Original subtitles

This year, the Royal House of Windsor celebrates a hundred years

on the British throne.

They are now the most famous royal family in the world

and have prospered while other great dynasties have fallen.

They've seen their relatives overthrown, murdered and exiled,

overcome family feuds, fire and betrayal.

And they have always followed one crucial rule… survive,

whatever it takes, whatever the cost.

The Windsors learned the dark art of survival in the days of war

a century ago.

They've never forgotten it.

Now, Channel 4 can uncover their secrets with the help of

family insiders, royal experts and some of the most

closely guarded papers in the world.

We've combed through letters, diaries, government memos,

confidential royal reports and, for the first time,

cameras have been allowed into the Queen's personal

family archives at Windsor.

What we've found rips aside the mask of royal pomp to reveal the human

frailties and the secrets of the family that built

Britain's most powerful dynasty.

On the 1st of February 1947, the Royal Navy's flagship, HMS Vanguard,

slipped its icy moorings and began a long voyage south.

On-board were King George VI,

his wife, Queen Elizabeth, and his two daughters…

Elizabeth and Margaret.

They were heading for South Africa on the first royal tour

after the war, leaving a country in crisis.

We were facing an economic Dunkirk.

We were practically bankrupt as a nation and we needed to be

bailed out by the Americans.

But it wasn't just the British economy that was in crisis.

Now, personal letters and unseen colour archive

reveal the royal family was also in turmoil.

George VI was embarked on a vital mission to shore up Britain's

diminishing role on the world stage.

Princess Elizabeth was forced to face her own personal conflict

between love and duty to ensure the Windsors would be reborn

for the modern age.

Due at Cape Town on February the 17th,

Their Majesties and the princesses are assured of a tremendous welcome

by the people of the union.

With the people of Britain, we wish every success to the royal tour.

As the royal family steamed south on the first stage of their

historic voyage, they were leaving a Britain in the grip

of the worst winter on record.

Everything froze, the Thames froze, Big Ben froze… the ports froze.

The nation's imports came to a stop, practically, for several months.

The big freeze triggered chronic fuel shortages.

Leaving the country in such a state desperately worried the King.

In this series, our cameras have been allowed inside the Queen's

personal archive at Windsor Castle for the first time.

A letter held there reveals the depth of the King's despair.

"I am very worried over the extra privations which all of you at home"

"are having to put up with, the ghastly cold weather"

"with no light or fuel."

Publicly, the royal tour was billed as a way of saying thank you to the

people of South Africa for their contribution to the war effort.

But, privately, the King's mission was much more important…

to maintain his status as head of an empire on the cusp of great change.

The Empire's still viewed as very valuable in the post-war years

because it's seen as being crucial to Britain's recovery.

It's seen as being crucial to Britain's position in the world.

George VI was the King Emperor and he had no wish to go down

to just being a king.

The map of the world was being redrawn and new superpowers

were rising in the shape of Russia and of America,

and no-one quite knew what the new map was going to look like,

when large chunks of the world map were no longer painted pink.

The steady decline of the British Empire worried the King greatly.

In 1944, walking in a plantation of trees in Windsor Great Park,

where each tree represented a different dominion, he lamented.

"This is Singapore. There is Malaya. Burma, too, over there."

"The time may soon come when we shall have to cut out"

"the Indian tree and I wonder how many more."

At the time of the tour,

George VI had been on the throne for ten years.

The second son of George V, he had never expected to be King.

He reluctantly took the throne after the shock abdication of his brother,

Edward VIII, in 1936.

Sickly, nervous, with a hatred of public events,

George VI had been known to shout.

"How I hate being a king!"

George VI was shy, modest, diffident.

A lot of people thought that he was a dimwit and he

certainly wasn't very bright.

Hugh Dalton, the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Labour,

said that he was as inanimate as an animate monarch could be.

The reluctant king had by his side a woman he described as

"the most marvellous person in the world."

George VI had never sat easily on the throne.

He really relied on his wife, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Married to George for nearly 30 years, a friend once described

Queen Elizabeth as "a marshmallow made on a welding machine."

I think it's rather an apt description

because the outer… lots of layers …was very, very soft and spongy

and like a bit of…

What's that awful pink things you get on fairgrounds?

