Original subtitles

[Music]

the story of the kings and queens of

England is more surprising than you

might think it's a fine drama a thousand

years of tales of lust and betrayal of

heroism and cruelty of mysteries murders

tragedies and triumphs

oh you're probably thinking that applies

to medieval kings all right but this

program's about the modern monarchy from

Victoria to the home life of our own

dear Queen and there's not much of that

sort of thing going on here oh really

keep

watching what you may Wonder did lust

have to do with the matronly Queen

Victoria well she was young once and her

husband Prince Albert gave his name to

more than just a bridge a concert hall

and a memorial no other British royal

has a body piercing named after him and

we can't show you where the ring goes in

a Prince Albert you'll just have to

guess kept Victoria happy nine

children and this isn't only a

collection of Royal trivia for the

tabloids we can reveal for the first

time on television that the present

Queen's grandfather George V actually

took over the running of the country

secret personal rule for a few days in

1931 he believed it was the the only way

to save the country from Revolution most

of the papers relating to this are still

hidden how much do we really know about

what goes

[Music]

on in 1867 Walter Bader wrote a book on

the British constitution which said that

it had two parts the efficient part and

the dignified part the dignified part

was headed by the queen it was a piece

of theater whose only purpose was to

make people feel loyalty the actual

power was entirely held by the efficient

part which he said was a secret

committee called the

cabinet everyone believed bad's book the

government encouraged people to believe

it so did the royal family then and now

well they would wouldn't they the truth

has been rather

different obviously when the 18-year-old

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 she

she wasn't in much of a position to try

to run the country she'd had a rather

odd upbringing her father had been a

brother of George IV and William IV but

he died when she was a

baby other was a straight-laced German

princess who was determined that her

daughter should not be part of the

disreputable life of the court or

murdered as her mother thought possible

by one of her terrible uncles who wanted

the throne

himself she was brought up in isolation

in Kensington Palace which in those days

was rather cut off from London her main

interest on becoming Queen was to

finally cut free of her mother and

supervisor and move out of her mother's

bedroom and when she was 19 she fell

hopelessly utterly in love with her

first cousin the 20-year-old younger son

of the Duke of sax cobber

[Music]

