Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of King George V1 and the accession of Queen Elizabeth 11 to the British throne, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
The queen normally spends Accession Day in remembrance of her father at Sandringham, her Norfolk estate, where his late majesty died on February 6th, 1952, aged 56, just five months after the removal of a cancerous lung.
However, in a poignant start to her Golden Jubilee year, the queen will today visit a cancer unit during the formal opening of the Macmillan Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kings Lynn in Norfolk.
Formal jubilee celebrations will get under way in May following Her Majesty's address to both Houses of Parliament and her attendance at a Downing Street dinner hosted by the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.
The delay is for the twofold reasons of inhospitable British weather and because the period around Accession Day marks a time of deep personal loss both for the queen and for the Queen Mother.
During her address to parliament on the occasion of her Silver Jubilee in 1977, Queen Elizabeth told the assembled peers and MPs she could "never forget that I was crowned queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Union flags will fly on government buildings today, including the Stormont Assembly in Belfast, which the First Minister, Mr David Trimble, hopes the queen will be able to visit during her jubilee tour of Northern Ireland later in the year.
While "the king is dead, long live the queen" proclaimed the orderly succession in February 1952, Elizabeth 11 was not crowned queen until June 2nd, 1953. In her coronation oath she swore "to maintain inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline and government thereof as by law established in England".