She went to bed a princess in Kenya and woke up a queen

The late Queen Elizabeth 11 was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, the longest-serving female head of state in world history, the world’s oldest living monarch, and the longest-serving head of state, when she died. She was also the most widely travelled head of state.

The British Empire was, at its height, the largest empire in human history and the foremost global power for over a century. By 1913, it accounted for 23 per cent of the world’s population, or 412 million people, and 24 per cent of the earth’s total land area.

Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, left England on 31 January 1952 and were seen off from London airport by the King, the Queen and Princess Margaret. On 3 February, we drove up-country to a fishing lodge, Sagana, the colony’s official wedding present to them. Two days later, they left for Treetops, the game-viewing platform in the Aberdare Forest, where they were received by Eric Sherbrooke Walker and his wife, Lady Bettie, their hosts for the night. For their safety, a cordon of Africans armed with spears was stationed for several miles along the forest edge of the Treetops. Visitors come to our parks mainly to see animals, but the movements of wildlife can be unpredictable. Elizabeth was lucky to find a herd of forty-seven elephants seemingly awaiting her arrival, with the nearest not more than eight paces away from the wooden ladder to the lodge.

The couple then spent most of the night sitting on the balcony watching a game.

To prevent any uninvited visits by royalty seeking leopards, Jim Corbett, the well – known naturalist, hunter and killer of leopards, spent the night  

on the top step of the ladder to the ground. After breakfast the party set of for the return journey to Sagana. It was later that morning that a reporter from the East African Standard informed Prince Philip that the King had died. The King who had had a meal with his family that evening   and retired to bed at 10:30 pm died in his sleep on 6 February 1952 at the age of 56. He was discovered by his valet at 7:30 am.

Phillip would, in turn, inform Princess Elizabeth at 2:45 pm on 6 February 1952, beside the Sagana River, that her father had died in his sleep the previous night. As she left Sagana towards dusk that evening, ‘she was carrying a quarter of the world on her shoulders.’

James Corbett her ‘leopard’ guardian would write in the Treetops visitors book ‘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 the next day a Queen – God bless her.’