Royals

Happy birthday Her Majesty! Celebrating 93 years with Queen Elizabeth II

What does one get the monarch who has everything?
Queen Elizabeth II

All images: Getty images

On April 21st, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 93rd birthday.

While June 6th is marked officially as the monarch’s birthday, her actual birthday is on April 21st.

The monarch usually celebrates her birthday privately with her family, but this year she will also be attending a church service at St George’s Chapel in Windsor because her birthday falls on Easter Sunday.

The day will also be marked on Sunday, as is tradition, by gun salutes in central London at midday: a 41 gun salute in Hyde Park, a 21 gun salute in Windsor Great Park and a 62 gun salute at the Tower of London.

Here, we take a look back through some of our favourite images of the Queen.

What’s Christmas Day without the Queen’s Christmas broadcast? This has been a tradition of the British monarchy since 1932 when King George V delivered a three-minute wireless message, penned for him by poet and writer Rudyard Kipling.

This image of the Queen having a rolicking good time with her son Prince Charles was taken during the Braemar Gathering in Braemar, Scotland in 2006.

The Queen’s love for her corgis has stayed with her, her entire life. She was given her first-ever corgi, Susan, for her 18th birthday in 1944, and once famously confessed, “My corgis are family.”

So thoroughly modern and, dare we say it, fashion forward, she attends British Fashion Week with Anna Wintour!

This photo was taken in 1947 at Buckingham Palace during Elizabeth’s engagement to Prince Philip; she was still a princess.

The Queen enjoys a warm relationship with her grandchildren and is no prude at Christmas time when it comes to the private family tradition of exchanging of joke-themed gifts. Prince Harry is said to have once given the Queen a shower cap emblazoned with the words, Ain’t Life a B**!

This warmth and humour also extends to her grandchildren’s spouses, with some royal commentators saying the royal family has never been so inclusive and ‘touchy-feely’.

This joyful image of the Queen running free-spirited on the deck of a ship was taken in 1947 – she was playing tag with the midshipmen on board the HMS Vanguardin.

The Queen has enjoyed one of the most enduring marriages of all time with Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Together more years than they’ve been apart, November 20, 2018 marked their 71st wedding anniversary.

“He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years,” Her Majesty, has previously said of her husband. Prince Philip says the secret to a successful marriage is having “tolerance” and “different interests.”

Something made her mad and we just think she looks adorable!

She may have grown up in the era of the handwritten letter, but the Queen has always been open to embracing new technology. Here, she is captured making her first Instagram post at the age of 92. She posted her pre-prepared photo and caption during a visit to London’s Science Museum.

This is an official portrait of the Queen, released in July 2017. She wears the maple leaf brooch inherited from her mother

The Queen always wears bright colours so that she can be easily spotted in a crowd. She looks very fetching in pink

And here she is, glorious in green.

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