The image of Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth from 1952 to 2022, was widely favourable throughout her years as a reigning monarch. Modest in dress, she was well known for her solid-colour overcoats and matching hats, which allowed her to be seen easily in a crowd. She attended many cultural events as part of her public role. Her main leisure interests included horse racing, photography, and dogs, especially her Pembroke Welsh corgis. She ate jam sandwiches every day since childhood. Some of her other favourite foods were fish and chips, chocolate perfection pie, scones with jam and clotted cream, salmon from the River Dee, and Morecambe Bay potted shrimp. Her views on political issues and other matters were largely subject to conjecture. She never gave a press interview and refrained from discussing her personal opinions publicly.
Personality
Much of what is known about Elizabeth's personality and views has been compiled from impressions and descriptions by those whom had met her. Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King wrote about then-Princess Elizabeth in his diary, after speaking with her at a dinner during the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference in 1944: "She was very natural, not in the least shy."
Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff remarked in 2010, after a private audience with Elizabeth, how he was struck by her "wonderful sense of the absurd" and noted her "sense of humour [...] that sense of comedy of life has survived 60 years of gruelling public life." After a weekend at Balmoral Castle hosted by Elizabeth, Canadian Governor General Michaëlle Jean recounted witnessing a relaxed, informal home life: Elizabeth and her family preparing a meal together—including a salad dressing she had devised—and doing the washing up afterwards. Similarly, Michael Hood, aide-de-camp to Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn, remembered the Queen and her husband driving their guests to picnics on the grounds of Sandringham House and helping serve food and drink.
Lady Pamela Hicks, a cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, commented on Elizabeth's personality as "individualistic". Hicks's mother remembers back to when King George VI died. Elizabeth was in Kenya with her husband when she found out; "I'm so sorry, but we are going to have to go back to England," she recalled Elizabeth saying.
Beliefs, activities, and interests
Elizabeth had a deep sense of religious and civic duty, and took her Coronation Oath seriously.Shawcross, pp. 194–195 Aside from her official religious role as Supreme Governor of the established Church of England, she worshipped with that church and also the national Church of Scotland. She demonstrated support for inter-faith relations and met with leaders of other churches and religions, including five popes of the Roman Catholic Church: Pius XII, John XXIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. A personal note about her faith often featured in her annual Christmas Message broadcast to the Commonwealth. In 2000, she said:Shawcross, pp. 236–237
Elizabeth was patron of more than 600 organisations and charities. The Charities Aid Foundation estimated that Elizabeth helped raise over £1.4 billion for her patronages during her reign. Her main leisure interests included equestrianism and dogs, especially her Pembroke Welsh Corgis. Her lifelong love of corgis began in 1933 with Dookie, the first corgi owned by her family.
Despite not being a football fan and instead enjoying horse-racing, Elizabeth stated to the former England men's manager Sven-Göran Eriksson in the past that her favourite player was ex-Liverpool striker Michael Owen.
Political views
Elizabeth did not explicitly express her own political opinions in a public forum, and it is against convention to ask or reveal the monarch's views.
Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King recorded a meeting with King George VI, on 23 October 1945, at which Princess Elizabeth was present. Mackenzie King wrote in his diary, "some mention was made of [Adolf] Hitler [...] the King said something about it being a pity that Hitler had not been shot. Princess Elizabeth said she would have been prepared to shoot him."
While the Queen never spoke publicly on the matter of apartheid, in 1961, the year in which South Africa held a Whites-only referendum that narrowly rejected the South African monarchy and, along with it, Elizabeth as queen, she was photographed dancing with President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah at a banquet in Accra celebrating Ghana's establishment as a republic (also removing Elizabeth as head of state) the year before. This act was taken as the Queen's symbolic expression of her antiapartheid stance; the image offended the white South African government. Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said the Queen had, through the 1980s, sided with the majority of Commonwealth prime ministers, and against her British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, on the matter of imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa, a point echoed by former Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal, who said, "so steadfast was the Queen to the antiapartheid cause [...] that, once again, she stood firm against the position of Thatcher."
When The Times journalist Paul Routledge controversially asked Elizabeth for her opinions on the miners' strike of 1984–85, she replied that it was "all about one man", a reference to Arthur Scargill.
