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 programs 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

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 the fifth

actually took over the running of the

country secret personal rule for a few

days in 1931

he believed it was 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 on

[Music]

in 1867 Walter Badger wrote a book on

the British constitution which said that

it had two parts the efficient part and

the dignified the dignified part was

headed by the Queen it was a piece of

theatre 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

Badger's book the government encouraged

people to believe it so did the royal

family then and now well they would

wouldn't then the truth has been rather

different obviously when the 18 year old

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 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 the fourth and William before

but he died when she was a baby

a beau 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 abyssal in love with

her first cousin the 20 year old younger

son of the Duke of saxe-coburg-gotha

[Music]

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

bedchamber when his wig government fell

and Robert Peel came to power Peale

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 Peale 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 Peale 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 throne all she

had as her own was the revenue of the

Duchy of Lancaster 27 thousand pounds a

year the Sunday Times Rich List for 1990

showed Elizabeth the second as being

worth six point seven billion pounds

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 as she lost 97 percent of

her money on the horses did she give it

all away 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 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 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 stuff unless it was a

kitchen or scullery 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 laying a fire was the

Lord stewards job but lighting it the

Lord Chamberlain's 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 knot 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 Arts and

Industry no one should have doubted that

he could make it happen of course they

did that 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 the

Victorian

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 influencing 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 round 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 Defence 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 Eye wasn't allowed

in Albert's own role was pretty secret

he was in reality acting as King of

England that 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 utter

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 I was born on the Isle of

Wight

Sandringham in Norfolk and her favorite

Balmoral here she hid for 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 at 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 her reign

three hundred and eighty five thousand

pounds a year from the government it was

more than she needed her court was

nowhere near as expensive as for

instance George the fourths have been

and without her being visible many

people could see no point in our having

this money by the 1870s there was a

strong republican movement expressing

itself in newspapers large public

meetings and environment 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 throat no British statesman

wanted to see the royal family given its

marching orders when their marriages

offered such a useful back door into the

chancellors 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 in

Bismarck'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

eighteen-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 Tsar Alexander the second

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 little lady there was a

downside to all this royal into 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 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 their 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

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 and 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 governed and

the grand theatricality of Dizz railings

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

[Music]

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 victorious 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 at once seemed endangered and she

drained 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's would leave the 19th

century without the security of the

Great Mother in Victoria would cast a

long shadow Elizabeth the second coming

to the throne fifty-one years later

would be the first of her successors who

had no personal memory offer her oldest

son Albert Edward the new King Edward

the seventh was already 59 years old the

funeral of the Queen Empress and Edwards

coronation involved a huge invention of

traditions and ceremonies and in this

atmosphere it's not surprising that

Edward was granted an annular Lance even

greater than Victoria's a few voices

said that it was unnecessary for the

King to have as big an income as Andrew

Carnegie 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 yardstick of her hero

worship of the perfect man

his father naturally young Bertie had

rebelled 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 rein him in princess

Alex of Denmark was beautiful but she

was also deaf and dull company with

nothing much else to do Bertie had

become the living epitome of the life of

the Belle époque a life of champagne

drinking cigar smoking horse-racing

gambling and entertaining showgirls and

pretty a 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 because a man has a black face

and a different religion than our own

there is no reason why he should be

treated as a brute he sat on a

commission on working class 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 Keppel who

understood 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 on tante

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 reaction reviews 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 threw up legislation to take

that power away from the Lord's 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 throne he was the

late Kings 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 brothers shoes he'd left his job and

married the woman who'd been betrothed

Clarence a relative called Princess Mary

of Teck 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 brake 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 Marshal 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

saxe-coburg-gotha to Windsor and stop

being a German Prince and Duke of Saxony

revolution was a real danger cousin

Nicky the Tsar 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 adorn the offer the

