ABSTRACT
The new Elizabethan Age began in Kenya when, in February 1952, the new queen received news of her father’s death while she was on an official visit to Kenya. The setting for the story of the accession seemed both exotic and familiar. Princess Elizabeth and her husband were taking a break from the tour, watching for big game in a reserve, but the notion of a royal tour with the accompanying newsreel footage of the rituals and celebrations that welcomed them was a familiar one. The post-war Commonwealth was similarly strange and familiar, built out of the British Empire but with a new and more modern emphasis on self-government and multi-racial cooperation. Ironically, in 1952, when Elizabeth became head of the Commonwealth as well as queen, Kenya’s bloody experience of decolonisation had yet to be completed.
