Cultural changes brought by everything from rock and roll to mass immigration have transformed the U.K. over the past 70 years, but if the queen herself has changed, there’s little sign of it.
She was a serious and demure young woman who ascended the throne at age 25 in a ceremony dripping in splendor, but ‘s country in the early 1950s was still mired in post-war poverty. Sir Paul McCartney and best-selling author Tina Brown reflect on Queen Elizabeth’s unprecedented reign in «Her Majesty The Queen: A Gayle King Special.» The special airs on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Thursday, June 2 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS and will stream on the CBS News app and Paramount+ on Friday, June 3.
«Britain was a bit stuck-up. Britain was all about hierarchy and deference and respect», Professor Anna Whitelock, a historian and expert on the British monarch, told CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams. Within a decade of her coronation, however, Britain was in the grip of the Swinging ’60s, and the queen became the first British monarch to bestow royal honors on rock stars like The Beatles.
«I mean, literally, the queen at the beginning of her reign would be sending telegrams, and now she’s sending tweets», Whitelock said.
