https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aac36242-eebb-11e6-b160-fe23d6a9b5dd
When the Queen became this country’s longest-serving monarch, the humility with which she acknowledged the passing of that historic moment reflected the same selfless dedication with which she once promised to serve her people. Some 68 years separated the pledge she made in Cape Town on her 21st birthday and the modest speech that she made on passing Queen Victoria’s record in September 2015, but even if the empire to which she devoted herself no longer exists, the values she spoke of then were the values to which she still held true a lifetime later. “My whole life,” she said, in that resonant passage that captured imaginations worldwide in 1947, “whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”