Flying home from Kenya after the death of her father, King George VI, the new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, came back to a Britain still recovering from the ravages of the Second World War.

To greet her at London Airport was the man who had guided the country through that great conflict – Winston Churchill. It still comes as something of a shock to think that the first of the Queen’s 12 prime ministers was a man born 26 years before the end of the 19th century.

The average Briton mourning the King – with many workers turning up in black ties – had a standard of living that 21st century UK residents would regard as Third World.

One household in three still lacked a bath, while one in 20 had no piped water. Only around ten per cent of homes had telephones, and the average house price was a little more than £2,000.

Many towns still resembled bomb sites, with children playing among the rubble. Rationing was still in place from the war. Tea was not to come off rationing until October 1952, while it was to be several more months after that before items such as butter and meat were unrestricted again.

Standards of decency were far different in 1952 than now. Many reckoned the publication of the picture of the heavily-veiled three queens – Queen Mary, the Queen Mother and Elizabeth II – mourning George VI was the height of bad taste.

Two men who failed to observe the two-minute silence for the passing of the King had to run from an angry crowd in London, with a woman hitting one of them with her umbrella.

Although nearly seven years had passed since the end of the war, the Cold War was hotting up. Just three weeks after the death of the King, Mr Churchill told the Commons that Britain had developed an atomic bomb. It was tested later in the year off the north-west coast of Australia.

A few weeks later, the departure of a Comet airliner from London to Johannesburg signalled the start of the jet era, with those lucky enough to fly becoming known as the jet set.

In September 1952, 26 spectators died when a de Havilland 110 fighter aircraft fell apart and ploughed into the crowd at the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire. It was one of a number of disasters that scarred the year.

In August, a devastating flood swept through the Devon resort of Lynmouth, claiming more than 30 lives. In October, in what is still the UK’s worst-ever peacetime rail accident, 112 people died in a three-train, morning rush-hour crash at Harrow and Wealdstone station in north-west London.

For entertainment, Britons turned to sport and the cinema. TV was still in its infancy. There was only one channel - BBC and in black-and-white of course – and it would not be until the following year, when the Coronation was televised, that mass ownership of TV sets took off.