Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's second-longest serving monarch, has
completed 62 years of her reign as gun salutes by different royal army
regiments marked the occasion.
Queen
acceded the throne on February 6, 1952, after the demise of her father King
George VI from lung cancer. The
Queen was thousands of miles away from
Buckingham Palace in Kenya
when she learnt of her accession to the throne. She was spending the night at a hotel when her
husband Prince Philip broke the news that King George VI had died. The couple
returned to Britain and she was swiftly proclaimed Queen. Her coronation came more than a year later on
June 2 1953. Striking gun salutes were
held on Thursday afternoon to honour the occasion, although the monarch spent
the day in private at Sandringham.
The
King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery were the first to mark the occasion in the
capital with a 41-gun salute in Hyde Park at midday. It was followed by a
62-gun salute by the Honourable Artillery Company from Gun Wharf at the Tower
of London at 1pm. A 21-gun salute was
also held by the 4th Regiment Royal Artillery in York's Museum Gardens. The 87-year-old Queen is preparing herself
for a busy period of appointments over the next few months. It was announced
this week that her and Prince Philip will travel to Normandy to mark the 70th
anniversary of the D-Day landings in a three-day trip to France in June. In
April the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will also visit Rome to meet Pope
Francis at the Vatican. The Queen is the
second-longest-reigning monarch in the UK behind Queen Victoria who
served for 63 years and 216 days.