Queen Elizabeth marks longest reign

The petite girl who majestically climbed a giant Mugumo tree in Nyeri 63 years ago and descended the following day a Queen has made history.

Unlike in 1952, when everything, including the weather conspired against her as she drove out of Tree Tops Hotel to Nanyuki and flew to Uganda for an onward flight home to a grieving nation, yesterday, her public appearance in London was greeted with cheers.

The Queen who took the reigns of one of the world’s biggest empires by declaring that since she could not lead her country to war she would give her subjects her heart, was yesterday hailed as the longest serving British monarch.

Britain paid heartfelt tribute to Queen Elizabeth as she sealed a special place in the country’s history by becoming its longest-reigning monarch.

The Queen, now aged 89, is also the nation’s oldest-ever monarch, after surpassing the 63 years, 7 months, 2 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes that her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria spent on the throne.

KENYA JOURNEY

“Her Majesty the Queen inspires us all with her incredible service and her dignified leadership and the extraordinary grace with which she carries out her duties,” Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament in London. “She is our Queen and we could not be more proud of her. She has served this country with unfailing grace, dignity and decency and long may she continue to do so,” Cameron said.

Lawmakers cheered at the end of his tribute. Initially, the queen did not even intend to mark the event publicly, but she bowed to public pressure and undertook an official engagement in Scotland, where she traditionally spends her summer holiday.

As a young princess, Elizabeth had not expected to become monarch as George VI only took the crown when his elder brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Her journey to Kenya and into the reign started on January 31, 1952, when she bade farewell to her family in Britain as she set off on her most memorable journey.

But this was no ordinary trip. The journey was slated to cover 30,000 miles, taking her to far flung corners of the British Empire including Australia and New Zealand. Her father, King George VI was unwell and the young princess had the onus of representing him during this trip.

However, there was the small matter of taking a small vacation along the way if only to know Philip, the man she had married five years earlier, better. And what a better way to get romantic than a visit to Treetops Hotel in the Aberdares.

It was while here that news of her father’s death was conveyed by Granville Roberts, a journalist who worked for the East African Standard and who had been detailed to cover the royal visit.

BOGGY QUAGMIRE

Elizabeth abandoned the trip and had to return back home to assume the role of Queen and Head of the Commonwealth with Jim Corbett, Aberdares resident hunter penning the famous words: “For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen.”

Artifacts at the British Airways Museum at Waterside, London contain details of how events that unfolded in East Africa changed the world.

First, the quickly assembled British Overseas Airways Corporation Argonaut plane christened ‘Atalanta’ gained celebrity status, having changed from a civilian carrier to a Royal flight in an instant.

The new queen was flown from Nanyuki to Entebbe where her plane was waiting. Apparently, Kenya did not have an airport of international repute that could handle such a dignitary. Embakasi was still a work in progress while Eastleigh was a boggy quagmire during the rains.

According to information from the museum, the flight from Entebbe was the most monitored for the 19 hours and 43 minutes it was in the air.