The crown can be a heavy burden to bear, and the 1960s and 70s were challenging decades for Queen Elizabeth. From tabloid coverage of Princess Margaret’s affair to Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, the royal family entered the spotlight like never before. When disaster struck in Aberfan and a miner’s strike plunged London into darkness, Queen Elizabeth was tasked with restoring calm and order to a changing nation. Here are seven of the biggest moments in Queen Elizabeth’s reign in the 1960s and 1970s.
Princess Margaret’s Controversial U.S. Tour
By 1965, Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret, had established her reputation as the royal most likely to court controversy. So Elizabeth II was playing with fire when she sent “The Royal Lightning Rod” on a three-week tour of the United States.
The trip came at a tense time in U.S.-U.K. Relations. Prime Minister Harold Wilson and President Lyndon B. Johnson were at loggerheads, the UK was in debt and in need of American approval for a loan and America was embroiled in the Vietnam War just as Britain was shedding its colonial holdings.
The trip began well enough. Margaret and her husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, rode the trolley in San Francisco, rubbed elbows with celebrities like Judy Garland and Alfred Hitchcock in Los Angeles, rode horses in Arizona and danced with and Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson in the White House at a spectacular dinner that roared on until 1:40 a.m. But other late night hijinks on the trip raised eyebrows— as did its astronomical cost of £30,000. The princess was banned from making future official U.S. visits.
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