XN000022-1975-03-18 — Page 6

2

I

After the end of the war, Princess Elizabeth's public engagements

grew in number and frequency, and she travelled extensively to attend

public functions throughout the British Isles. Her first official visit

overseas took place in 1947, when she accompanied her parents and her

sister Princess Margaret on a tour of South Africa.

Shortly after the return of the royal family from South Africa

came the announcement of the engagement of Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant

Philip Mountbatten, (now His Royal Highness, The Prince Philip, Duke

of Edinburgh), son of Prince Andrew of Greece and a great-great-grandson

of Queen Victoria. Their wedding took place in Westminster Abbey on

November 20, 1947.

Prince Charles, now the Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the

throne, was born in 1948, and his sister Princess Anne, in 1950. The

third child of the Queen and the Duke, Prince Andrew, was born in 1960,

and.their fourth, Prince Edward, in 1964. The Queen and the Duke celebrated

their silver wedding in London in 1972.

In 1952, when King George VI's illness made it inadvisable for

him to carry out his projected visit to Australia and New Zealand, the

Princess, accompanied by the Duke, took his place, and it was on the

first stage of this journey, in Kenya, that she received the news of her

father's death and her own accession to the throne.

The Queen's coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2,

1953. The ceremony, attended by representatives of the Peers, the Commons

and all the great public interests in Britain, the Prime Ministers and

leading citizens of the other Commonwealth countries and representatives of

foreign states, was brought home to many hundreds of thousands of the Queen's

subjects in a way never before possible.

/For the ..***