Original subtitles

This year, the Royal House of Windsor celebrates 100 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.

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 secrets of the family that

built Britain's most powerful dynasty.

It is extremely difficult sometimes to keep a straight face when

the Home Secretary said to me, "There's a gorilla coming in."

So I said, "What an extraordinary remark to make",

"very unkind about anybody," and I stood in the middle of the room

and pressed the bell, the doors opened and there was a gorilla.

I had the most terrible trouble in keeping… you know,

he had a short body, long arms.

And I had the most appalling trouble.

On 21 June 1969, an astonished British public saw something

for the very first time.

A fly-on-the-wall documentary showed a relaxed Queen telling

stories around her dining room table.

The Royal Family documentary more than any other moment

humanised the Royal Family.

It meant that people saw them for the first time really as a family

like them and it opened the doors to everything else that followed.

Overnight, the Windsors went from distant icons to familiar faces.

It was the final victory in a 20 year battle

to modernise the Royal Family.

But the Royal responsible wasn't born a Windsor at all.

Prince Phillip was an outsider,

determined to drag the Windsors into the modern age.

There is this battle that's being fought behind the walls of

the Palace.

But Philip's impatient style lead to hostility from

the old guard.

The Queen Mother said he was a Hun, he was rough and overbearing.

Now, using documents never before seen by historians, and revealing

previously unknown meetings between senior royals,

we tell the story of one man's controversial struggle

to assert his authority and relaunch the Royal Family.

Stay as you are or adapt and change because if you don't you die.

22 years earlier, the British public had been treated to

a far more formal Royal performance.

The wedding of Princess Elizabeth to the newly created Duke of

Edinburgh, Philip Mountbatten.

'November 20, 1947 and London's background of misty grey

became the setting of the greatest royal event

the capital has seen since the coronation.

Born a Greek prince,

the 26-year-old Philip was a war hero and decorated naval officer.

Intelligent and driven, Philip was a natural leader.

Although Elizabeth was next in line to the throne,

for now it was his career that came first.

In October 1949, Philip was sent to the British naval base on Malta.

There he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and took charge of

his first ship, HMS Magpie.

Philip was always ambitious as a naval officer.

He always had his eye on the main chance.

He hoped to go right to the top of the Admiralty.

He felt this was his destiny.

Meanwhile, Philip's young wife was happy to take a backseat.

Within a year of marriage,

Princess Elizabeth had produced a male heir, Prince Charles.

Followed by a daughter, Princess Anne.

That duty out of the way,

she was free to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

She could, for the first time, do more or less what she wanted.

She could be like a normal young woman.

She could go to the hairdresser on her own.

She could drive around the island.

She could go to restaurants with her husband,

go on picnics and all the while the Maltese people left them alone.

So Malta for her represented a great sort of feeling of freedom.

But the couple's Maltese idyll was not to last.

By February 1952, Elizabeth's father, George VI,

was suffering from lung cancer.

The young couple were asked to take over

a royal tour to Australia and New Zealand, stopping en route in Kenya.

One of the press corps on the trip was

the 22-year-old photographer John Jochimsen.

One day a chap off the East African Standard had got the news

through from his paper that the King had died.

'The heart of the nation stops, the King is dead.

It had been released to the world but it hadn't got to the Queen.

We went down to the lodge.

This person came out and said Her Majesty requests that

no pictures be taken.

In those days, unlike today with the paparazzi,

we put our cameras down in the dirt and just stood there.

Aged just 25, Elizabeth was suddenly head of state to millions

across the globe.

From the first she made plain that a new monarch did not mean

a new style of reign.

It was very important for Elizabeth

to follow the template which had been set down by her father.

After all he was the man who stabilised the monarchy after

the abdication.

George VI's sober, traditional rule

was a life raft to the Queen as she began her reign.

In my experience, so much of her thinking,

particularly in her early years,

is what her father did.

So often she'd say to me, "My father did it this way,"

"my father told me that."

The Queen's desire to do things her father's way also

stemmed from her own cautious nature.

There are stories about the Queen's childhood which suggests she was

a rather conservative character and

somebody who very much valued order.

