Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

General websites

The following websites have information about Queen Elizabeth II's life, interests, and reign.

Royal.uk This is the official site of the British Royal Family. It includes information about family members and news.

• Find the tab for The Queen's Life and Reign.

• There will be lots of images and articles to choose from.

• Choose The Queen's Life and Reign for a good biography.

• Other articles talk about her family life, interests, and more.

Tips: When looking for info on a famous person try to find their official website because the information is likely to be more accurate than fan sites.

Britannica School

Britannica School is part of EPIC. EPIC is a collection of reliable databases covering lots of different topics. It’s put together especially for New Zealand school students and helps to answer questions like this.

• Choose the Middle level.

• Search for 'Elizabeth II'.

• Go to Elizabeth II ((1926-2022) queen of the United Kingdom).

• You can get more or less information by changing the Reading level at the top of the page.

Tips: To get to the EPIC resources you will need a password from your school librarian first. Or you can chat with one of our AnyQuestions librarians between 1 and 6pm Monday to Friday and they will help you online. Some EPIC databases may also be available through your public library.

Biography (Gale In Context)

This is another EPIC resources that has information about famous people around the world. As well as biographies, it includes videos, audio recordings, and images of past and present famous people.

• Go to Browse People.

• From the Topics menu choose British Royalty.

• Select Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom.

• This page gives a good overview about Elizabeth II's life.

• You can find links to more information under headings for biographies, audio, newspapers and magazines.

New Zealand sites

Queen Elizabeth II was the first reigning British monarch to visit New Zealand. The first visit was over the 'royal summer' of 1953-54. She visited another 9 times. The following websites have information about those tours and the relationship Queen Elizabeth II had with New Zealand.

NZ History

NZ History is a great website for information about Aotearoa New Zealand. If we go all the way down the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.

• Search for 'Queen Elizabeth II'

• The article Queen Elizabeth II has information about her role in New Zealand, her tours of New Zealand, and relationship with Māori.

• Royal Visit of 1953-54 talks about her first royal tour of New Zealand.

• Or you can select an event in history such as Waikato-Tainui sign Deed of Settlement with the Crown.

Tips: Search words, or keywords, are the most important words in our question. You can leave out small words like ‘the’ and ‘of’ and just choose the main ones, eg Elizabeth II. We can always change our keywords or add more if we need to.

DigitalNZ

DigitalNZ is a search site that focuses on New Zealand history and brings together results from lots of different websites. It’s an easy way of searching online resources from New Zealand libraries, museums, universities and government sites all at once.

• Search for 'Queen Elizabeth II' or 'Elizabeth II'.

• You can choose to limit results to Images, Audio, Video, or Articles.

• Select an item to look at.

• For videos, you may need to then select the View original item to watch it.

• For example we found a video with article called From evolving colony to bicultural nation: Queen Elizabeth II walked a long road with Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tips: Websites that have .org or .net in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the About us link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the organisation’s mission and values are.

NZ On Screen

NZ On Screen is an online showcase of New Zealand television, film and music videos on news, current affairs, history, sport and various other categories.

• Select the tab Collections.

• Find The Crown Collection.

• Choose a video to watch.

• The first clip of New Zealand Day at Waitangi shows the Queen arriving at Waitangi.

• The Royal Tour of New Zealand 1953-54 is a short film about the tour including the opening of Parliament.

Books

Your local school or public library might have some books about Queen Elizabeth II. Here are some that we found:

• Queen Elizabeth II by Sally Morgan

• Our rainbow queen : a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and her colorful wardrobe by Sali Hughes

• Elizabeth II : princess, queen, icon by National Portrait Gallery (Great Britain) and Alexandra Shulman

• Elizabeth revealed : 500 facts about the Queen and her world by Lucinda Hawksley

• The Times Queen Elizabeth II : 70 years on the throne by James Owen.

SCIS no: 5438243