Britain to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s record 65-year reign tomorrow

90-year-old Queen Elizabeth II is staying 175km to the north at her Sandringham House estate in Norfolk, where her father, George VI, died of lung cancer at age 56 on February 6, 1952, after a 15-year reign.

Queen Elizabeth II is poised for another historic milestone, an unprecedented 65 years on the throne.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth arrives to view an exhibition on Fiji at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia in Norwich, eastern England. (Reuters file photo)

But Buckingham Palace says Britain’s longest-serving monarch plans to spend Monday’s ceremonies far from the spotlight in sombre contemplation of her late father.

Official commemorations of Elizabeth’s Sapphire Jubilee are expected to feature ceremonial cannon fusillades at a central London park and at the riverside Tower of London as well as a procession of military horses pulling World War I-era artillery pieces.

But the 90-year-old monarch is staying 175km to the north at her Sandringham House estate in Norfolk, where her father, George VI, died of lung cancer at age 56 on February 6, 1952, after a 15-year reign.

Elizabeth surpassed Queen Victoria as Britain’s longest-serving monarch in 2015.