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Elizabeth II got on well with PMs of widely differing politics and backgrounds and played a key role in the background of British politicsFor seven decades, she bore intimate witness to the shifting of power around the globe. Coming to the throne in the distant era of Stalin’s Russia, Elizabeth II reigned through wars cold and hot and through sweeping economic change. She presided over Britain’s retreat from empire and its emergence as a modern networked power, but also its struggle to forge a post-Brexit identity and the beginning of a painful reckoning with colonialism. With her goes a unique institutional memory, a reservoir of insights shared with 15 prime ministers.The relationship between constitutional monarch and elected politician is an odd one – part bowing-and-scraping deference, part curious intimacy. Tony Blair said she was the one person to whom he spoke freely, knowing it wouldn’t leak, and the Queen herself once described her function as “a sort of sponge”, soaking up confidences. But it also, she added, occasionally involved offering governments a different point of view: ‘perhaps they hadn’t seen it from that angle’. She was a mistress of soft power, knowing when to project full regal majesty and when to play kindly grandmother, and a unique diplomatic resource. At times she could make Britain’s case to a foreign head of state better than any elected politician. (Contrast Emmanuel Macron’s spiky relationship with Liz Truss and the genuine warmth of the French president’s tribute to the Queen.) Never party political, she was nonetheless core to the body politic, and her relationships with successive prime ministers help tell a story of what Britain has become. Continue reading...

Queen Consort facing down challenge of a past that starred Diana with charitable patronage and choreographed media appearances

The event will take place at 11am at Westminster Abbey at the end of an official 10-day period of mourning

Queen’s family applauded after stopping to talk to well-wishers on way from private service at Crathie Kirk

First MP to take new oath was Lindsay Hoyle, followed by Harriet Harman and Peter Bottomley, then Liz Truss

Hundreds of protesters march through Whitehall demanding justice as police watchdog launches homicide investigationThe family of Chris Kaba has called for the immediate suspension of the Metropolitan police officer involved in his fatal shooting.The 24-year-old, who was due to become a father for the first time, was shot dead by a firearms officer in Streatham, south London, on Monday night. Continue reading...

The hereditary behind-the-scenes role involves organising state funerals of sovereigns and arranging the accession of monarchs

Posts by Playmobil and Legoland Windsor provoked comment, as did the Queen Elizabeth II workout

UK’s new home secretary upsets civil servants with speech on migrants, trashy TV and back-to-office callThe new home secretary has already prompted consternation among Home Office officials after telling them she wants to ban all small boats crossing the Channel, the Observer has learned.During her inaugural address to departmental staff last Wednesday, Suella Braverman said a top priority would be stopping all Channel crossings. She has also asked all staff to watch “trashy TV” to help their “mental wellbeing”, a source said, specifically citing Channel 4’s Married at First Sight and First Dates as well as Love Island. Continue reading...

First such historic event to be held in 70 years was attended by judges, archbishops and ex-prime ministers

Mia Mottley praised his environmental and social commitment and noted his recognition of the atrocities of slavery

Merseyside police are holding man from West Derby on suspicion of assisting an offenderA 37-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the killing of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, Merseyside police have said.The force said the man, from West Derby, had been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender and remained in custody being questioned by detectives. Continue reading...

Stories of the monarch doing the washing up and slipping her corgis toast under the table always proved popularThough she lived a very different life, the Queen embraced a few common touches that endeared her to many of her subjects.Famously, she stored her morning cornflakes in Tupperware containers, an incongruous sight among the gilt and silverware at Buckingham Palace, a fact revealed by a tabloid journalist who managed to work undercover as a footman for two months. Continue reading...

King Charles III is proclaimed in his absence at an accession council in the state apartments at St James’s Palace

Police blamed the accident, in which passengers burned to death, on speeding and reckless drivingAt least 20 passengers burned to death when a bus collided with another vehicle and caught fire in south-west Nigeria, police and an official have said.The accident at Lanlate in the Ibarapa area of Oyo state on Friday, is the latest road crash in the vast west African nation of 210 million people. Continue reading...

The new prime minister had her first audience with the monarch on Friday, when she offered her condolencesCabinet ministers will meet King Charles III for the first time on Saturday, days after Liz Truss formed her new government.Charles was formally proclaimed King at an accession council in an ancient ceremony at St James’s Palace, which was televised for the first time. Continue reading...

Sovereign says he is ‘deeply aware of the duties and heavy responsibilities’ that pass to him

Several of the poets appointed by, or inherited by the Queen, had to deal with public mockery. No wonder Philip Larkin turned down the role“Oh, God, the royal poem!” John Betjeman wrote to a friend early in his laureateship. “Send the H[oly] G[host] to help me over that fence. So far no sign: watch and pray.” For a woman who wasn’t noted for a deep interest in literature, the Queen was served by some highly skilled poets laureate. Yet almost all found the job burdensome, and none produced his or her best work while wearing the laurels – certainly nothing to match, say, Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.The official verse they wrote in some ways mirrors changing attitudes towards the monarchy over the course of Elizabeth II’s long reign. Though, given that most holders of the job have written poems on a wide range of themes – not just to mark royal hatches, matches and dispatches – it’s fair to say that their work reflects broader shifts in social and political concerns.