There are stories about her keeping all her shoes very tidy.

But the flipside to that is a character like that tends

probably to be rather small C conservative and like things

to go on as they always have done.

The young Queen's husband was very different.

Philip was restless and a born innovator.

But with the King's death,

the career he loved was suddenly in ruins.

A friend said that when Philip heard the news

he looked absolutely flattened, as if the world had collapsed on him.

Although when he married the Princess Elizabeth,

he must have known that this moment would come,

he can't have expected it to come so soon.

He'd have calculated almost certainly when they got

married that they would have had 20 years at least,

given George VI's relatively young age.

It really was what? Barely four years since the marriage.

Now his naval career was over and he was going to spend the rest

of his life walking four paces behind his wife.

But the fiery Philip wouldn't remain silent for along.

Just weeks after Elizabeth's accession, he'd clash with

the Palace old guard and turn up the pressure on his own marriage.

'Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

'was on her way to the House Of Lords

'to deliver her first speech from the throne.

In 1952, the royal couple began their new life.

The young queen suddenly had huge responsibilities.

But for her husband, it was a different story.

He had no function.

In the Navy, you have a function.

In his role in Buckingham Palace,

it was very difficult to see precisely where he fitted in.

Philip very much was an alpha male, a dominant male,

and he resented the situation.

Philip had sacrificed his career ambitions

for the sake of his wife.

Yet there was one part of the marriage

over which he was determined to retain control.

For any man at that time, it was terribly important

to have certain emblems in your life

that represented what you were on earth,

and one of them was that your wife would take your name,

because that was the tradition at the time,

and that your children would also have,

as their last name, yours.

Yet Philip's determination to give the royal children his own name

set the young outsider on a collision course

with the older Windsor generation,

led by his mother-in-law.

The Queen Mother had been a power behind the throne

during her husband's reign.

Now, she was reluctant to leave Buckingham Palace,

as a letter in the royal archives reveals.

I could be quite self-contained upstairs, meals, etc.

You'll hardly know I was there.

She wanted to be on the spot.

She wanted to be able to walk into her daughter's room

and just say, "No, I don't think that's the way to do it."

"I think you should do it that way."

The Queen Mother knew how monarchy should be run.

Philip thought that it was time for a change.

And the piggy in the middle is the Queen.

Since girlhood, Elizabeth had been in thrall with her mother.

Now, she agreed to her request to stay in the palace.

This was bad news for Philip.

The Queen Mother had always been suspicious

of Philip's family's German origins.

The Queen Mother said, quite specifically,

that he was a Hun, he was…

He was somebody who was rough and overbearing.

After the abdication in 1936,

the Queen Mother's husband, George VI,

had taken his brother's discarded crown.

She believed saving the Windsor dynasty

had driven him to an early grave.

And she was determined this trauma would not be belittled

by the eradication of the Windsor name.

Backing her to the hilt was her mother-in-law,

the steely-eyed Queen Mary.

She was the widow of George V,

the man who had created the Windsor dynasty.

Queen Mary is still a wonderfully conservative matriarch.

She is really at the centre of it, like a sort of medieval queen.

Queen Mary remarked at the time, you know,

"What does that damn fool Edinburgh"

"think that the family name has got to do with him?"

Together, these two women formed a matriarchy

that dominated the royal family

and they expected the new queen to toe the line.

They had the support of the most powerful man in the land,

the Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill…

another deep-seated traditionalist, who was suspicious of Philip.

Churchill was hostile to him.

He remarked privately

that he neither liked nor trusted Prince Philip.

On 18th February 1952,

Churchill's Cabinet discussed the issue in 10 Downing Street,

as recorded in their minutes.

The Cabinet was strongly of the opinion

that the family name of Windsor should be retained

and they invited the Prime Minister to take a suitable opportunity

of making their views known to Her Majesty.

Churchill passed on the message,

making it clear to the Queen that the government opposed Philip.

Churchill, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth,

all of whom understood the magic of the Windsor name,

completely ganged up on Philip and said,

"Look, this is not the way it's going to be."

"Windsor is the surname,"

"and that's the way you are going to keep it."

They don't want change.