Goa he's excessively handsome such

beautiful eyes my heart is quite

going he certainly tried hard to look

good that notorious ring piercing if it

did exist no one can be quite sure was

attached to a chain to assist in

smoothing the line of his

britches they married in

1840 she wasn't hugely popular at the

time headstrong willful she actually

blocked a change of government because

it would have upset her domestic

Arrangements

the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne had

given her the wives and Daughters of his

own supporters as the ladies of her bed

chamber when his wig government fell and

Robert Peele came to power Peele

insisted that the queen should replace

at least some of the ladies so that the

court wasn't a complete one- party State

Victoria

refused Peele felt forced to resign and

Melbourne came briefly back to Power

people didn't like what she was doing

they didn't like her and they didn't

like the stiff German Prince

Albert Peele came back to Power and

refused to Grant him much more than half

the allowance Victoria demanded saying

that people were very hard up which they

were the position of the throne seemed

pretty shaky it didn't seem likely that

this would become the most secure and

richest monarchy in the world how did

that

happen when Victoria came to the all she

had as her own was the revenue of the

duy of Lancaster £27,000 a year the

Sunday Times rich list for 1990 showed

Elizabeth II as being worth 6.7

billion that's nearly 10 billion in

today's money the richest person in the

land by a huge

margin it's true that the latest rich

list shows her being worth a mere 250

million has she lost 97% of her money on

the horses did she give it a all the way

to

charity no the latest figure is a guess

based on an instruction to the Sunday

Times not to count anything she holds on

trust for the nation obviously she can't

sell the crown jewels and pocket the

proceeds but actually most rich people

hold much of their wealth in trust yet

it's still treated as theirs because

they have the use of it the Royal move

into profit began when Albert took

charge of the royal finances he he

wasn't allowed to be king there was deep

suspicion of him but Victoria let him

manage her Affairs and he did an

astonishing job of

it the Royal household was an incredible

Gothic antique to clean a window in

Buckingham Palace was a job for the Lord

Chamberlain staff unless it was a

kitchen or scaly window then they had to

call on the Lord Steward and neither

could touch the outside of the glass

which was looked after by the office of

woods and forests lay a fire was the

Lord Stewart's job but lighting it the

Lord chamberlains as their staff were

not on good terms the queen

froze other Palace staff were paid for

jobs whose very purpose and even

existence had been forgotten enter

Albert with boiling water and a hatchet

he sorted that lot out and cut

Victoria's costs dramatically he had a

huge capacity for work and organization

so when he came up with the idea for a

great exhibition of the World's art and

Industry no one should have doubted that

he could make it

happen of course they did doubt it they

had no confidence in the exhibition Hall

the Crystal Palace a giant Greenhouse

erected by a gardener and when they

realized that thousands would congregate

there they thought that it would be a

rallying point for

revolutionaries the opening of the great

exhibition on May the 1st 1851 was a

thrilling day for the nation and for

Victoria

the royal couple began to be viewed with

some enthusiasm and it was quite

understandable that the next year an

eccentric Miser should leave the queen

half a million pounds in his

will Albert's influence in Government

Rose visibly which of course soon put an

end to his

popularity by 1854 it was generally

believed that Albert The Foreigner was a

traitor in League with Russia forcing

loyal ministers out of office

crowds gathered around the tower under

the impression that Albert and Victoria

had been arrested for

treason that frenzy died down but at the

back of it were two things that were

going to be permanent problems one was

that the queen and her consort must have

some role in running the country but

that couldn't be squared with any kind

of representative government and the

other was that people were realizing

that the Monarch was making a profit and

they didn't like it the solution was to

conceal what was really happening under

a cloak of secrecy and that cloak is

still in place when I was researching a

book on the most sensitive part of this

story I needed to see some papers that

should have been released by the

ministry of Defense the then Navy

Minister David Owen read the file and

released it but the crucial documents

weren't there he suggested they would

have been treated as the private

property of the crown and kept in the

Royal archive private I wasn't allowed

in Albert's own role was pretty secret

he was in reality acting as king of

England but that was behind the scenes

the title he was eventually given in

1857 was just prince consort he took it

very seriously and worked himself to

death his last act as the hidden King of

England was at the end of 1861 to stop

the Prime Minister from sending an angry

dispatch to the American government if

it had been sent England would probably

have been pushed into the American Civil

War on the side of the

South when Albert died Victoria uttered

a terrible shriek she never recovered

she retired to Scotland and went into

what seemed to be Everlasting morning

she and Albert had built a number of

