The Queen Returns to Official Duties After Rest

The Queen Returns to Official Duties After Rest

'The Queen Returns to Official Duties After Rest'

The Queen held a face-to-face audience with General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the Defence Staff in the Oak Room at Windsor Castle, joined also by one of the royal corgis.

The engagement came three days after the Queen missed the national Remembrance service at the Cenotaph due to a sprained back. Report by Lucy Lewis.

LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, has died at the age of 96. She had served more than 70 years on the throne.



“The queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Thursday evening.

She is immediately succeeded by her eldest son Charles, who now becomes King Charles III. He and other members of the royal family had rushed to Balmoral, the queen’s Scottish estate where she traditionally spends the late summer, earlier in the day, as the severity of her condition became clear.

Tributes flooded in from the around the world Thursday evening and flags across the U.K. were lowered to half-mast, as the nation prepared for an official period of mourning.

In his first statement as king, Charles spoke of the sadness felt by all his family.

“The death of my beloved mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family,” Charles said.

“We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished sovereign and a much-loved mother. I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

New U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss — asked to form a government by the queen only two days ago — addressed the nation from Downing Street Thursday night.

“Queen Elizabeth II was the rock on which modern Britain was built,” Truss said, in one of her first speeches as U.K. prime minister. “Our country has grown and flourished under her reign.

“Britain is the great country it is today because of her … She was the very spirit of Great Britain, and that spirit will endure.”

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer paid tribute to Britain’s “longest-serving and greatest monarch.”

He added: “Above the clashes of politics, she stood not for what the nation fought over, but what it agreed upon.”

In Westminster, House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle described her death as a “terrible loss” for the nation.

“For all of us, the queen has been a constant presence in our lives — as familiar as a member of the family, yet one who has exercised a calm and steadying influence over our country. Most of us have never known a time when she was not there. Her death is not only a tragedy for the royal family, but a terrible loss for us all.”