They see monarchy as being something

which really has to rely on what's happened in the past.

Behind closed doors,

the row put pressure on Philip and the young queen.

Prince Philip would've been telling her,

"My name has got to be involved," because otherwise,

he felt sort of emasculated.

He felt pushed to one side.

Barely six weeks into the job,

Elizabeth hit the first crisis of her reign.

Would she back the Windsor dynasty, or her husband?

On 9th April 1952, she made her decision.

"The Queen today declared in Council Her Will and Pleasure"

"that she and her children shall be styled and known"

"as the House and Family of Windsor,"

"and that her descendants,"

"other than female descendants who marry, and their descendants,"

"shall bear the name of Windsor."

That hurt Prince Philip deeply.

You know, as we all know, he said, "I'm just a bloody amoeba."

To put the matter absolutely bluntly, he was regarded

as the producer of the Queen's children.

And that was about as far as he was allowed to go.

Outwardly calm, Philip revealed his bitter frustration to his friends,

saying, "I am the only man in the country"

"not allowed to give his name to his children."

He'd already given up everything else.

He'd given up his freedom, he'd given up his naval career.

I think, for a time, it was very difficult.

For Philip and Elizabeth, tensions now simmered.

But they were about to get worse.

Within four weeks of the surname announcement,

the royal couple moved into their new home…

Buckingham Palace.

Philip arrived at a court

which had barely changed since the time of Queen Victoria.

It was extraordinarily elaborate ceremonial protocol,

that he found intensely irritating.

There were footman still powdering their heads with what Philip,

quite reasonably, considered an unhygienic mixture

of, you know, flour and water.

A very archaic practice.

Defeated over the surname,

Philip found another way to assert himself.

He decided to modernise Buckingham Palace.

He began with a visit to every room in the palace,

questioning staff to find out what they did.

He wanted to do away with a lot of the, as he saw it,

unnecessary and time-wasting things.

So he would carry his own suitcases.

When electric frying pans came on the market,

he would fry his own breakfast,

until the Queen complained of the smell,

that lingered until lunchtime.

But it would take more than an electric frying pan

to change the old guard at Buckingham Palace.

Philip wanted a role,

and the courtiers were determined not to let him have a role,

and, consequently, he went round like a squirrel in a cage,

you know, busy doing nothing all the time.

The problem was that Prince Philip is one man,

wanting everything to change,

and he's surrounded by all these flunkies,

who want everything to stay the same.

'Under Admiralty Arch, into Trafalgar Square,

the tumult of welcome and love surrounds her,

on the packed pavements and the windows and the roofs above.

In a welcome of bells, the Queen arrives at Westminster.

In June 1953, Philip's role as supporting actor

was confirmed to the world.

Millions watched as Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

God save the Queen.

God save the Queen. God save the Queen.

The first to kneel before her was her husband.

I think Philip is caged by the role that fate has given him,

which is to be an attendant to the Queen.

He meant to be his own man and create his own world,

and be, on his own terms,

somebody who did something.

Philip yearned for a project of his own.

Fortunately, one was at hand.

I name this ship Britannia.

I wish success to her and to all who sail in her.

'Her Majesty releases the traditional bottle,

not of champagne, this time, but of Empire wine.

On 16th April 1953, at Clydeside in Scotland,

the Queen had launched the new royal yacht.

Philip seized control of the design of the still-unfinished ship.

He brought in modernist architect Hugh Casson to oversee the project.

As Casson's designs show, instead of chandeliers and velvet,

the result reflected Philip's own modernising character.

In the finished ship, Philip's bedroom looked like

a senior naval officer's Spartan quarters.

But one small detail of Philip's study

gives a revealing window into his state of mind.

In pride of place was a scale model of HMS Magpie,

the naval ship whose command he'd been forced to give up.

There it was, staring him in the face,

a poignant reminder

of the naval career that he might have had.

He was in charge of this lovely toy boat,

but it really was a toy boat.

It wasn't a real naval vessel

of the kind that he aspired to command.

So it emphasised the emptiness of his position.

Philip didn't even get to sail on Britannia's maiden voyage.

He had to accompany his wife on a Commonwealth tour.