Retreats for themselves Osborn on the

aisle of white Sandringham in Norfolk

and her favorite palal moral here she

hid from months at a time with the

faithful Highland retainer John Brown he

was allowed enough familiarity for the

queen to be widely referred to as Mrs

Brown Victoria herself could see no

reason to take part in public ceremonies

like the opening of parliament she

thought that her hidden role as the head

of her government was enough but that of

course led many people to wonder why

they had to pay for her upkeep at

all she received as she had done from

the start of of her Reign

£385,000 a year from the government it

was more than she needed her Court was

nowhere near as expensive as for

instance George IV's had been and

without her being visible many people

could see no point in her having this

money by the 1870s there was a strong

Republican movement expressing itself in

newspapers large public meetings and in

Parliament the nature of the country was

changing dramatically new industrial

cities were darkening the landscape with

smoke and soot a new kind of society was

formed a society of factory workers and

low paid Artisans of Builders and Miners

and Metal

Workers these were people outside the

political world with no natural

attachments to traditional political

structures and there were a lot of them

the anti-royalist head of steam built up

every time Parliament was asked for

extra grants to Victoria's children when

they came of age or

married but in fact it was very probably

these children who saved her

throne no British Statesman wanted to

see the royal family given its marching

orders when their marriages offered such

a useful back door into the chancellor

of Europe Victoria's eldest daughter was

married to the heir to the Kaiser of the

new German Empire and was a strong and

useful influence on her husband and a

thorn imis Mark's flesh the heir to the

British throne Albert Edward had married

Alexandra daughter of the king of

Denmark and sister of the king of

Greece the Greek Crown had actually been

offered to another of Victoria's Sons

Alfred the Greeks had sacked their own

King and held a national vote on who

should get the throne 95% of them voted

for Alfred who was at the time an

18-year-old midshipman in the Royal Navy

the government made him turn it down

because they had promised to keep their

hands off Greece never mind it went as a

sort of hand me down to the son of

England's good friend the king of

Denmark and in 1874 Alfred married the

daughter of tar Alexander II which was

Jolly useful given the anglo-russian

competition on the edges of

India these were marriages that would

produce many many well-distributed

children by the time Victoria died in

1901 she had over 90 living

descendants it was a full-time job just

getting them birthday

presents the rulers of Germany Greece

Romania Norway Russia Yugoslavia Spain

and Sweden would all Trace their descent

from this Stout little

lady there was a downside to all this

Royal inter marriage Victoria was a

carrier of Hemophilia the condition that

prevents blood from clotting and the

Spanish Prussian and Russian royal

families were consequently affected Ed

by it but even if the British government

had known about that they wouldn't have

shed many tears over it as a system for

exercising influence abroad the monarchy

was well worth the money it also ought

to have the advantage at home of

inducing people to be loyal to their

country even if they detested its

government which is obviously very

useful if you ran that government but to

sell monarchy to the British public that

monarchy needed rebranding enter in 1867

a new Tory prime minister Mr Disraeli

just the man to do it he flattered

flirted and lured Victoria out of

mourning and back to public life

creating her Empress of India turning

her into the queen

Empress Britain was now a world power

with an international trade that dwarfed

all others its Navy dominated the oceans

and its Empire expanded on the simple

principle that trade follows the flag

and if the Union Jack is flying in each

remote corner of the globe then other

flags

aren't the problem was for a small

country with a very small army to rule

ever more of the Earth's surface that

rule couldn't be maintained by force it

required the consent of the Govern and

the grand theatricality of disraeli's

Victorian imperialism invited people

throughout the Empire to take pride in

being subjects not of a bunch of

industrialists and politicians

but of a prim and matronly great

Sovereign Victoria became the logo of

the British Empire her portrait spread

all over the world thanks especially to

the introduction of postage

stamps her statue would appear in

virtually every ambitious town and city

of the British Empire and where there

was no statue there would certainly be a

Victoria Street or Victoria Park or

Victoria something the whole process

came to a glorious climax in her golden

jubilee of

1887 the great processions in London of

Representatives of her dominions were

followed by an eruption of ugly public

Halls clock towers fountains and statues

disfiguring public spaces over about a

quarter of the

planet by the time Victoria died hardly

anyone even remembered that her throne

had once seemed endangered and she'd

reigned so long 64 years that hardly

anyone could even remember any other

Sovereign her death in 1901 22 days into

the new century seemed portentous she'd

become synonymous with Britain and its

Empire and now Britain would leave the

19th century without the security of the

great mother hen

[Music]

