Queen Elizabeth II: A Concise Biography of an Exceptional Sovereign

The life of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s extraordinary and longest-lived monarch

The reign of Queen Elizabeth II was exceptional for many reasons: among them her remarkable longevity, her enduring marriage to Prince Philip, her astonishing success in concealing her opinions on virtually any contentious subject, and the many representations of her in many media, which meant she was the most depicted human being ever to have lived in the entire history of the world.

Elizabeth II was a global superstar who met almost any person who mattered, she was Head of the Commonwealth, head of state of such realms as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and queen of the United Kingdom. She embodied dutifulness and service and continuity in a rapidly changing world. During the course of her reign, the United Kingdom ceased to be a great power in the world, and evolved into a multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-ethnic society, and the country in which she died was very different from that in which she had been born.

This book offers a concise but authoritative account of her life and reign, set against the background of these extensive and disruptive domestic and international changes.

David Cannadine, Dodge Professor of History Emeritus, Princeton University

Sir David Cannadine has taught history at the Universities of Cambridge, Columbia, London, and Princeton. He has published many books, among them The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), G. M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (1992), Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire (2001), Mellon: An American Life (2006), The Undivided past: History Beyond our Differences (2014), and Victorious Century: The United Kingdom 1801-1906 (2018). He has served as Director of the Institute of Historical Research, President of the British Academy, and Chairman of the Trustees of the National Portrait gallery, as well as General Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography since 2014.