In May 1954, he finally joined the ship

as it sailed from Libya to Malta.

Yet the trip had echoes of the career

Philip had been forced to abandon.

The Britannia was joined by the Royal Navy…

the fighting force the young Philip had been tipped to command.

It then docked in Malta,

the very island where he had aimed at high naval office.

It remained something that he always looked back on

with a certain amount of regret.

Desperate for a role of his own

soon, Philip would use Britannia to break out of the palace.

But rumours of a rift in the royal marriage

would at last leak into the press.

By the mid-50s, Prince Philip had achieved international fame.

But privately he had suffered serious disappointments…

…and he'd been stripped of his career and his right to name his children.

Philip was expected to take this background role,

this completely passive, almost domestic role.

This was a man who'd been accustomed to command and suddenly the

owner responsibility he's got, is to stand there looking very

handsome beside the Queen.

In October 1956, Philip finally broke out.

He left his wife and children and set off on

a world tour aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia.

Over four months, Philip made a leisurely crossing of the Atlantic

and the Pacific, meeting some of his wife's colonial subjects.

But his long absence gave rise to rumours that all

was not well at home.

It didn't look as if the marriage was at its happiest.

He did things like not coming back for his son's birthday and

rumours then spread of a rift.

He was known to enjoy the company of male friends.

Inevitably, there were rumours that not all the friends were male.

Reports swirled that there were problems in the royal marriage.

In America, the Baltimore Sun reported rumours that Philip

was involved with an unnamed other woman.

The story appeared to be a rehash of an old piece of

gossip about Philip from eight years earlier.

In 1948, Philip had allegedly spent a night on the town with

a singer named Pat Kirkwood.

Her legs had been described as the eighth wonder of the world.

There was no evidence of an affair but gossip about the incident

fed suspicions that had dogged Philip since he was a young man.

Even before they married, George VI was concerned that Philip

seemed to be a little bit of a womaniser.

You know, he'd had what some would describe as armfuls of girls

in his youth and he'd probably go on having armfuls of girls,

albeit rather more discreetly, in his middle age.

As pressure mounted, the Palace broke its usual wall of

silence on royal private lives and issued a public denial.

'It is quite untrue that there is any rift between the Queen and Duke.'

That was in itself perhaps a mistake because, of course,

there's nothing like denying a story to give it some plausibility.

Now the stories began to seep into the press back home.

The British papers dismissed the rumours as idle gossip but

that didn't stop them running the story.

In February 1957,

Elizabeth joined Philip in Portugal at the end of his tour.

Four months almost to the day after I left home,

the Queen flew out to Portugal and we enjoyed two days there together.

On 28th February, at a lunch to mark his return to London, Philip

made no mention of the stories in the press.

As you know, this adventure ended where it began at London Airport

with a very happy family reunion.

But the publicity the trip had attracted was rather less happy.

As Philip and Elizabeth had learned, the papers were growing hungrier

for salacious royal stories.

And in the modern world,

an obedient press was a thing of the past.

Two years after their marriage had hit the headlines,

the Royal couple had some more wholesome news to announce.

A decade after the birth of Princess Anne,

the Queen was expecting a third child.

But the new arrival would open an old wound.

The couple would have another child without Philip's surname.

Philip prepared to battle the Palace again but he wouldn't be alone.

On his side would be one of the most controversial British

Royals of the 20th century.

Lord Louis Mountbatten was Philip's uncle.

A former head of the British Armed Forces, Mountbatten was proud

and fiercely ambitious.

Mountbatten's ambitions were boundless.

Anyone who was rash enough to ignore his ambitions were likely to

find themselves knocked rather savagely out of the way.

The British establishment, including the Queen Mother and the

government, viewed Mountbatten with some suspicion.

They believed he shared Philip's dangerous obsession with

modernising the monarchy and that he wanted to push his minor branch of

the Royal Family, the Mountbatten's, to the very centre stage.

He had already coached his nephew, Philip Mountbatten,

towards marriage with Princess Elizabeth.

Unbowed by the earlier defeat, Mountbatten was determined

the royal children should bear his and Philip's name.