Date of funeral has not yet been announced but new monarch confirms day will be bank holiday

In the era of the Queen’s coronation, the UK was a land of deprivation and deference, but profound social and economic change was about to transform the nation and then the monarchyOn the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, on 2 June 1953, Marian Raynham, living in the Surrey town of Surbiton with her husband and two children, recorded the celebration lunch they had that day. Nothing gives a greater flavour of the times – or of how much life in Britain has changed since then.“Listened to it all,” Raynham told the chroniclers of Mass Observation, the forerunners of public opinion testing. “I took advantage of the religious part to put the lunch on the table. They loved the lunch – tom [-ato] soup, a big salad with Nut Meat brawn and strawberry blancmange and jam and top of milk.” She went on to spring clean behind the couch: “did room, later crocheted, later rested.” Continue reading...

Guardian Australia understands the few remaining Qantas seats from Australian capital cities to London have been quickly booked since the news of monarch’s death

Professor finds pattern of wellbeing problems in political families, often linked to parents’ workProminent politicians must do more to protect the mental wellbeing of their children, according to a leading historian whose research has revealed the enormous pressures faced by those with parents in the government.Prof Elizabeth Hurren, the chair in modern history at the University of Leicester, found a troubling pattern of mental health and wellbeing problems in children of politicians, which were often linked to their parents’ work and the relentless attention that comes with public life. Continue reading...

Queen Elizabeth’s achievement was to adapt the monarchy to sweeping change without ever letting on what she was doingWhen the future Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926, her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, had been dead for scarcely a quarter of a century, and it was less than 30 years since the spectacle and splendour of her diamond jubilee. Viewed from the vantage point of 1897 or 1901, the long years of Victoria’s reign had given the British much to feel proud of and be grateful for: constitutional stability, democratic progress and increased prosperity at home, and the extraordinary expansion of the greatest empire that the world had ever known. Small wonder, then, that Queen Victoria gave her name to her age – an age in which everything about Britain and its dominions had seemed to be getting bigger and better and greater and grander.These precedents were much in the mind of the new Queen’s first prime minister, Winston Churchill, when he broadcast in February 1952 on the death of her father, King George VI. For Churchill was a product of the late 19th century, and the last authentically Victorian figure to occupy 10 Downing Street. As he ended his broadcast, he turned from eulogising the late king to acclaiming the new monarch, by linking the last great reign of a female sovereign with the one to come: “I,” he concluded, “whose youth was nurtured in the august, unchallenged, tranquil glow of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking once more the prayer and the anthem ‘God save the Queen.’”

Exclusive: Mark Rowley has 100-day plan to turn force around after it was placed into special measuresThe new Metropolitan police commissioner is recruiting scores of new investigators to root out prejudiced and corrupt officers, the Guardian has learned.Mark Rowley starts on Monday and will launch a 100-day plan to turn Britain’s biggest force around after it became mired in repeated crises and was humiliatingly judged to be so poor it was placed into special measures by the official inspectorate. Continue reading...

New King to swear oath in presence of privy counsellors at St James Palace on Saturday

No heir has ever spent as long waiting to accede the throne. The future of the monarchy is in his hands – and he faces many tricky questions. Can he succeed?King Charles III has been waiting his whole life for this moment. At his birth 73 years ago he became second in line to the throne and for the past six decades, ever since his mother ascended the throne in 1952 when he was three, he has been the heir apparent.He was brought up, trained and endlessly coached for a job that has finally come to him at an age when most men want nothing more than a peaceful retirement; a time which, in his case, might have otherwise involved growing organic vegetables and painting watercolour landscapes. Continue reading...

Head of state role in doubt in realms from Jamaica to New Zealand after death of Queen Elizabeth II

The King also announced William and Kate would become Prince and Princess of Wales

Boris Johnson scandals, energy crisis – not to mention Brexit – have undermined Britain’s influenceThe prevailing view from America of post-Brexit, post-Elizabethan Britain is principally one of a country of declining influence which is in danger of sinking on the world stage as a result of mostly self-inflicted crises.The US news coverage of the day of the Queen’s death was overwhelmingly reverent, but by Friday there was already a backlash, pointing to the inseparable bond between the royal family and the country’s imperial past. Continue reading...

Saturday’s papers capture the King’s public display of deep affection for his mother, and his vow to make loyalty, respect and love the tenets of his reign

People on disability pensions say they should be able to work more without having their financial support reduced

Russia sends reinforcements to Kharkiv region amid Ukrainian counter-offensive; Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant situation increasingly precarious, says UN watchdog

Political violence breaks out in Mato Grosso state after argument between followers of rival presidential candidatesA supporter of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has stabbed to death a backer of leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in the latest instance of rising political tensions in the buildup to this year’s election.The violence happened in the west-central state of Mato Grosso, after tempers frayed during an argument over support for the two candidates. Bolsonaro trails Lula in the polls in an election riven by intense polarisation. Continue reading...

