THE END OF AN ERA

Our royal correspondent, lan Lloyd, pays tribute to our much-loved and already much-missed monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

IT was news none of us wanted to hear. It wasn't a shock in the way that Diana's death was, but the sadness was just as profound. The Queen has always been there for us, as strong and resilient as Windsor Castle itself.

The end had to come, as it did for her mother and husband, but if there is one consolation for her family and for the nation it is that, like them, she lived to a great age and was active almost until the end.

It is astonishing to think that when she became Queen in February 1952, it was only six and a half years after the end of World War II in the Far East.

Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, Harry S. Truman was President of the USA and, in Britain, Winston Churchill, who had entered parliament in the reign of Queen Victoria, was her first Prime Minister.

Elizabeth was twenty-five at the time, by coincidence the same age as Elizabeth I when she became Queen.

She once said, "It's all to do with training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained," adding that she liked to think she had been.

Her father, George VI, had unexpectedly become King when his older brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936.

Thrown in at the deep end, he survived thanks to the unfailing devotion of his wife, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother).

He was determined his elder daughter and heir would be better prepared and, early on, taught her the basics of the job.

Despite her youth, she had an air of maturity as well as her father's steadfastness and belief in duty.