Mountbatten wanted to become the head of the British Royal Family.

It was going to be the house of Mountbatten.

So far both his and Philip's efforts had failed.

But things were about to change thanks to the arrival of an

unlikely individual.

Edward Iwi was a solicitor obsessed with the microscopic

detail of British law.

For decades he bombarded the British establishment with

corrections to the legal system.

He wrote letters to The Times and the most maddening thing about

him was that he was often right and he maintained that it was

quite wrong that the royal children should not have their father's name.

Mountbatten had found an ally.

On 10th August 1959, Iwi and Mountbatten met to discuss the name.

Iwi wrote a personal account of what happened next.

Its contents have never been made public until now.

As the account reveals, Iwi had a proposal.

A new hyphenated royal name. Mountbatten-Windsor.

Iwi now kicked off the campaign.

In a letter, now in the National Archives, he gave a warning

to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan about the imminent royal birth.

'When the new baby is born, as matters now stand,

'it will bear the Badge Of Bastardy, namely its mother's maiden name.'

To raise the suggestion that somehow the royal children were illegitimate

was something that really set the cat among the pigeons.

Macmillan tried to gag Iwi in a personal letter.

'The highest legal authorities hold the opinion that your points

'are not well founded and I should be most grateful if you'd

'refrain from reiterating them in public.

'I'm sure I can rely on your discretion.'

Iwi refused to be silenced but he knew he needed

a respected public figure on his side.

So he asked a favour from an old friend.

Edward Iwi managed to mobilise a bishop who rejoiced in the

name of Bishop Bloomer of Carlisle to preach a sermon about the

delegitimising, as it were, of the Royals.

Bishop Bloomer's sermon, supporting the new name,

was reported in The Times.

'He did not like to think of any child born in wedlock being

'deprived of the father's family name.

'A right and privilege which every other illegitimate child in

'the land possessors.'

As the issue spread into the public domain,

the debate intensified within the walls of Buckingham Palace.

According to Macmillan, Philip put pressure on his wife over the

name as he confided to his diary.

'What upsets me is the Prince's almost brutal attitude to the Queen

'over all this.'

A source close to the Deputy Prime Minister, Rab Butler, said Butler

had claimed discussion of the name had reduced the Queen to tears.

In February 1960,

Elizabeth once again faced a choice between the man who had given

up so much for her sake and the dynasty to which she was devoted.

11 days before the birth of the baby,

the Queen issued a statement creating a new family name.

Mountbatten-Windsor.

It is the House of Windsor, nothing can change that.

That's Parliament. They decide that.

But they, as a family, are Mountbatten-Windsor.

It certainly was a victory for Philip and this was something

which he had wanted and had sought sought-after actively

for a long time, and at last had achieved.

Iwi's handwritten account has one final revelation

unknown to historians before now.

The day after the Queen's statement, he was invited

to Mountbatten's house.

At his host's request, he slipped in through a side door to escape attention.

There, Iwi had a drink with Mountbatten and Prince Philip.

Yet if Philip had won one battle,

he soon had another struggle on his hands.

The surname was announced just five weeks into a brand-new decade.

The 1960s saw a complete seismic change in the social

attitudes and expectations of everything.

Fashion, music, women's position and, of course,

the Royal Family were not left untouched.

In these rapidly changing times, tradition was under attack.

Encased in privilege, the Windsors were vulnerable.

There was definitely this impression that Britain had become

a very closed, backward looking society run by

public schoolboys who knew nothing at all about the modern world

and the monarchy was seen as being at the apex of that.

- The monarchy should be abolished. - The monarchy should be abolished?

- Yes. - What makes you say that?

Well, what good are they?

In November 1966, the BBC investigated public

attitudes towards the Royal Family.

Among the happy flag-waving, a growing restlessness was revealed.

You've got the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the rest of them.

They're taking the public's money, aren't they?

That's what I feel about it.

I think that she should get out and meet the people more,

instead of meeting all these at these social occasions.

- Meet the common people. - Yes.

90% want the monarchy to stay but only one in four think it

should continue as it is now.

The big majority, 64%, think it should change with the times.

