It was 50 years ago today that the world learned of the death of King George VI - and the accession of Queen Elizabeth II. Nick Morrison looks at the passing of one era, and the beginning of another.

JUST before three o'clock this afternoon, the Queen will open a Macmillan Cancer Care and Treatment centre, at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, in Norfolk. Another royal engagement among hundreds, but what marks this out as special is that today is a day the Queen normally spends in private, on her Sandringham estate.

Although February 6 marks the start of her reign, it also commemorates the death of her father, George VI, who died in his sleep at Sandringham at the age of 56. But, as this year is her Golden Jubilee, the Queen has decided to break with tradition to carry out a public engagement, and, in choosing a cancer care unit, at the same time, pay her respects to her father, who died from lung cancer.

The new Queen learned of her accession while in Kenya, 4,000 miles away, during a Commonwealth tour. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh had been resting after spending the night at the Treetops Hotel, in Aberdare Forest, watching big game, when the news was broken by an equerry, half an hour after it had been announced on the radio. The next day, the royal party returned home.

The King had been ill for some time. A heavy smoker, his health had started to deteriorate by 1948. He had been suffering from pains in his leg and was diagnosed as having a hardening of the arteries, raising the danger that gangrene would set in and his right leg would have to be amputated.

In March 1949, he underwent surgery but, after a period of recovery, a shadow was detected on his lung in May 1951. In September, a malignant growth was discovered, and an operation was performed to remove his left lung. He was thought to have made a good recovery.

And, throughout all this, the details of the King's illness were kept from the public. Only the week before his death he had been reported as looking well.

But when the Queen acceded to the throne, the House of Windsor held a much firmer place in the public affections than when her father became King. Controversy over the abdication of Edward VIII, who abandoned the throne to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson, had seen popular opinion of the monarchy at its lowest point since the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign.

And the portents for the new monarch were not good. The second son of George V, George VI was an unassuming, shy boy who suffered with a stammer from childhood. But he was also a conscientious and dedicated man, and was able to bring a stability to the monarchy after the abdication crisis.

But the real test came on the outbreak of the Second World War, just three years into his reign, and it was the actions of the King and his Queen which did much to restore the reputation of the Crown.

A former serviceman himself - he served with the Royal Navy during the First World War and saw action at the Battle of Jutland - he was assiduous in visiting troops, munitions factories and bomb damaged areas. And, as the Germans bombed London, the King and Queen remained defiantly at Buckingham Palace, although it was bombed on nine occasions.

After visiting the much-bombed East End of London, the King wrote in his diary: "We have both found a new bond with them, as Buckingham Palace has been bombed as well as their homes, and nobody is immune."

When victory finally came, Buckingham Palace became a focal point for the celebrations, but the strain of leading the nation through the war, as well as the upheaval of being thrust, unexpectedly, onto the throne, had taken its toll, and left him emotionally and physically drained.

The day before his death, on February 5, the King had gone shooting on the Sandringham estate, and was said to have been in good spirits at dinner, before retiring at about 10.30pm. He was last seen alive at around midnight, as he fastened the latch on his window.

But when his valet went to wake him at 7.30am the next day, the King was dead. Coronary thrombosis, a blood clot interrupting the supply of blood to the heart, was given as the cause of death.

More than 300,000 people filed past the King's simple oak coffin as it lay in Westminster Hall, before it was taken to St George's Chapel at Windsor for interment, on February 15. As the coffin left Westminster on a gun carriage, Big Ben rang out, one chime a minute to mark the 56 years of the King's life.

As the cortege passed Marlborough House on The Mall, Queen Mary, the King's mother, appeared at a window, across which a blind was half drawn, and bowed her head. The King was the third of her sons to die.

He may have been the reluctant King, but as the new Queen set foot on English soil - the runway at London Airport - for the first time as Sovereign, he had helped restore the gloss to a tarnished institution, a legacy which is still being felt, 50 years on.