Underneath was quite a steely heart.

The couple's high visibility and service during the war

had made them extremely popular.

The royal family had a good war.

They did sterling work.

The Queen Mother famously toured the East End,

said she was glad when Buckingham Palace was bombed

because now they could look the East End in the face.

'They shared the trials and dangers of their people and their own home

'at Buckingham Palace suffered in the Blitz.'

So at a time when Britain was fighting for her life,

the royal family were vital.

But the peace was always going to be harder.

And so it proved.

Paralysed by crippling austerity,

more goods were rationed in 1947 than during the war.

King George VI had visibly aged.

"I feel burned out. I have been suffering from an awful reaction,"

"from the strain of the war, I suppose."

Queen Elizabeth reckoned that he'd never really recovered from having

to rescue the monarchy from the catastrophe that had been visited on

it by his brother.

He smoked heavily. The health problems that would kill him early

were already there and visible, so he was living on his nerves.

The voyage to South Africa would take nearly three weeks.

It was hoped this would give the king plenty of time to relax and

unwind with his family.

For his daughters, 20-year-old Elizabeth and 16-year-old Margaret,

the trip would be a liberation.

This was the first trip abroad that the princesses had ever made.

They'd been terribly cosseted, carefully brought up,

and now they were getting a taste of freedom.

The two princesses had spent much of the war isolated in Windsor Castle,

away from the bombing in London,

a dull life that had bothered the King.

"Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet."

'And fine weather continuing to grace the voyage.

'Everyone made the most of it.

'The princesses, for example, are here seen enjoying deck games

'in company with a number of mid-ship men.

'And when I say enjoying, I mean just that.

'Well, you can see for yourselves.'

In a deliberate PR move,

the Windsors had decided to allow a newsreel cameraman

to follow their journey.

The images were designed to convey a close-knit royal family.

This is all about family values.

Being seen with your family is, in many ways,

just the best thing to be doing.

You see the princesses playing around with the young officers

in a way we almost never actually see.

Elizabeth, she's almost playing like a child.

The princesses were the only young women

among a crew of nearly 1,700 men.

In a letter to her nanny, Elizabeth revealed her excitement.

"There are one or two real smashers"

"and I bet you'd have a wonderful time if you were here."

Behind the fun and games, a family drama was playing out.

The King, who relied totally on his nuclear family,

had created a close-knit unit.

"Our family, us four, the royal family,"

"must remain together with additions, of course,"

"at suitable moments."

Now this cosy royal quartet was under threat.

In the autumn of 1946,

Princess Elizabeth had dropped the bombshell that her cousin,

Prince Philip of Greece, had proposed.

The news that she'd accepted shocked her father.

The King wanted to maintain "us four", that's to say the King,

the Queen and the two daughters together.

This was the royal firm.

And "us four" was about to be broken up by this Greek god Philip.

South Africa was fast approaching.

Princess Elizabeth would have to put her feelings on hold and prove

she was up to the top job.

During the brutal winter of 1947,

King George VI had embarked on what would be his last imperial tour.

He was heading for South Africa on a mission to save

Britain's crumbling empire

and reinforce the Windsors' place in the world.

The tour would launch his heir presumptive,

the young Princess Elizabeth,

on to the world stage.

The party had nearly three weeks at sea.

The King took full advantage of this time

to instruct his eldest daughter.

She learnt so much from her father.

On that long voyage to South Africa,

there was an awful lot of sitting beside her father

being instructed in the art of kingship, or queenship.

As part of the campaign to launch the Princess,

the tour was to be covered in great detail.

Along with the newsreel cameramen,

the Palace had recruited the BBC to undertake one of the most complex

overseas radio broadcasts in its history.

The first royal journey overseas since 1939.

No more fitting destination could been chosen.

The BBC equipped the ship with its old radio studio

and assigned a famous reporter, Frank Gillard.

He wrote later, "never in peace time was the mobility of the microphone"

"more completely demonstrated."

6,000 miles away, South Africa waits to welcome them.

The BBC was recruited as a propagandist arm of royalty.

Frank Gillard had been a war reporter and was very much

the voice of Pathe news.

