THEY are two women whose lives have been very different. Yet the Queen and Mrs Muriel Warwick share one thing in common.

At 86, they are almost the same age, and have lived through a momentous period that has seen a world war, the loss of empire, a revolution in standards of living – and, more recently, a crippling recession.

Mrs Warwick is a few months older than the Queen. She was born in York on December 14, 1925, the Queen a few months later, on April 21, 1926. And where the Queen was born at Bruton Street in Mayfair, Mrs Warwick was born Muriel Jones at a nursing home in Grosvenor Terrace, York.

The family lived in a simple terraced house in Ebor Street, rather than in a palace. But Mrs Warwick has always felt a bond with the Royal family. She shared her birthday – December 14 – with the Queen’s father, King George VI. At school, she used to joke that the flags flying for the King’s birthday were for hers.

Muriel’s mother was from York, her father from Liverpool. The family went to live in Liverpool when Muriel was a baby. But when her parents died of natural causes, she returned to York in 1943, to live with her aunt in Heworth. She missed the York Blitz, but she did see evidence of bomb damage.

For 11 happy years, she worked at Rowntrees. Then she met and, in 1954, married Kenneth Warwick, a thread grinder at Cooke, Troughton and Simms.

The couple adopted a daughter, Susan. Muriel went back to work, this time as a dinner lady at Tang Hall Infants School. She only meant to stay for a year. “But they kept me for 21 years!” she says.

“I enjoyed it. I think it’s why I like children today.”

Her husband died after 32 years of marriage. But she still has living nearby in Heworth her daughter Susan, grandson Shane Smith, and great-granddaughter, Ava Nicole. “She’s gorgeous!”

She has always been a huge admirer of the Queen, ever since Princess Elizabeth acceded to the throne in 1952 on the death of her father. In her accession speech, the young Queen referred to “this heavy task that has been laid upon me so early in my life”, and pledged herself to “advance the happiness and prosperity of my people”.

She has never wavered from that pledge, Mrs Warwick says. “She has done exactly what she said she would do. She has been well looked after, yes, but she deserves it. She has done a marvellous job.”

Mrs Warwick saw the Queen on one of the monarch’s several visits to York. She can’t remember exactly when it was. The Queen had come to the Minster to look at stained glass, she says. “I was right opposite the opening. She came across and I could have touched her. She was beautiful! She seems so calm.”