Paul Martin Sr., who was in 1981 sent to the UK to discuss the patriation of the Canadian constitution, noted that, during that time, the Queen had taken a great interest in the constitutional debate and he, along with John Roberts and Mark MacGuigan, found the monarch "better informed on both the substance and politics of Canada's constitutional case than any of the British politicians or bureaucrats." After the constitution was patriated to Canada in 1982, with amendments the cabinet of Quebec refused to agree to, the Queen, at a reception at Rideau Hall, privately conveyed to journalists her regret that the province was not part of the settlement. Elizabeth later, on 22 and 23 October 1987, publicly expressed her personal support for the Meech Lake Accord, which attempted to bring Quebec governmental backing to the patriated constitution. She received criticism from opponents of the accord, which failed to attract the unanimous support from all federal and provincial legislators required for it to pass.
Elizabeth was, in October 1995, tricked into a hoax call by Montreal radio host Pierre Brassard impersonating Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Elizabeth, who believed that she was speaking to her Prime Minister, said she supported Canadian unity and agreed to make a national, televised statement encouraging such in the days ahead of that year's referendum on Quebec's independence.
Following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the Queen was pleased with the outcome. She had arguably issued a public coded statement about the referendum by telling one woman outside Balmoral Kirk that she hoped people would think "very carefully" about the outcome. It emerged later that Cameron had specifically requested that she register her concern.
Elizabeth favoured action to mitigate the effects of climate change. She told the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference: "None of us will live forever. But we are doing this not for ourselves, but for our children and our children's children, and those who will follow in their footsteps".
According to former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, Elizabeth believed that every Israeli was "either a terrorist or son of a terrorist" and she always refused to let Israeli officials step into Buckingham Palace.
Public image
At Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee in 1977, the crowds and celebrations were genuinely enthusiastic;Bond, p. 97; Bradford (2012), p. 189; Pimlott, pp. 449–450; Roberts, p. 87; Shawcross, pp. 114–117 however there was a significant shift over the next twenty years with her popularity sinking to a low point in the 1990s. Under pressure from public opinion, she began to pay income tax for the first time, and Buckingham Palace was opened to the public. Although support for republicanism in Britain seemed higher than at any time in living memory, republican ideology was still a minority viewpoint and Elizabeth herself had high approval ratings.MORI poll for The Independent newspaper, March 1996, quoted in Pimlott, p. 578 and Criticism was focused on the institution of the monarchy itself, and the conduct of Elizabeth's wider family, rather than her own behaviour and actions.Pimlott, p. 578 Discontent with the monarchy reached its peak on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, although Elizabeth's personal popularity—as well as general support for the monarchy—rebounded after her live television broadcast to the world five days after Diana's death.Bond, p. 134; Pimlott, pp. 624–625 In 2002, Elizabeth was ranked 24th in the 100 Greatest Britons poll.
In November 1999, a referendum in Australia on the future of the Australian monarchy favoured its retention in preference to an indirectly elected head of state.Hardman, p. 310; Lacey, p. 387; Roberts, p. 101; Shawcross, p. 218 Many republicans credited Elizabeth's personal popularity with the survival of the monarchy in Australia. In 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard noted that there was a "deep affection" for Elizabeth in Australia and another referendum on the monarchy should wait until after her reign. Gillard's successor, Malcolm Turnbull, who led the republican campaign in 1999, similarly believed that Australians would not vote to become a republic in her lifetime. "She's been an extraordinary head of state", Turnbull said in 2021, "and I think frankly, in Australia, there are more Elizabethans than there are monarchists". Similarly, referendums in both Tuvalu in 2008 and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 2009 saw voters reject proposals to become republics.
Opinion polls suggested that Queen Elizabeth II had a strong approval rating even in the 1990s which improved in the early years of the 21st century; coinciding with her Diamond Jubilee, the Queen had an approval rate in the United Kingdom of 90% in 2012. According to a YouGov poll in January 2014, Elizabeth was the most admired person in the United Kingdom with 18.74% of respondents reporting that she was the person they most admired, the highest percentage of all candidates. Internationally she was the 17th most-admired person in the world.