A changing Britain demanded a changing monarchy.

Sensing his moment, Philip was about to seize the reins.

Soon he would reboot the Royal Family for the modern age

but open it up to new dangers.

Queen Elizabeth II leaves Buckingham Palace

for the most spectacular event of the royal year.

On Saturday, 13th June, 1964,

the Windsors put on one of their world-famous pageants.

A regular event since the early 19th century,

Trooping The Colour was an unchanging ritual.

But away from the parade ground,

Britain was changing very fast.

Eight weeks earlier,

the Rolling Stones had released their first album…

…the previous autumn the Labour leader, Howard Wilson, had praised

a new Britain, driven by the white heat of science and technology,

then, in October 1964, Labour swept the Conservatives from power.

Harold Wilson had become Prime Minister

and there was a greater equality in the air,

or at least the thought of equality in the air.

For the Windsors,

the ancient rituals that had once been their strength

were starting to look like a straitjacket.

The Royal Family is beginning to feel different

from some spirit that's moving through Britain.

But there was one exception.

In the 1950s, Philip is very much a lone voice

calling for modernisation

and being blocked and shut down whenever he tries to do anything.

But by the 1960s, Philip is in tune with the times,

and change is in the air and Philip is behind change.

Philip now began a one-man global campaign

to give the Windsors a new modern face.

Prince Philip is a modern man and he's into modern things…

…setting out to identify himself with modern and scientific

and industrial British achievements.

He was good looking, he was tall, he liked gadgets.

He was almost like a sort of domesticated royal James Bond.

James Bond, of course, is a commander in the Royal Navy,

he likes gadgets, he likes girls.

Prince Philip is absolutely cut from that cloth.

Philip believed the Royal Family needed to re-engage

with a rapidly-changing, modern Britain.

One medium above all gave the opportunity.

By the '60s, TV was the dominant means of mass communication.

Philip had spotted the power of television early.

The Radio Times from 30th June 1957 showed a suave Philip

on a futuristic set,

making his presenting debut in a science documentary.

The International Geophysical Year begins at midnight.

The great adventure is about to start.

Prince Philip is beautiful, elegant, scientific, modernising, in charge.

Radio engineers aim their transmissions in such a way

that it bounces off this ionised layer back to the receiving station,

rather like a billiard ball bounces off a cushion into a pocket.

He's instinctively and accurately reaching out

for the most important propaganda tool of the moment.

Philip believed TV could restore something essential

to the survival of the Royal Family.

Since the foundation of the dynasty in 1917,

the Windsors had forged a close relationship with the people…

from George V's informal visits to working-class areas…

…to George VI and the Queen Mother's walkabouts

during the Blitz.

Yet in recent years,

the Windsors seem to have lost their common touch.

If they don't seem to be approachable,

if they don't seem to be human,

if they seem to be little tin gods, then they are remote

from the people and they cannot expect the same degree of affection.

Philip thought the Royal Family needed to reconnect

with the people of Britain,

as he explained in a revealing interview in 1968.

Well, instead of endlessly having to fend off,

er, you know, too close a scrutiny

in an attempt to try and live a normal life,

it is now possible, not to go to the offensive,

but to try and make contact

and try and create a kind of two-way relationship.

He had been pressing for years for the monarchy to be more dynamic

in the way it presented itself to the nation,

particularly with the advent of telly.

He recognised, you know,

they couldn't stay in that sort of gilded tower for ever,

that they had to get out and communicate with the public.

Now, Philip got his chance.

Lord Mountbatten's son-in-law, John Brabourne, was a TV producer.

In 1968, he asked Philip if he could make

a-fly-on-the-wall documentary about the Royal Family.

Inspired, Philip championed the film inside the palace

and chaired the committee set up to explore the idea.

Yet the idea of behind-the-scenes access

flew in the face of palace tradition.

The Buckingham Palace flunkies were worried that people lose respect

if they saw the members of the Royal Family purely as TV characters,

as characters in a kind of soap opera,

that once you invited the cameras in, they would be hungry for more.

16 years after Prince Philip had first tried to modernise

the Royal Family, the battle was on again.

