Monarch who through her seven decades of public service became a figure of fascination by remaining steadfastly private //

The 42nd of a line of kings and queens of first England, then Britain, then the United Kingdom, since William the Conqueror, she was also the sixth queen-sovereign of England and the fourth of the UK. In addition, she was queen and head of state of 15 other countries, stretching from Fiji, Australia and New Zealand to the Bahamas and Canada, all once part of the former British empire. She was for seven decades head of the Commonwealth, whose 54 countries comprise 2.1 billion people, a third of the globe’s population.

In accordance with the precedent established by Henry VIII, the Queen was also Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role she took much more seriously in both her private and public lives than many of her predecessors. //

During the course of her reign she was served by 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss. She met more than a quarter of all the American presidents who have ever lived, five popes, hundreds of national leaders, from the saintly, such as Nelson Mandela, to the tyrannical, including Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu, as well as thousands of celebrities and – it is calculated – more than 2 million more “ordinary” people. She was easily the most travelled monarch in British, indeed world, history: criss-crossing the globe regularly to visit the Commonwealth and just about every other significant country in the world, into her 90th year, and touring Britain year in and year out even longer. //

Yet through all this exposure, renown and public fascination, she never engaged in partisan politics, uttered a truly controversial remark, scarcely expressed an opinion and only rarely showed emotion: exasperation occasionally, but never temper.