Queen Elizabeth II

From Sarah Bradford, the best-selling author of George VI, Elizabeth and Diana, the definitive biography of Queen Elizabeth II,now celebrating the Platinum Jubilee -- her 70th year on the throne

Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 14 US Presidents including JFK, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to Boris Johnson.

Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years. Our world has changed more in her lifetime than in any of her predecessors: the Queen has remained a calm presence at the centre, earning the respect of monarchists and republicans. How has she done it?

Bradford has a real grasp of history and the ability to make it spark into new lifeSunday Telegraph

Bradfords forte, ever since she was a history-mad girl, is thinking herself into other livesDaily Telegraph