A good number of pages in this site recall the King’s Funeral, which took place in the gloomy morning of 15th February 1952, with millions flocking to the streets of London and thousands more to the streets of Windsor to witness the long, slow funeral procession, a unique display of funerary pageantry. Remarkably was that 50 years on to the day, Windsor received a new royal funeral, the King’s youngest daughter’s. The death of Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, which happened 50 years and 3 days after the one of her father, was actually a very sad beginning for the Golden Jubilee Year.
Proving the consciousness of the Royal Family of the fact that times have changed and respecting Princess Margaret’s own wishes, her funeral was a very discreet event, in sharp contrast with the King’s, that had taken place in Windsor 50 years before. Proving an extreme devotion to her country and to the Commonwealth, despite the loss of her sister, with whom Her Majesty was extremely close, the Queen kept the engagement she had planned for the week after the Princess’ death and carried on with the first of her two Commonwealth trip, which started just two days after the funeral.
In the pictures that illustrate this final page of this website, the signs of 50 years of reign are clearly visible. But the devotion of both Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth has not faded. 50 remarkable years of changes, like there never had been. The Queen, who is over 75 years old as we write this conclusion, has had and continues to have to adapt herself to a changing world, something that is never easy when you were born and educated in a very different world, inside a closed and bygone court. As it was proved during this Jubilee Year, with the visits to her realms overseas and in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as with the Jubilee Weekend in London, the adaptation of Her Majesty The Queen has been totally perfect. She remains a symbol of Britain above all the attempted distortions; she remains the most loved of sovereigns, being acclaimed by crowds of one million people at 75 years old and after 50 years of reign; she remains, quite simply, the most respected head of state of the whole world.
But the most important is really not if thousands came to the streets to celebrate: the most important is that people do realize that the Queen’s work for the United Kingdom and for the Commonwealth has been an outstanding one and that she deserves to be honoured for her immaculate public role. It is realizing that, that we decided to provide this small, humble homage to Her Majesty, remembering the Coronation of 1953, quite an unrepeatable event. It would not have been possible, though, to make all this work without the help of many friends, who have contributed immensely to this project.
As it happens with the other sites of the Glittering Royal Events Sites, the purpose of this site is to provide visual and textual information about the events that are described and pictured. We do not hold the copyrights of the images displayed in the website but we do not seek to profit from this site and so we ask that if you are the original copyright holders of any of the pictures displayed, please contact the editors to negotiate terms of use.
When the first conclusion (from which some of the paragraphs remain intact, since they are perennial) to this website was published, the Queen had begun her first Golden Jubilee Tour, beginning in Jamaica and continuing in through New Zealand and Australia. Now all the Golden Jubilee Celebrations have taken place in Britain in a quite unexpectedly great and triumphant way, and only the tour of Canada is reserved for the end of the year. A review of the Jubilee Year might be added to this site in the future, but for now we do hope that all of you who come to visit it enjoy looking back at those memorable days of 1952 and 1953, when a young Queen received a heavy burden of responsibility that she has carried like no other, in fifty years of service, to the Kingdom and to the Commonwealth. May the God Save The Queen!
August 2002, the Editors
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