Triumph & TURMOIL

ANY life has its ups and downs but for Queen Elizabeth, who dedicated herself to the service of her people, good times and bad meant going through everything in the full glare of public scrutiny.

Sometimes she earned praise, other times she was criticised. Here are some of the many major events of her reign.

ABERFAN / 21 OCTOBER 1966

The disaster that struck the mining village of Aberfan in South Wales remains one of the United Kingdom’s greatest tragedies – and the way the queen handled it was one of the biggest royal controversies at the time. It would also be one of her most profound regrets.

After days of heavy rain, an avalanche of coal waste stacked on the mountain-side started sliding down the slopes to-wards the town below.

It buried everything in its path, including an entire primary school. A total of 116 children and 28 adults died, their lives snuffed out by the black sludge.

David Evans, owner of the local pub, ran out into the street in the aftermath of the chaos. “Everything was so quiet, quiet,” he told historian Gaynor Madgwick. “All I could see was the apex of the roofs.”

The country was plunged into mourning yet Queen Elizabeth refused to visit at first, triggering outrage about her seeming reluctance to offer solace to the grieving.

“People will be looking after me, when perhaps survivors might have been found under the wreckage,” she is said to have reasoned.

Instead she sent Prince Philip, and what he saw moved him deeply. Aides say he encouraged her to travel to the village to see the scale of the disaster for herself and, eight days after the tragedy,