Queen Elizabeth - Britain's Longest Reigning Monarch

A celebration in photographs of the Queen's life and reign.

Celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday! This fully illustrated collector’s guide spans her reign through coverage of royal weddings and other fabulous ceremonies, from Prince Charles and Princess Diana to the Olympics and Jubilee celebrations, and much more.



Commemorating Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday…

When the then Duke of York's first child was born on April 21, 1926, no one expected that the infant Elizabeth Alexandra Mary would ever have to bear the burden of the crown of Great Britain.

History, however, had other ideas, and when she celebrates her 90th birthday this April, it will be as Her Majesty Elizabeth II, the nation's longest reigning monarch ever – and perhaps its most beloved.

Over seven decades of unprecedented political and social change, the Queen's unfailing dedication, formidable intelligence, keen wit, and rare wisdom have been a constant amidst the turbulence and made her among world's most admired women.

To celebrate Her Majesty's birthday, Easton Press and the editors of LIFE proudly present the lavishly illustrated commemorative: Queen Elizabeth at 90, a superlative leather-bound Collector Edition.

The life of Britain's longest reigning monarch.

The world-renowned photojournalists and writers of LIFE have covered Elizabeth since she became the heir presumptive at age ten. This luminous volume draws on the magazine's incomparable eighty-year archive to chronicle Her Majesty's character and achievement, challenges and triumphs.

Here is the child who named herself 'Lilibet' and the teenage princess who served in war torn England, as well as the canny performer playing herself on film with James Bond for the London Olympics. These pages also record the fascinating characters in Elizabeth's life, from her scandalous uncle, Edward VIII, to her granddaughter-in-law, 'Kate,' the Duchess of Cambridge.

Queen Elizabeth at 90 also looks beyond the dedicated constitutional monarch who rarely reveals her personal feelings or opinions to discover something of the private Elizabeth, examining her devoted marriage to Prince Philip and her lifelong love for horses and her trademark Welsh corgis.

And of course, there is the royal pageantry captured by LIFE's legendary photographers, extraordinary images of such historic ceremonies as Elizabeth's marriage, coronation, Golden and Diamond Jubilees, and the glamorous weddings of Charles and Diana and Prince William and Kate.