London shivered in an intermittent snowstorm,

among gas and electricity cuts.

But the Princess Elizabeth was in a gay mood.

The BBC was well recognised as being the best form of promotion

for the Royals. Even now, newscasters,

when Royals are mentioned,

you get this sort of collusive little simper on their part

as though "we're all in this together",

"we're all monarchists together and we couldn't possibly criticise them."

As the vanguard approached the Equator,

the camera recorded one of the more bizarre events of the tour.

The whole ship's Company, Royals included,

dressed up as Neptune's court and took part in the

Crossing The Line ceremony.

Among those dealt with was Frank Gillard,

who got especially severe treatment, not because he represents the BBC,

but because he had previously flown over the line without a certificate.

The Princesses received special treatment of a very different kind.

Instead of being ducked, a gentle powdering.

Amphitrite is said to have interceded with Neptune

on their behalf.

"There was about a thousand initiates."

"I don't know whether they got through them or not,"

"as we withdrew after about an hour"

"when it seems to have degenerated"

"into everybody ducking everybody else!"

The King's most senior adviser, his private secretary, Tommy Lascelles,

recorded the hi-jinks in his diary of the tour.

Following his death in 1981,

Lascelles' private diaries and letters were donated

to the Churchill archives in Cambridge.

Author Duff Hart-Davis is one of the select few

who has been allowed to study them.

Never before seen on television,

we have been given special permission to see a selection.

He wrote in ink, always in ink.

All those thousands of words, never

a word crossed out, incredibly fluent.

Lascelles' letters and diaries help us unlock the character of the king.

Tommy was a much more intelligent man than the King.

Much better educated.

He used to lose his temper in the most catastrophic way

and the private secretaries had a word for it…

they called Nashville.

Because… there's a note here saying,

"'Nashville', the name used by me to describe"

the King's sudden outbursts of temper,

accompanied by a gnashing of his teeth

and raising his clenched fists to heaven…

cf. King Lear.

The King's volatile state of mind

was made worse by the news from home.

All over Britain, the lights were going out.

Overnight orders for the most drastic fuel cuts ever experienced.

Silent fractures, day and night temperatures below zero.

The winter of 1947 was a complete disaster.

And the King was indeed widely criticised

for going off to the sunshine to have a nice holiday.

Writing to her grandmother, Princess Elizabeth shared her concern.

We hear such terrible stories of the weather and the fuel situation.

I, for one, felt rather guilty

that we had got away to the sun while

everyone else was freezing.

The Princess wasn't the only royal who felt the urge to write.

South Africa was less than a day away.

The king could no longer contain his anxiety.

He cabled Prime Minister Clement Attlee,

offering to fly home immediately.

"The following statement was issued from 10 Downing St last night."

"The King has sent a telegram from HMS Vanguard,"

"thanking the Prime Minister for keeping His Majesty in touch"

"with developments in the fuel crisis."

Clement Attlee's grandson Richard

believes his decisive grandfather would

have made a swift calculation.

What my grandfather would have thought is,

is the King coming back going to help?

No.

If the king did come back, that would just alarm people more.

Attlee wrote back to the King

telling him firmly to stick to his mission.

"I hope that the King will not add to his burden by anxiety about his"

"absence from this country at this time."

"It is realised that the King's duties must carry him on occasions"

"to his dominions and he has kept in touch with affairs of state"

"when he is abroad."

Attlee released a statement to the press.

This unprecedented move underlined the crucial importance

of the King's mission.

The imperial crisis was more important than the domestic crisis,

because that cut at the roots of Great Britain.

We were very shortly destined to become Little England

rather than Great Britain.

On the 17th of February 1947, the Vanguard docked in Cape Town.

King George VI became the first reigning British monarch

to set foot in South Africa.

Pre-tour nerves about how the royal party would be received

quickly disappeared.

This rare colour footage, never before shown on British TV,

reveals that the welcome was as warm as the weather.

"We landed yesterday in a temp of 105 degrees."

"A real Bombay day."

"Everything was most successful,"

"with unexpectedly large crowds and vociferous cheering"

"throughout the day."

The Royal family were absolutely welcomed

and it was a terrific occasion.

