I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
Elizabeth on her 21st birthday, April 21, 1947, broadcast on the radio from Cape Town.
Queen Elizabeth II received visits from the Head of States of 62 different countries during her reign as a monarch.
France (de Gaulle, Giscard d’Estaing, Mitterand, Chirac, Sarkozy) leads the table with 5 visits, followed by Germany (Heuss, Heinemann, Weizsäcker, Herzog), Italy (Gronchi, Sargatt, Cossiga, Ciampi), Mexico (Echeverría, de la Madrid, Calderón, Pena Nieto) and Saudi Arabia (King Faisal, King Khaled, King Fahd, Al Saud) with 4 visits each. The ‘special’ partner USA (Bush senior, Obama, Trump) follows with 3 visits, as does India (Radharkrishnan, Venkataraman, Patil). The last visit was by President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump from the United States in June 2019. There have not been any state visits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
