vast empire buffeted by fissiparous currents of nationalism and the tide of British decline, the monarchy was nurtured as a symbol of unity. The royal family’s role and identity became entwined with the British empire during Victoria’s reign and, by the time Elizabeth was born, the Windsors had become an imperial dynasty. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage.12 surprising facts about Queen Elizabeth II. ![]() Given this, we are fortunate to have Philip Murphy’s study of the Queen, Monarchy and the End of Empire (2013), to guide us here. This is because the Queen has not created a personal archive open to the public, published voluminous diaries or memoirs, granted interviews, or reflected autobiographically on Desert Island Discs. I should make clear that any article on the Queen demands the caveat that much of what is written is speculative. The process of decolonisation, and the evolution of the Commonwealth of Nations that shadowed it, became leitmotifs of the new Elizabethan age, from the independence of Ghana in 1957 to the hand-over of Hong Kong four decades later. It was the Commonwealth’s foundational moment and the declaration’s principles extended to the empire’s non-white territories following the Second World War. Elizabeth’s birth year, 1926, was also the year of the Balfour Declaration (named after Arthur Balfour, as was the famous 1917 letter on the future of Palestine), a landmark statement acknowledging the independence of the ‘white’ Dominions in relation to Britain, bound only by their attachment to the crown. They are age-mates – one might force an analogy and call them twins. The modern Commonwealth and Queen Elizabeth II grew up together. ![]()
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