Victoria would cast a long Shadow

Elizabeth II coming to the throne 51

years later would be the first of her

successors who had no personal memory of

her her oldest son Albert Edward the new

King Edward iith was already 59 years

old the funeral of the queen empress and

Edward's coronation involved a huge

invention of traditions and ceremonies

and in this atmosphere it's not

surprising that Edward was granted an

annual allowance even greater than

Victoria's a few voices said that it was

unnecessary for the king to have as big

an income as Andrew carnegi the Bill

Gates of his day but no one took much

notice Edward had been given a miserable

and oppressive

childhood Victoria had measured him by

The Impossible yard stick of her hero

worship of the perfect man his

father naturally young berti had belled

of course his first visit to a

prostitute shocked his parents deeply it

happened to be followed by Albert's

fatal illness which Victoria had

inevitably blamed on her Wicked son she

had arranged his marriage shortly

afterwards in the hope that domestic

discipline would Reign him in Princess

Alex of Denmark was beautiful but she

was also deaf and dull

company with nothing much else to do

berti had become the living epitome of

the life of the belly pooc a life of

champagne drinking cigar smoking horse

racing gambling and entertaining show

girls and pretty married

ladies he was naturally drawn to the

company of Outsiders not just Shady

characters but Jews and Catholics

bankers and foreigners and he was

outspokenly outraged by the Casual

racism of the Empire Rosa man has a

black face and a different religion than

our own there is no reason why he should

be treated is a brute he sat on a

commission on workingclass housing and

even invited a member of the working

class to stay at

Sandringham admittedly the man in

question was an MP and a fellow member

of the commission and he had to eat in

his bedroom because he didn't have the

right clothes to come down to dinner but

still by the time Edward came to the

throne he was a big fat old man with a

social conscience and a comforting

mistress Alice Keel who UND OD him

perfectly Edward saw himself as

something like a nursery rhyme Monarch

magnificent and jolly caring and

helpful in 1903 completely ignoring his

government he went to France and started

negotiations for a treaty that would

become The onon Cordial isolating

Germany he detested his nephew the

Kaiser he persuaded the press and then

the government to back a treaty which

guaranteed that if Germany attacked

France Britain would go to war so that's

what happened in

1914 he determinedly resisted any

increase in democracy in Britain and was

a firm opponent of votes for

women the crunch over his reactionary

views came when Lloyd George planned to

introduce old age pensions in

1909 to raise the cash there would have

to be new taxes on income the Tory

majority in the House of Lords voted

down what was called The People's budget

and when the liberal government Drew up

legislation to take that power away from

the Lords they voted that down too

obviously so the Prime Minister told the

king he needed to create about 250 new

peers to swing the vote Edward was not

enthusiastic would he actually defy the

government in May 1910 in the middle of

the battle he died

in 1910 Edward's 44-year-old son George

inherited the

[Music]

