During the 1981 Trooping the Colour ceremony, six weeks before the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, six shots were fired at Elizabeth from close range as she rode down The Mall, London, on her horse, Burmese. Her parents were the Duke and Duchess of York, who later became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother).

And with the passing of the second Elizabethan age, we usher in a new era in the magnificent history of our great country, exactly as Her Majesty would have wished, by saying the words 'God save the King'.Reflecting on those words decades later, during her Silver Jubilee in 1977, she declared: "Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I do not regret nor retract one word of it.

Scenes of a relaxed, informal home life were occasionally witnessed; she and her family, from time to time, prepared a meal together and washed the dishes afterwards. In November 1956, Britain and France invaded Egypt in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to capture the Suez Canal. From February to May 1940, they lived at Royal Lodge, Windsor, until moving to Windsor Castle, where they lived for most of the next five years. Elizabeth again came under criticism for appointing the prime minister on the advice of a small number of ministers or a single minister. Elizabeth was portrayed in a variety of media by many notable artists, including painters Pietro Annigoni, Peter Blake, Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy, Terence Cuneo, Lucian Freud, Rolf Harris, Damien Hirst, Juliet Pannett and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.During the tour, crowds were immense; three-quarters of the population of Australia were estimated to have seen her. by the end of the 1970s, Elizabeth was worried the Crown "had little meaning for" Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. Elizabeth was present at the service of thanksgiving for Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey on 29March, [241] but was unable to attend the annual Commonwealth Day service that month [242] or the Royal Maundy service in April, due to "episodic mobility problems". She stated: "We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers, and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war. In 1999, as part of the process of devolution within the UK, Elizabeth formally opened newly established legislatures for Wales and Scotland: the National Assembly for Wales at Cardiff in May, [170] and the Scottish Parliament at Edinburgh in July.