There was a conflict, two visions of the monarchy…

stay as you are, look backwards, do what you've done well in the past,

and the other vision of the monarchy

which is adapt and change because if you don't, you die.

Yet by 1968, things had changed.

The Queen Mother was 68 years old

and her power in the palace was fading.

Queen Mary had died, weakening the great Windsor matriarchy

and their ally Churchill had passed away in 1965.

Meanwhile, Philip's power within the palace was growing

and his vision had caught the spirit of Britain.

The decision fell to the Queen.

As a young woman, she had obeyed her elders.

This time she supported her husband.

In the summer of 1968, for the first time,

cameras moved into Buckingham Palace

to film intimate footage of the Windsors.

Then, on 21st June 1969,

Britain tuned in to watch history being made.

He did have some very strange habits, your father.

I remember when I used to come up to the lodge,

I asked when I arrived, "Where's the King?"

- and they said, "Oh, he's in the garden." - Yes.

I went out and nothing to be seen

except a lot of terribly rude words and language

coming out of a rhododendron bush

and I eventually found him hacking away wearing a bearskin cap…

- To protect him from everything. - Yes.

As the footage shows, Philip came across as a relaxed, family man.

I think what was particularly groundbreaking was to present

the Royal Family as a family, i.e.

the accent is on the word "family" rather than on the word "royal".

- The salad is ready. - Good.

The very fact of the Royal Family cooking on a barbecue

seemed to some people

absolutely jaw-dropping.

You know, they'd assumed, I think,

that sort of footmen in wigs would present them

with sausages on a silver platter or something.

I watched it, I think, with my parents

and there was that electric buzz of a direct connection

to something you hadn't seen before

'and relationships emerge.'

'You see a real relationship actually to the little children.'

- An ice cream. - An ice cream.

This is what he really would like.

Yes, they always go straight for the ice creams.

Well, would you like to go and get one?

- This is change, this is all I've got. - Thank you.

It's disgusting.

Just a gooey mess that's going to be in the cars.

Two thirds of the British population watched the film.

Everybody said, "Oh, this is a terrific",

"pioneering brilliant stroke by the palace because it's enabling"

"the Queen's people to see her and her family"

"as they are in the late 20th century,"

so it was a brilliant piece of public relations.

The documentary's triumph completed the transformation of Prince Philip

from downtrodden outsider to the Windsors' driving force.

Philip's influence in changing the monarchy was absolutely crucial.

He throws up all sorts of ideas,

he creates a kind of atmosphere of change, of radicalisation.

For the young man once tipped for the very top of the Navy,

there had been a personal cost.

With almost no exceptions, anybody who marries into the Royal Family

sees their identity taken from them.

But Philip had forged a new identity…

…battling the conservative palace and rebooting the Royal Family.

Every so often it is vital that there should be a driving force,

a reforming force,

within the Establishment and that

at that moment was exactly what Prince Philip provided.

Yet despite his modernising energy,

there was one thing Prince Philip didn't foresee…

the Royal Family documentary was to have a sting in the trial.

Publicity is a two-edged sword, if they could produce this,

what amounted to a huge royal commercial,

then it was legitimate to use the media as a means of criticising

the Royal Family when they didn't measure up in whatever way.

I think the problem that they faced, the royals,

once they did that Royal Family documentary… why stop there?

Once you've let them in once, why can't you always let them in?

From that moment, really, they become fair game, I think,

for the tabloids in the way that they had never quite been before.

The film was withdrawn from public view

and hasn't been seen in its entirety since,

but in the decades that followed,

the intimate glimpses it had provided

fed a hunger for more and more personal royal revelations.

They had opened the Pandora's box, opened themselves up into criticism.

You might well date the emergence of a much more critical press

to the showing of the film.

The Windsors had been rebranded for the modern media age,

but in the years to come, there would be a price to pay.

The British people had seen the Royal Family

in their off-duty clothes,

soon they wanted the dirty laundry.

Next time… new revelations about Prince Charles's love life

expose a man desperate to find his perfect bride,

the ambitious Mountbatten steps in as the royal matchmaker,

but a brutal terrorist murder pushes Charles towards a hasty decision.