She turned 88 on 21st April.
She was born by Caesarean at 2.40 am (GMT) on 21st April 1926 at the house of her maternal grandfather, Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair in the London Borough of the City of Westminster in central London. She was baptised by the Archbishop of York, Cosmo Gordon Lang, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 29th May, and named Elizabeth after her mother, Alexandra after her great-grandmother Alexandra of Denmark (George V's mother), who had died six months earlier, and Mary after her paternal grandmother (George V's wife). Her close family called her "Lilibet".
Her grandfather, George V, absolutely adored her and it is thought that during his serious illness in 1929 her regular visits were credited in the popular press and by later biographers with raising his spirits and aiding his recovery (he died in January 1936).
She became Queen when her father George VI died on 6th February 1952, and was proclaimed Queen in all her realms (she was Queen of more countries then than she is now). Elizabeth found out she was Queen when she and her husband Philip were staying at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya. So Kenya was the country in which she became Queen (in those days she was the Queen of Kenya, which didn't get its independence from Britain until 1964). It was Philip who broke the news to the new Queen. Her private secretary Martin Charteris asked her to choose a regnal name; she chose to remain Elizabeth,
"of course" (she could have chosen to become Queen Alexandra or Queen Mary III).
She was crowned at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher on 2nd June 1953, an event which was watched, at that time, by the largest global television audience in history.
17 Bruton Street is today the Hakkasan restaurant. How many diners have dined there not knowing that the Queen was born in there?
Princess Elizabeth aged 7 in 1933. She should never have become Queen, and only eventually did so due to her uncle, Edward VIII, abdicating in 1936, leaving the Throne to his brother Prince Albert - Elizabeth's father - who became George VI
Dale Smith-Journo @journo_dale 