throne he was the late King's Second Son

he'd worked as a commander in the Navy

to which he was deeply attached but in

1892 his elder brother Clarence had died

and he'd unexpectedly become heir

to step into his brother's shoes he'd

left his job and married the woman who'd

been betrayed to Clarence a relative

called Princess Mary of tech he now

inherited a fortune worth around 140

million in today's prices and a

political

crisis as part of the deal with the

government to pass the budget and cut

the powers of the House of Lords it was

agreed that the crown could stop paying

any income tax in return the king would

pay for his own trips abroad

the new constitutional deal drew the

teeth of the House of Lords whatever the

elected government in the Commons

decided to do it now could do the only

possible break on its power was now the

king and the question was of course

whether he would ever exercise it and

what would happen if he

tried at first the crown was too weak to

try when War began with Germany in 1914

George was seen naturally enough as a

German which he

was he kept a bit quiet about his

courtesy titles of field Marshall

general of the Prussian Army and admiral

of the Imperial German

Navy to make himself seem more British

and therefore more secure in July 1917

George felt forced to change his family

name from sax cobber Goa to Windsor and

stopped being a German Prince and Duke

of Saxony

Revolution was a real danger cousin

Nikki the saw of Russia was deposed in

February

1917 the new Russian government asked

Britain to give him Asylum and Lloyd

George agreed to it but King George was

terrified of being associated with a man

now labeled Tyrant by revolutionaries so

he forced the government to withdraw the

offer the Bolsheviks took over Russia in

October and Nicholas and his family were

slaughtered

to protect the king's reputation it was

put about that Lloyd George had refused

to rescue them despite the king's

pleading then in November 1918 a German

Revolution forced the Kaiser cousin

Willie to abdicate and Germany gave up

the

war the whole political landscape had

been transformed there had been six

Emperors when George was crowned by 192

5 he was the only one left and his world

was not exactly safe most of the

Southern Irish were committed

Republicans attempts to hold that

country by force were disastrous and in

1922 the Irish free state had come into

being King George had lost a

considerable chunk of his

kingdom the wealth of the royal family

continued to grow due largely to Queen

Mary's enthusiasm for collecting

valuable trinkets at special prices

the romanovs hadn't been allowed to join

the British Royals but a substantial

chunk of their jewelry

did people began hiding their Treasures

if the queen was coming to call as she

would hint strongly that she expected to

be given them and sometimes take them

anyway so that embarrassed AIDS had to

quietly return them

later in 1924 Ramsey McDonald became

Britain's first labor prime minister the

old political establish M had been given

a kicking no one knew where this might

lead and then came the Wall Street crash

of 1929 and financial disaster the

government needed huge loans which were

conditional on Cuts in unemployment

benefit and the pay of public servants

and the armed forces the labor cabinet

wouldn't do it and McDonald went to the

king to resign George was pretty sure

this was a decisive moment if these

harsh policies were forced through by

conservatives class war would probably

break out everything including himself

might very well be swept

away so he refused to accept the

resignation he persuaded Ramsey McDonald

that it was his patriotic duty to stay

on as the leader of a new coalition

government to force through the cuts

that way they were more likely to be

accepted this was an extraordinary

exercise of royal power and and it

wasn't over

yet when the cuts were announced in

September 1931 the entire Atlantic Fleet

went on strike this was the most

powerful military force in the world and

it was gathered at inor there was total

panic in the admiralty Mutiny the

intelligence Services warned that it was

a communist plot and that the sailors

were going to march to London rallying

all the disaffected including the police

on the way

the financial markets went into a tail

spin and the bank of England was forced

to stop exchanging pounds for gold going

off the gold standard the admiralty Drew

up plans to bombard the mutinous fleet

from the land and sink its own

ships and the King decided he had to

save the Navy and the country he knew

Sailors they weren't revolutionaries

they just needed to be spoken to in the

right way in complete secrecy he took

control a appointing a retired Admiral

to deal with the situation Admiral John

Kelly was not appointed by the

government or the admiralty and was

instructed not to report to them but

directly to King

George he offered the sailors a deal if

they sailed back to their home ports the

king would see to it that their

grievances were taken seriously and they

would not be

punished it was a sensible approach and

it worked but all evidence of the king's

role and Kelly's appointment was hidden

with we're not supposed to know what

power royalty can wield of course the

bit about mutineers not being punished

was a lie once the danger was passed the

leaders were identified and quietly

removed the following year 1932 King

George gave the first Christmas radio

message he was now a presence in homes

throughout his

Empire the Empire had changed its form

of course and in 1931 the dominions the

white bits of the Empire can Australia

and so on had become legally independent

of Westminster they were the

Commonwealth and The Sovereign was its

institutional

core as part of his program to make the

monarchy seem British and so he hoped

more secure he decreed that his children

need not marry partners of royal descent

this would indeed transform the position

of the monarchy but not in the way he

expected in 1936 six when George was 70

and dying his doctor Lord dorson decided

to ensure that the death would not be

reported first in the vulgar evening

papers you've heard of Lord dwson of

Penn he's killed any number of men and

that's why we sing Oh God Save the King

from Bertrand Lord dwson of

Penn Lord Dawson met the times's

deadline by giving the king a fatal

injection called a whizbang George was

told he would soon be convalescing in

Bogner his last words were bugger

Bogner the times was told he'd said how

is the

[Music]

Empire his successor his son Edward was

38 the poorly educated child of rather

dysfunctional parents the queen had been

completely distant and King George

famously said my father was frightened

of his father I was frightened of my

father and I'm damn well going to see to

it that my children are frightened of

me Edward had escaped by traveling

widely and as the world's most eligible

bachelor enjoyed affairs with a number

of married women culminating in the love

of his life the twice married elegant

American Wallace

Simpson at the time of Edward's

succession the affair was in full swing

and her husband had resigned himself to

a divorce the British press completely

censored the whole subject while the

rest of the world was fascinated by it

Edward insisted that he was going to

marry Wallace and make her Queen the

Prime Minister and the Archbishop of

Canterbury said the country wouldn't

stand for it were they right probably

not Edward was actually pretty popular

he wanted to go on the radio and appeal

to the nation but he wasn't allowed to

do that he was told it would be

unconstitutional without a written

document the Constitution is what the

government can get away with they had

their

reasons these went beyond the court

gossip that Wallace was said to be a

lesbian or a man engaged in a sedom

masochistic relationship with

Edward The crucial issue wasn't even

that the head of the church shouldn't

marry a divorce or that secret

investigators had reported that Wallace

Simpson had two other lovers a car

salesman and an Irish

peer the real reason only came to light

in

2002 secret documents show that the FBI

told the British government that Wallace

had another lover the German ambassador

Von ribbon trop in fact the FBI said she

was a Nazi agent that was why the

government insisted Edward must give her

up to keep the

throne Edward chose love rather than the

Crown he abdicated and took Mrs Simpson

to live in

France the coronation went ahead but

with his brother Albert sitting on the

[Music]

throne Albert was crowned as King George

V 6 he was 18 months younger than Ed

wood and completely lacked his brother's

social Grace he stammered he was shy but

at least he was safely married to

Elizabeth Bose lion the daughter of a

minor Scottish Aristocrat the first

Royal to legally marry a commoner since

Henry

[Music]

[Music]

