Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth II made little fuss over the 40th anniversary of her coronation yesterday. She went to the races at Epsom, where she had two horses running.The occasion was deliberately subdued at the palace's request. There was no formal dinner; there were no parades.The only concession to the significance of the day were two cannon salutes (one of 41 guns in Hyde Park and one of 62 guns at the Tower of London) and a new 5-pound commemorative coin.These are troubled times for the queen, so much so that last November she summed up the previous 12 months of her life as the "annus horribilis," her horrible year.

Jim Panopoulos, home on a 30-day furlough, was in a North Avenue movie theater when the action outside of the theater turned greater than that on the screen. Jerry Zarend was visiting relatives in Mount Clemens, Mich., when news of the Japanese surrender raced through the then rural suburb north of Detroit. Milton Bates, serving with the Army in Europe, thought of only one thing when he heard the news: "I'm going home." These are some of the reminiscences that reached me after my column last week on the end of World War II, when a war-weary nation let go in a coast-to-coast explosion of joy tinged with sadness for those who didn't live to see victory.

LONDON -- Is Simon Hughes a panting republican zealot out to deep-six the queen of England or just a humble politician trying to further constitutional reform?It is a question of the moment here, and opinions depend on how one regards the British monarchy from which Americans celebrated their independence yesterday.Mr. Hughes is a Liberal-Democratic member of Parliament who represents the London constituency of Southwark and Bermondsey, and earlier this week he put a bill into Parliament that would require the queen to pay income taxes, which she does not now do.Mr.

On March 7, 2003, GENEVIEVEELIZABETH. Friends may call at the JAMES A. MORTON & SONS FUNERAL HOME, INC., 1701 Laurens Street, on Monday 2 to 7 P.M. On Tuesday, the family will receive friends 10 to 10:30 A.M., followed by services. Interment in Arbutus Memorial Park.

FOLKESTONE, England -- Queen Elizabeth II and President Francois Mitterrand of France crossed the English Channel by luxury train yesterday, capping a centuries-old Anglo-French dream to join Britain with Europe."

Whenever Walter T. Wilkie, former Pipe Major with the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards at Buckingham Palace, finished a performance for Queen Elizabeth II, he'd raise a Gaelic toast to the monarch."

The Royals are coming to Memorial Stadium . . . the ones from London, not Kansas City.Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip will be at the stadium May 15 to watch what apparently will be their first baseball match ever."

LONDON - Prince William graduated with honors from St. Andrews University in Scotland yesterday in a traditional ceremony attended by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and father, Prince Charles. One of only three British royals in recent history to graduate from university, the 23-year-old prince earned a Scottish master's degree, the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor's degree, in geography after four years of study. He achieved the second-highest honors, surpassing the performance of his father and uncle, Prince Edward, who received lesser honors at Cambridge University.

LONDON - She became queen when Winston Churchill was prime minister, food was rationed and the British Empire was crumbling along with its influence. Harry S. Truman was president of the United States. Stalin was running the Soviet Union. Mao Tse-tung was less then three years into his communist grip on China. In Britain, it was an era when housewives spent a quarter of their 15-hour workday in the kitchen, one in three households didn't have a bath, and only a few hundred thousand television sets existed.

MONTREAL -- The glory days are gone, but the sun still doesn't set on the British Empire, reduced now to a dozen or so forlorn and far-flung colonies, from the rearing rock of Gibraltar to the South Pacific specks known as the Pitcairn Islands.Queen Elizabeth II still reigns over 15 independent nations, large and small, in addition to Britain. While her role is symbolic, all acts of government in those countries are done in her name, and she is officially the head of state of each. These countries, most notably Canada and Australia, all slipped from Britannia's imperial embrace over the past 130 years but have clung steadfastly to the British monarch as their own.That devotion, however, is being tested in the waning days of the 20th century.