There was a civic reception on the Grand Parade

in front of the City Hall.

Again, they streets were filled and thousands were there to see

Their Majesties and the princesses arrive at the Royal Pavilion.

It was pageantry, it was lively, it was a terrific spectacle.

And you can see from the newsreels

the enthusiasm they had for a person,

who was, after all, descended from the great, white, Imperial Queen,

Queen Victoria, who had been revered throughout the empire.

Here was a living fetish that they could appreciate.

It wasn't just the pro-British

white South Africans who welcomed the King.

Many black South Africans saw the British monarchy

as a force for change.

There had been a very strong tradition of loyalism to the Crown,

going back to the 19th century.

As far as black people were concerned, it was Britain,

it was the British crown that was responsible

for the ending of slavery, for the freeing of slaves.

Essentially, large numbers of black people viewed the Crown

as a force of enlightenment, as a force that gave black people a place.

But Britain's ailing King Emperor

was now charged with flying the flag for

a mother country that was peddling an illusion.

It was this need to project Britain's image

as being still a powerful player

and the image of the British battleship,

the Norman Hartnell-designed dresses,

the extraordinarily lavish tour

boasted a material power and strength that

was not actually there any longer.

Every day for ten weeks,

Princess Elizabeth waited eagerly for letters from her boyfriend,

while the King struggled with his impossible schedule.

It was like an enormous shopping list

and it's down to the Royal family to try and deliver.

King George VI and his royal party landed in South Africa

on the 17th of February 1947.

One of the first to welcome them was the Prime Minister,

General Jan Smuts.

Although he'd been a rebel leader during the Boer War,

he now wanted South Africa to remain in the British Empire.

He had a close relationship with the Windsors.

He knew George V very well and began to develop a similarly close

relationship with George VI.

Smuts claimed the tour was partly designed to help the King rest

after the strains of the war,

but in reality, he had a different agenda.

His Unionist party was losing ground.

Lined up against him he had on one side the white nationalists,

with their policy of apartheid.

On the other, an emerging radical black movement,

who were demanding better rights for urban black workers.

Smuts badly needed some royal magic to help him stay in power.

South Africa was in a situation of total turmoil.

There had been a series of uprisings and protests.

The urban townships were in ferment,

so there was a sense in which South Africa was at

a very, very tense moment.

He wanted to maintain and foster the links with England.

The Royal family, looking good, behaving well,

were one of the biggest guns anyone with that agenda could deploy.

Smuts had organised a punishing itinerary.

The royal party would travel on this gleaming white train,

crisscrossing South Africa, Rhodesia and Basutoland.

On a journey of over 10,000 miles,

they stopped at every opportunity for a royal meet and greet.

Whether it was in the rural areas or the cities,

or little wayside huts and stations

as the great white train moved through the country,

hundreds of thousands of people came to see the King.

The next two months were an endless round of balls, banquets, pageants,

march pasts and tribal meetings.

It was like an enormous shopping list.

You've got traditional imperial concerns of a royal family

visiting territories overseas.

On the other hand, you've got the ambitions of the South African

political elite. You've then also got the British government's hopes

for maintaining links with South Africa,

and it's down to the royal family to try and deliver.

This was stage-managed by the powers that be at home

and the South African authorities.

The King really was a pawn during the tour.

Accompanying the white train was another full of British

and South African press.

There was no escape for a royal party who found themselves

under constant scrutiny.

The first thing reporters noticed was the King's worries about

the domestic crisis.

British journalist James Cameron wrote later

that the King kept saying…

"I should be at home and not lolling around in the summer sun."

His private secretary Tommy Lascelles had the difficult task

of trying to soothe the King.

In a letter to his wife, he confessed to feeling the strain.

One day succeeds another in our pilgrimage here.

It has all been highly successful, but as always on these things,

a bit exhausting, and not made less so by occasional internal storms.

I think the internal storms is another reference to what we called

Nashville before… the King losing his temper.

One of the few people who could calm him down was his wife,

Queen Elizabeth. Day and night she and the King were expected

to be on parade.

On one occasion he was woken up at 11pm and told he must get up

and greet the expectant crowd.

