Platinum Queen HOW HER MAJESTY CHANGED HISTORY

Throughout 70 amazing years, brave Elizabeth has been staunch, steadfast and strong

- Donna Fleming

Her husband Prince Philip was the one to break the news that would change Princess Elizabeth’s life forever.

It was the early afternoon of February 6, 1952, and the couple were in Kenya on the first stop of the Commonwealth tour they’d undertaken in place of her father, George VI, who had been unwell. They’d spent the previous night at an exclusive hotel, Treetops, built into the branches of a giant tree and famed for letting guests see wildlife up close as the animals used the watering hole below.

An excited Elizabeth, 25, hardly got any sleep because she kept getting up to observe the nocturnal visitors, and that morning she delighted in photographing elephants and rhinos. Then she and Philip travelled 32km to Sagana Lodge, a private fishing lodge that had been purpose-built for the couple and given to them as a present for their wedding in 1947.

Philip was having an afternoon nap when he was woken by his private secretary, Commander Michael Parker. Michael, a good friend who had served in the navy with Philip during the war, had just been alerted to some news coming in from the UK by a local reporter who was covering the tour. According to a message from the news service Reuters, the king had died in his sleep.

British officials had actually sent a coded telegraph to Government House in Nairobi to let Elizabeth know her father had passed away and that she was now Queen, but embarrassingly, the decoding book was locked away in a safe and the only person with the key was out of the office working on the royal tour. The message went unread.