VII George didn't have much in the way

of winning ways but his wife enraged at

what Edward had done was determined to

help him through she arranged speech

therapy to cure his stutter but when war

with Germany began in 1939 they were not

seen as a rallying point for patriotic

further especially as they had publicly

supported Neville Chamberlain's

appeasement of Hitler when the royal

couple visited the first bomb sites they

were booed GE I 6th and Queen Elizabeth

that's the woman we remember as

Elizabeth the Queen Mother refused to

allow themselves any doubt as to the

outcome of the second world war when

Buckingham Palace was bombed the queen

said she was glad it meant she could

look the East End in the face at least

it meant the royal couple wouldn't be

booed anymore when they visited other

people's bombed out

homes actually while they spent their

days in London they retreated for the

night to Windsor which was considerably

safer nevertheless they did have one

really really narrow

Escape as the war went on the royal

couple became more and more identified

with Churchill as the spirit of Britain

dogged in their determination to see

Nazism defeated when the victory

celebrations came in 1945 it seemed

natural that they should revolve around

Buckingham Palace by the time of his

premature death from smoking in 1952

this shy Country Gentleman and his Queen

had gone a very long way to restore ing

the monarchy to its Central place in

British life it had vanished virtually

everywhere else there had been 16

monchis on the continent of Europe when

Victoria died now there was only Sweden

monarchs were restored to Belgium

Holland Norway and Denmark but as a pale

shadow of the old European royalty

[Music]

the new Queen the 25-year-old Elizabeth

II seemed to be a fairy tale remnant of

a lost world of

Glamour her coronation was a celebration

of pageantry itself in a country that

was a vast bomb site four houses out of

10 had been damaged or

destroyed it was even shown on the new

medium of

Television though the Archbishop of

Canterbury feared men would watch in

public without removing their

hats by her side in the coronation coach

wrode her husband like Albert he would

never be

crowned Phillip dukee of Edinburgh was

from the Greek and danish Royal House of

schic Holstein sonenberg

glurg he had no surname he was given the

name of one of the branches of

Elizabeth's family Mount Batton

there was no question of the queen

becoming a modest Suburban Sovereign

like the restored European Royals

George's Widow was sure her daughter

should be Regal and Grand royalty

required flunkies and castles and

palaces and golden coaches she herself

made do with six cars three chauffeurs

five chefs two pages three footmen two

dressers and 30 secretaries Maids

treasurers and house Keepers and she was

absolutely dead set against royalty

paying

tax for a long time this was met with an

extraordinary degree of complicity from

the governments of the day in 1947 when

labor came to power amid all the

nationalizations and the class war

Declarations of We Are The Masters now

had come in agreement that the

government would take over the cost of

running Buckingham

[Music]