He was fuming, but the Queen calmly told him…

"Well, you must go out and we'll get you back as soon as possible."

A seasoned campaigner, Queen Elizabeth dutifully smiled,

waved and charmed her way through every massive crowd.

But away from the public gaze, she was afraid for her husband.

A letter, now held in the royal archive,

reveals a family in distress.

The tour is being very strenuous, as I feared it would be,

and doubly hard for Bertie, who feels he should be at home,

but there is very little he could do now.

The King had hoped the tour would shake off memories of British

colonialism and show that the new Commonwealth would be more equal

and inclusive.

But the racist Afrikaans establishment had organised the tour

in such a way as to make such gestures almost impossible.

There were civic balls and garden parties

and musical celebrations for the whites.

'It was certainly a glittering occasion.

A segregated ceremony, perhaps in a township,

or usually on a piece of land way outside for the African residents.

Even on the street, there were real attempts to make sure that coloureds

and whites would not share the same literal space.

As he processed along in his car,

on the right-hand side there were white children,

on the left-hand side there were black children.

The division was palpable and embarrassing.

The segregation that we see during the royal tour is a mirror image

of the kind of segregation that we see in South Africa.

There are physical barriers, railway lines, highways.

Black people have no right to permanent residency and black people

are workers, white people are supervisors.

Everywhere the royal party went, they were under the watchful gaze

of the Afrikaner police.

There's much more choreography and control than the royal family

would've been used to. These aren't situations in which you can go

and wander in the East End and be with your people,

and this obviously wears upon the royal family.

A South African journalist reported that when the King did manage

to lose his escort, he remarked to his wife…

"Well, Mother, we've shaken off the Gestapo at last."

Matters came to a head when the King tried to reward black soldiers

for their part in the war.

When George VI tried to pin the medals on himself,

he was firmly told, no.

His flesh was not allowed to be sullied by black flesh.

He got the medal out of the box, handed it to an official,

who pinned it on the chest of the person being awarded it.

As far as white South Africa was concerned,

black South Africans had always been painted as unhygienic,

carriers of disease, carriers of plague.

So it's not at all surprising that close contact was discouraged

because that would've negated the claims of white South Africa

that black South Africans were dirty people,

who needed to be held at a distance.

Deeply resentful of the nationalists' behaviour,

the exasperated King burst out to the Queen…

"I'd like to shoot them all."

To which she calmly replied…

"But, Bertie, you can't shoot them all."

The Royal train progressed beyond South Africa into the British colony

of Basutoland.

Even here the South African government tried to impose

equally divisive restrictions. But this time a furious King hit back.

In a letter, the wife of the British High Commissioner observed…

"The king said, 'Righto, he'd shake hands with everyone.'"

"And when it came to the investiture,"

"he would jolly well pin on the medals himself."

The vast, enthusiastic crowds

suggested the tour was a huge success.

But behind the scenes, the personal tensions seemed to have taken

their toll on the King's health.

Pale and gaunt, he lost 17lbs.

Near a beach just outside Port Elizabeth,

he ordered the train to stop.

As he got out, journalist James Cameron recorded…

A solitary figure in a blue bath robe carrying a towel.

All alone on a great empty beach, the King of England stepped into the

Indian Ocean and jumped up and down.

The loneliest man, at that moment, in the world.

In contrast, the two princesses seemed liberated by the tour.

In a frank letter to his wife,

the King's private secretary Tommy Lascelles recorded…

"From the inside, the most satisfactory feature of the whole"

"business is the remarkable development of Princess E."

"She has come on in a most surprising way,"

"and all in the right direction."

Like her father, Princess Elizabeth had not been born to be monarch.

She had the role forced on her when her uncle Edward VIII abdicated.

She was wholesome and level-headed

and rather sensible and not over-brainy and capable of fun,

but with this sort of shadow of responsibility.

South Africa was a chance for fun, adventure and new experiences,

far removed from grey, war-ravaged Britain.

The Princess was once overheard saying…

Mummy and Pop were just about done in,

but Margaret and I are enjoying every minute of it.

They'd never really been out of Britain.

They'd never seen somewhere sunny.

They're travelling, you know. They're travelling.

