Gillian Clements - Becoming Queen Elizabeth II

www.franklinwatts.co.uk This ebook edition published in 2012 Franklin Watts 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH Franklin Watts Australia Level 17/207 Kent Street Sydney NSW 2000 Text first published as Great Events: The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. Copyright Gillian Clements 2001, 2012 The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. ISBN: 978 1 4451 1327 2 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Series editor: Sarah Peutrill Original series editor: Rachel Cooke Historical consultant: Claire Edwards Franklin Watts is a division of Hachette Childrens Books, an Hachette UK company. www.hachette.co.uk

WHOOSH! BANG! The fireworks exploded in Londons skies. Down below, thousands of excited people pressed into Piccadilly Circus.

Someone shouted, God Save the Queen. Twenty-seven-year old Princess Elizabeth had been crowned Queen that morning. It was Tuesday, 2nd June 1953. Britains Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, spoke into a large BBC microphone. We have had a day which the oldest of us are proud to have lived to see, and which the youngest will remember all their lives. Elizabeth was born on 21st April 1926. Elizabeth was born on 21st April 1926.

She was King George Vs granddaughter. She called him Grandpa England. The serious little girl and her younger sister, Margaret, lived a quiet family life, walking dogs and riding ponies. Then in 1936, old King George V died and everything changed for young Elizabeth. King Edward VIII, Elizabeths Uncle, took over the throne but there was a problem. He wanted to marry Mrs Simpson, who had already been married.

This was not allowed so Edward abdicated. Instead, Elizabeths father became King George VI and her mother became Queen Elizabeth.

King George VI was a quiet man who stuttered when he spoke. Being King was a terrible strain and just three years later, the strain became far greater. Britain was at war. German troops had invaded countries in Europe.

Now, in 1940, German warplanes blitzed and bombed their way across London, killing thousands. Londoners scurried to the Underground. There were very few proper shelters. Above, in the East End, whole streets were turned to rubble and fire. Bodies lay in their flattened homes. Then the Germans began to bomb other British cities.

Thousands of city children were evacuated sent to live out of harms way in the country. The princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were sent away from their London home, Buckingham Palace, too. Some nights they slept in the dungeons under Windsor Castle! Britain had to fight back. A few hundred brave pilots fought the Germans in the skies above England. Many of them died, but they shot down even more enemy planes. The Battle of Britain saved the country from invasion.

Still the German bombing continued. The King and Queen shared their peoples sorrow. When a bomb fell on Buckingham Palace the Queen wrote: Im glad weve been bombed. Now it makes me feel we can look the East End in the face. On her eighteenth birthday, Princess Elizabeth joined the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) as a trainee driver and mechanic. For the first time, the young princess mixed freely with people her own age.

She had been educated at home, not in school with other children.

At last, on the 8th May 1945, the war in Europe ended. Everyone celebrated. For Hes a jolly good fellow, the happy crowd sang to the King outside Buckingham Palace. King George and his family stood waving from the balcony. That night the two princesses sneaked into Londons crowded streets with only a policeman and two soldiers to guard them.

I pulled my uniform cap well down over my eyes, Elizabeth remembered. But the street parties were soon over. After six years of war, the British were tired. Hundreds of thousands had been killed. Cities were bombed out, and the country was in debt. We have a great deal of work to do to win the peace as we won the war, said the new Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee.

The Royal Family had its own work to do. But the King seemed old before his time. Years of worry had made him tired and ill. Elizabeth was young nearly twenty. But, as heir to the throne, she was expected to marry. So the Princess made her choice, Prince Philip of Greece. So the Princess made her choice, Prince Philip of Greece.

He was a distant cousin whom she had known as a child. He was in the Royal Navy. In 1947 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip now the Duke of Edinburgh were married in Westminster Abbey. It was a happy moment in a terrible year. The winter of 1947 had been the worst in living memory. There was a shortage of bread and coal, so people were hungry and cold.

On top of it all, the government had to raise peoples taxes to help pay the countrys debts. The King looked at the world about him. I do wish one could see a glimmer of a bright spot in world affairs, he said. Never in the history of mankind have things looked gloomier than they do now.

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