Palace now the consern conservatives

said the government would take over the

cost of the royal train and Royal visits

abroad and freed the queen from paying

tax on property apart from rates on

Sandringham and Balm

moral in Edward Heath's time as prime

minister it was officially stated for

the first time that the queen pays no

tax in 1973 she was Exempted from the

new companies bill that could force

shareholders to identify themselves even

if they hid behind the names of

nominees her Shares are hidden in a

company called the bank of England

nominees which can only be used by heads

of state and is uniquely exempt from

disclosure

laws and in 1965 when a labor government

introduced capital gains tax they

declared that the queen is

exempt under these Arrangements immense

and unknowable riches were built up she

has for example

600 works by Leonardo da

Vinci we're told these riches are not

really hers because she's not free to

sell them but most of the royal

collection is never publicly displayed

why whose interest is being

served it obviously means the monarchy

can put on a heck of a show that goes

far beyond their demand on the public

purse and they don't need to run the

risk of asking us to fund the whole

thing from Texas

is we each contribute 61 a year at the

last count that money just over £36

million is not enough to put on the

grand Regal show which the British

Monarchy seems to be

about certainly for a very long time it

was simply not permitted to suggest that

the monarchy should be anything less

than

Grand in 1957 Lord Ultram wrote an

article arguing for a modernized

monarchy he called the court complacent

and out of time said the queen was a

priggish school girl and said that the

monarchy should not be as it was

intimately associated with the upper

classes wow the dukee of argal said that

he should be hanged drawn and quartered

and the BBC immediately dropped him from

any

questions in fact alram had got it wrong

lavish Splendor was just what most of

the public wanted from their monarchy

they would have despised a queen on a

bicycle they wanted to be

deferential they probably still

do and there were 20 more years of this

kind of thing to come in 1977 the year

of the Queen's Jubilee The Sex Pistols

Anthem God Save the Queen and her

fascist regime was banned from being

broadcast even when it outsold all other

records the puzzle becomes even more

intriguing when you look at the

Apparently shrinking role of the crown

in public affairs the Imperial title had

already disappeared in the days of

George V 6 when India and Pakistan

became independent the Empire became the

Commonwealth and of the 58 past and

present members of that vague

organization only 16 have Elizabeth as

their head of state and

falling why did it matter so much to

protect and sustain

royalty partly perhaps it's more to do

with the queen herself than the

institution of monarchy Elizabeth the

Victoria Elizabeth II the rule of

elderly matriarchs seems to be

particularly proper to the

English and it may provide important

social

glue as the population of Britain became

more heterogeneous with substantial

immigration from commonwealth countries

by people who feel excluded from

political life and often from the

legitimate economy perhaps there was a

hope that the queen would be a focus of

patriotic attachment after all she's the

lynchpin of the Commonwealth its

graciously enthusiastic figure head and

promoting the image of a glamorous and

golden royalty above and outside

politics that is synonymous with Britain

may be a very useful way of creating

legitimacy for a state that might

otherwise look rather

shabby the last great moment of this Mrs

Camila Parker BS Alice ke's

great-granddaughter Diana said that on

the honeymoon he was more interested in

Reading eight books by Lawrence van

depost than in her

and he wore Charles Camila cufflinks and

when she became distressed she felt

strongly that the royal family turned

against

her in 1992 it all blew apart in what

the queen called her anos horis her

second son Andrew separated from his

wife Sarah Ferguson who was pictured

topless being kissed by her financial

advisor her daughter Princess Anne

divorced Captain Mark Phillips Charles

and Diana split up with spectacular

accusations being made in the press and

on television and Windsor Castle caught

fire that was when the ground really

began to shift at least when it was

explained that the 40 million repair

bill would be paid by the public there

was a huge Collective breath of no it

won't and so the queen decided it would

be much the wisest thing to offer to pay

70% of the cost she opened up some of

her homes to the public to raise the

cash there was still astonishingly

little direct criticism of the queen in

an age when television and the Press

have the power to pull down anyone the

queen and her mother were treated with

respect even

devotion but the rest of the royal

family had become fair game and were

subjected to a ferocious assault of

public

humiliation why did we support the royal

family and all their wealth why were we

giving giving them all this

money the Press pack was baing at their

heels that's when the queen agreed that

she should voluntarily start paying

income tax and refund the Parliamentary

allowances received by other members of

the royal

family but things didn't get any better

and the queen herself began to be

criticized in 1997 when Princess Diana

was killed in a car crash in

Paris we all remember the shock and

horror and the Deb about the lack of

public reaction by the senior members of

the royal

family there was a widespread feeling

that at that moment they were not in

fact part of the nation was the program

started by George V of integrating the

monarchy into the life of the nation

coming

unraveled instead of the Monarch playing

the role of warning and Advising the

Prime Minister which is supposed to be

her constitutional role the Prime

Minister warned and advised the

sovereign to take public action she had

to be seen to grieve or the monarchy

itself might be in

danger and now we wait to see what

happens

next the heir to the throne and his

mistress are forever tainted with the

image of the princess that was publicly

destroyed the queen is an old lady with

the Reign that begins to rival Victoria

in length can anyone be certain that the

country would accept her her son as

king there's always been a bargain at

the heart of monarchy in this country

the Monarch has always been dependent on

the people that bargain has been the key

to survival it began when William the

Conqueror realized that he and his

friends couldn't actually run a country

where they didn't speak the language or

know the laws Traditions or even the

geography it was restated in a series of

crises in which monarchs who tried to

rule without consent

was simply dumped Matilda Jane gray

Richard Cromwell James

II and to give that consent people need

to feel that The Sovereign is entitled

to be there and respects laws even

though no court can enforce them laws

which today probably include having to

pay

tax partly of course the institution is

sustained by the character of the queen

herself faced with enormous pressures

and a job from which there is no no

possibility of rest she has retained a

calm resilience and exquisite

constitutional carefulness which

guarantees her a respectful place in

history then what the British Monarchy

is certainly a great addition to the

gayety of

Nations partly as a soap opera partly as

a walking talking anachronism that makes

other heads of state visibly uneasy but

it does come at a price

and whether the price is too high for

the continued survival of this most

extraordinary form of government well

that of course will be the surprise

ending spend this Sunday evening

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[Music]