This must've been absolutely extraordinary,

seeing the size, the colour, the heat.

And the South Africans loaned them horses,

so they went for these lovely rides along the beach.

"She has got a perfectly natural power of enjoying herself"

"without any trace of shyness. Not a great sense of humour,"

"but a good healthy sense of fun."

She actually developed the habit if her parents looked like being late,

of chivvying them along,

or if the Queen Mother was talking too long to anybody,

Princess Elizabeth would give her a little jab with the point of her

sunshade and say, "Get a move on."

"For a child of her years, she has got an astonishing solicitude"

"for other people's comfort."

"Such unselfishness is not a normal characteristic of that family."

By early April, with the tour coming to an end,

all eyes were now fixed on Princess Elizabeth.

As her 21st birthday loomed,

she was due to make a speech that would launch her

onto the world stage.

The biggest test of her young life so far.

I declare before you all that my whole life,

whether it be long or short,

shall be devoted to your service.

On the 21st of April 1947,

Princess Elizabeth delivered her 21st birthday speech live

from Government House, Cape Town.

It was designed to define her role, and the British royal family's

relationship to a rapidly changing world.

Let me begin by saying thank you to all the thousands of kind people who

have sent me messages of goodwill.

She began by placing herself firmly on the side of youth.

Will you, the youth of the British family of nations,

let me speak on my birthday as your representative?

The speech was a marketing tool.

It was intended to promote the Queen-in-waiting and to smooth

the transition from the old Empire to the new Commonwealth.

George VI comforted himself with the idea that the Empire would be

replaced by a free association of self-governing nations.

The British monarch would provide the link between them.

That way Britain and the Windsors

would maintain their place on the world stage.

If we all go forward together, with an unwavering faith,

a high courage and a quiet heart,

we shall be able to make of this ancient Commonwealth

an even grander thing,

more free and a more powerful influence for good in the world

than it has been in the greatest days of our forefathers.

She emphasises issues relating to shared traditions and values,

but avowedly says this is not like the empires of old,

this is about common humanity, it's about multiracialism,

it's about multinational relationships.

So I think what she's able to do remarkably adeptly is, if you like,

shed the skin of talking to the Empire in a particularly,

if you like, Anglo-Saxon way.

This is Empire-lite.

Elizabeth completely bought in to the idea.

As she signed off, she made a nun-like vow

that has come to define her reign.

I declare before you all

that my whole life, whether it be long or short,

shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial

family to which we all belong.

The Princess's grandmother, Queen Mary, tuned in and was duly moved.

My darling Lilibet's birthday…

her broadcast was perfect and there were the most charming articles

in the papers, really moving.

And, of course, I wept.

For many years the palace implied that the 21-year-old princess

had written the speech herself.

Not only did Elizabeth own it, she utterly took it into her heart,

but it was as if someone else's words

actually became her own manifesto.

But in this recently discovered letter,

Lascelles wrote to the real author of the speech,

Times leader writer Dermot Morrah.

"My dear Morrah, I've been reading drafts for many years now

"but I cannot recall one that has so completely satisfied me

and left me feeling that no single word should be altered".

I think it is remarkable that they didn't want to change a word,

because it's this 21-year-old girl,

written by a 51-year-old man and he does still have to have this royal

tone, but combined with this 21-year-old girl

just speaking to the family.

I think it's quite interesting that he uses the word "family".

That's where the royal family was moving at time,

from being an empire to a Commonwealth family,

and that's what the Queen's job was when she was growing up

as a princess, to bring in that kind of message.

It's hard to know if Livvy Utley's grandfather knew that his words

would resonate down the years.

But nearly 70 years later, although some of the speech sounds archaic,

the Princess's declaration still rings true.

I declare before you all that my whole life,

whether it be long or short…

Even now, when it should seem like

a ludicrously outdated piece of kitsch,

if you like, or of pretension, somehow still, it still resonates.

She never retracted it and she has continued to abide by it,

which I think is very significant,

because it signalled the changing of the guard.

The King was old and frail and fragile,

the princess was young and vigorous.

She was the future matriarch, and the strength of the Windsors,

I think, has been, it's been a matriarchy.