Police said the 44-year-old woman and 12-year-old girl were found at a home in village near SudburyA man has been arrested by police investigating the deaths of a mother and daughter who were found dead at a home near Sudbury in Suffolk.Suffolk constabulary said the 44-year-old woman and 12-year-old girl were found at a house in the village of Great Waldingfield on Thursday morning after police received reports of concerns for the safety of the occupants. Continue reading...

While some have offered unflinching takes on the damage of British colonisation, others say the monarch held ‘a special place’ in their hearts

Congregation of more than 2,000 people attends cathedral to listen to readings and sing hymns

Citizenship ceremony starts belatedly as officials adapt oath in moments following death of Queen Elizabeth IIRoberto Rocha was huddled with three others around a computer screen, as one of the friends prepared to become a Canadian citizen.The pandemic had derailed the pomp of an in-person swearing-in ceremony, leaving 140 excited, polite faces to meet instead on a Zoom screen. Continue reading...

The King’s first speech to the nation was telling of his hopes for his reign and how the royal family will operateKing Charles III’s first speech to the nation as sovereign contained telling passages showing how he hopes the public, in the UK and abroad, will see his forthcoming reign and how he wants the royal family to operate.The King said: “Queen Elizabeth’s was a life well-lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today.”“As the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.”“In the course of the last 70 years we have seen our society become one of many cultures and many faiths. The institutions of the state have changed in turn.” And he said: “Whatever may be your background or beliefs, I shall endeavour to serve you with loyalty, respect and love.”“My life will of course change as I take up my new responsibilities. It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply. But I know this important work will go on in the trusted hands of others.”“I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.” Continue reading...

Metropolitan police firearms officers fatally shot 24-year-old in Streatham Hill, south London, on MondayThe police watchdog has launched a homicide investigation into the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba by armed Metropolitan police officers in south London.The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said this followed its review of the evidence gathered so far after the incident in Streatham Hill on Monday night. Continue reading...

This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war hereUkraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv has proved that it can drive Russia out of its territories, a key adviser in President Zelenskiy’s government has said.Writing on Twitter, Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine, said: “What does effective Ukrainian counteroffensive tell the world? Continue reading...

King speaks of ‘darling Mama’ Queen Elizabeth’s life well-lived; names William and Catherine Prince and Princess of Wales, and speaks of his love for Harry and Meghan“I speak to you today with feelings of profound sorrow. Throughout her life, Her Majesty The Queen – my beloved mother – was an inspiration and example to me and to all my family, and we owe her the most heartfelt debt any family can owe to their mother; for her love, affection, guidance, understanding and example.“Queen Elizabeth’s was a life well-lived, a promise with destiny kept, and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today. Continue reading...

As the guns fired at Cardiff Castle, well-wishers speak of what the monarch meant to themFirst in the queue at Cardiff Castle to bag a good spot for the 96-round gun salute was Sara Rees, a 56-year-old radiographer, who waited patiently in the drizzle with her cockapoo, Teddy.Like many who attended, she had her own personal royal memories. “I first saw the Queen in 1977 at the time of her silver jubilee,” Rees said. “She came to Neath when I was 11. She opened a leisure centre, visited a factory and then she went to Margam Park. We all had a day off school and went and saw her. Everyone loved her. Continue reading...

People travelled from near and far to lay flowers and pay tribute to the Queen as Charles accedes to throne

Viewers can easily switch to streaming or social media if they tire of rolling updates and downbeat music

Ukrainian forces appear to be continuing speedy advance in Kharkiv region as ‘fierce battles’ rage

This live blog is now closed. You can read more on this week in politics here:

Thousands will line Royal Mile when monarch’s coffin is brought to Holyrood Palace

Loyalists and unionists grieve as politicians remember late monarch’s historic 2011 visit to Ireland

Joe Biden has reportedly confirmed attendance at event likely to involve UK’s biggest ever security operation• Britain mourns death of Queen Elizabeth - latest updatesLeaders and monarchs from around the world will attend the Queen’s state funeral in London later this month, congregating in Westminster Abbey for a solemn gathering on a scale seldom witnessed in recent decades.The funeral, which is expected to take place around 19 September in the same church where the Queen was crowned in 1953, will attract presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens as well as huge crowds from home and abroad. Continue reading...

Frasers Group to take up slot vacated by defence firm Meggitt, which was bought by US rivalMike Ashley’s retail empire is returning to the FTSE 100 after a six-year hiatus after the sale of a defence firm creates an opening for Frasers Group in the leading City share index.Frasers, which owns a host of high street brands including Sports Direct and House of Fraser, is poised to rejoin the index on Tuesday, taking up the slot vacated by Meggitt, which has been bought by a US defence rival, Parker Hannifin. Continue reading...