Bolsheviks took over Russia in October

and Nicholas and his family was

slaughtered

to protect the Kings reputation it was

put about that lloyd-george had refused

to rescue them despite the king's

cleaning then in november 1918 a german

revolution forced the kaiser cousin

Willy to abdicate and Germany gave up

the war the whole political landscape

had been transformed there had been six

Emperor's when George was crowned by

1925 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 end strongly that she

expected to be given them sometimes take

them anyway so that embarrassed aides

had to quietly return them later in 1924

Ramsay MacDonald became Britain's first

Labour Prime Minister the old political

establishment 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 benefits and the

pay of public servants and the Armed

Forces the labor cabinet wouldn't do it

and MacDonald 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 Ramsay MacDonald 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 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 in Bogor 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

tailspin 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 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 Keller's

appointment was hidden 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 his form of

course and in 1931 the Dominions the

white bits of the Empire Canada

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 when George was 70 and dying his

doctor Lord

Dawson decided to ensure that the death

would not be reported first in the

vulgar evening papers you've heard of

Lord Dawson of Penn

he's killed any number of men and that's

why we sing oh god save the king from

Bertrand Lord Dawson Penn Lord Dawson

met the times his deadline by giving the

King a fatal injection called a

whiz-bang George was told he would soon

be convalescing in Bogner his last words

were bugger Bognor The Times was told

he'd said how is the 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 damn well going to see to

it the by children are frightened of me

Edward had escaped by travelling widely

and as the world's most eligible

bachelor enjoyed affairs with a number

of marriage winning culminating in the

love of his life

the twice married elegant American

Wallis Simpson

at the time of Edwards 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 Wallis 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 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 Wallis was said to be

a lesbian or a man engaged in a

sadomasochistic relationship with Edward

the crucial issue wasn't even that the

head of the church shouldn't marry a

divorcee or that secret investigators

had reported that Wallis Simpson had two

other lovers a car salesman and an Irish

Pierre

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 Ribbentrop 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 throne Albert was crowned as king

George the six he was 18 months younger

than Edward and completely lacked his

brothers social grace he stammered he

was shy but at least he was safely

married to Elizabeth bowes-lyon the

daughter of a minor Scottish aristocrat

the first royal to legally marry a

commoner since an reveal

[Music]

[Music]

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

fervor especially as they had publicly

supported Neville Chamberlain's

appeasement of Hitler when the royal

couple visited the first bomb sites they

were booed what's the 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 any more 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 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

restoring the monarchy to its central

place in British life it had vanished

virtually everywhere else there had been

16 monarchies 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 seem 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 ten 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 pubs without removing

their hats by her side in the coronation

coach wrote her husband like Albert he

would never be crowned Philip Duke of

Edinburgh was from the greek and danish

royal house of

schleswig-holstein-sonderburg-glücksburg

he had no surname he was given the name

of one of the branches of Elizabeth's

family man Patton 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 thirty

secretaries maids treasurer's and

housekeepers 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 of the class war

declarations of we other masters now had

come an agreement that the government

would take over the cost of running

Buckingham Palace

[Music]

now the 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 rapes on Sandringham and

Palmyra 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 company's 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 Labour

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 funk the whole thing from

Texas we each contribute 61 pence a year

of the last count that money just over

36 million pounds 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 Altrincham wrote an

article arguing for a modernized

monarchy he called the court complacent

and out of touch said the Queen was a

pretty schoolgirl and said that the

monarchy should not be as it was

intimately associated with the upper

classes Wow

the duke of argyll said that he should

be hanged drawn and quartered and the

BBC immediately dropped him from any

questions

in fact Altrincham had got him wrong

lavish splendor was just what most of

the public wanted from their monarchy

they would have despised the 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 the 6th when India and

Pakistan became independent the Empire

became the Commonwealth and of the 58th

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

1st Victoria Elizabeth the second the

rule of elderly matriarch

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 linchpin of the

Commonwealth

it's graciously enthusiastic forgetting

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. Camilla

parker-bowles

Alice kepples great-granddaughter Diana

said that on the honeymoon he was more

interested in reading eight books by

Lawrence and the Post than in her and he

wore Charles Camilla 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 annus horribilis her

second son Andrew separated from his

wife Sarah Ferguson who was pictured

topless being kissed by her financial

adviser 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 forty million pound

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 matched the wisest thing to

offer to pay 70 percent 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 had 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 them

all this money the press pack was baying

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 debate 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 a reign that begins to rival

Victoria's in length can anyone be

certain that the country would accept

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

without consent were simply dumped

Mathilda

Jane Grey Richard Cromwell James the

second 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 possibility of rest

she has retained a calm resilience and

exquisite constitutional carefulness

which guarantees her a respectful place

in history in what the British monarchy

is certainly a great addition to the

gaiety 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 will

that of course will be the surprise

ending

and this Sunday evening exploring

ancient Egypt beginning with Michael

woods

top 10 sites that's tonight from sex

coming up the story at the strongest

sharpest blade that's ever been made a

decisive weapon

[Music]