The fireworks that lit up Cape Town harbour signalled not only the end

of the Princess's birthday, but also the end of the tour.

Three months, over 10,000 miles,

and hundreds of thousands of well-wishers and spectators.

On the surface, it looked like a huge success.

Even the previously sceptical King believed things had gone well.

In a letter to Jan Smuts, he wrote…

"Now that our visit is over,

"I don't mind confessing to you alone

"that I was rather fearful about it.

"I firmly believe it has,

"our visit has, altered the conception of monarchy".

Three weeks later,

the Windsors' triumphant return to Portsmouth was in stark contrast

to their muted departure.

'Vast crowds have collected to see the homecoming.

From every point where they could get a view,

people have been waiting to wave and cheer.

A few months later, the crowds had more to cheer about…

the marriage of Philip and Elizabeth was announced.

It was, in Churchill's words,

"A flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel".

The crowds waited with tense excitement for the appearance

of His Majesty, the King, and for the bride.

Just days after the wedding,

the King wrote to his daughter

apologising for taking her away from Philip

and making her wait to announce their engagement.

"I am so glad you think the long wait before your engagement"

"for the best."

"I was rather afraid that you had thought I was being hard-hearted"

"about it. I was so anxious for you to come to South Africa,"

"as you knew."

Even the dress,

it was embroidered with symbols taken from Botticelli's Primavera.

Flowers, heads of wheat,

to symbolise fruitfulness and new growth.

So, in a sense, the wedding itself was a great turning point,

because it really was meant to show the rebirth

that was hopefully coming.

By 1948, the rebirth was already faltering,

as one of the tour's main objectives failed.

Smuts lost the election,

the nationalists swept to power and set South Africa on the path

to racial and political isolation.

The tour had waved the flag, it had gone down very well,

and it had changed Princess Elizabeth,

she had grown up on that tour.

But, of course, as far as South Africa was concerned, no.

Apartheid came in, South Africa left the Commonwealth.

It wasn't just the Empire that was failing.

Four years later, the King succumbed to lung cancer.

London bids farewell to a king.

Nobody expected him to die as suddenly as he did,

and in fact he died in his sleep after a day in which he spent

happily shooting hares.

With her father dead,

it fell to the new young Queen to make good on her solemn promise.

My whole life, whether it be long or short,

shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial

family to which we all belong.

On the 2nd of June 1953, the world watched

as Britain entered a new age.

You can trace a path from the war years, the tour,

Princess Elizabeth's birthday speech and now everything coming together

in this extraordinary piece of pageantry.

The coronation is just a really well brought off ceremony.

Flummery and prettiness and spectacle, great dresses.

And silly old dukes taking their hats off or on, and shouting

"vivat, vivat," with amazing music, great music.

The sumptuous ceremony was designed to show off the last vestiges

of Britain's imperial past.

The Queen's gown was embroidered with the emblems of all

the newly created Commonwealth countries.

Filmed in colour and broadcast around the world,

the coronation coincided with Churchill's return to power.

A symbolic line had been drawn under the Labour government

and crippling post-war austerity.

The Windsors were back, stronger and more powerful.

It was a kind of magic,

and the combination of monarchical magic and technological magic came

together to give the British public an experience which they'd never

had before, and which would launch a new Elizabethan age,

which must be better than the drab and dreary and depressing

and, indeed, toxic era that had gone before.

For Elizabeth, the coronation and her Cape Town speech set the tone

for her entire reign… a new beginning,

but very much influenced by the old way of doing things,

where duty and tradition vie with progress and personal feelings.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Queen's devotion to the

Commonwealth, which some now regard as an irrelevance.

The resonance between the Commonwealth and the Queen is one of

the most signal elements of her reign to this day.

So in many ways the role of head of the Commonwealth was one that she

very much took to herself and has defined.

The Queen is still the glue which holds together

this disparate collection of nations. With Britain in a period

of massive social and political upheaval,

it remains to be seen whether the Commonwealth

will survive her reign, but while empires rise and fall,

for the Windsors, what counts is the survival of the dynasty.

Next time… New documents reveal a secret struggle at the heart of the

royal family, as Prince Philip's bid to reinvent the Windsors

puts the royal marriage under strain.