“The Queen At Windsor Great Park” (1985) by Tim Graham. He had been appointed official photographer and from Westminster Abbey gave Vogue an exclusive first-hand account of the day, the new Queen appearing to glow with, as Peter Quennell further described it, “the strangely transfiguring radiance that encircles those who occupy a throne”. The newly anointed monarch was the “harbinger of spring” and, with Beaton, Vogue had a ringside seat. The splendour and pageantry of 1953’s coronation afforded fresh opportunities to bind the Crown to the full magnificence of history.

Vogue’s tribute to a monarch who had guided the Crown through dark times ended: “His people loved him as a gracious and courageous man, both their King and their friend.” He left behind three royal women whose titles and positions would change overnight: his daughter now Queen Elizabeth II his mother, Queen Mary, lost her dowager queen status and his wife became Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In February 1952, the King died unexpectedly in his sleep. “Who of us is so without romance as not to respond to the appeal of a young Princess?” asked Vogue. The little Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, ranged next in line for Beaton. This was a fairy-tale Queen, the very image of what monarchy should be for a modern era: glittering and remote but possessing what Evelyn Waugh, in Vogue, would call an “accessible and human” face. It would be no exaggeration to claim that his first royal photographs, of Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s mother, taken in 1939 during the last summer before the war, changed the public’s perception of the House of Windsor. Few could have done more of a service to the monarchy at such a crucial moment. Putting it all into practice was entrusted to Vogue’s star image-maker Cecil Beaton. Vogue’s coverage, which included a delicately illustrated souvenir cover, was in tune with the times, emphasising love and romance over pomp and ceremony. Here, the happy couple are pictured returning from Westminster Abbey, she wearing the diamond fringe tiara lent by Queen Mary, he created a Duke the day before. The couple married on 20 November, during another winter of rationing and austerity. “Princess Elizabeth & The Duke Of Edinburgh” (1947).

Cecil beaton queen elizabeth coronation