Original subtitles

[Robert] Look at how the great problems of the Queen and

the monarchy in her lifetime have been all about love

and marriage and sex.

[man over TV] The question a lot of people here in Britain

are asking this morning is, "Where's the Queen?"

[man] It's like being brought up in a monastery

with glass walls.

Everyone can look in.

And every moment of weakness, it'll all be seen and exposed

and ridiculed.

[Michael] The red light's on.

[Deborah] We are interviewing Larry Adler,

friend to Prince Philip.

We are interviewing Commander Michael Avison Parker.

We are interviewing Lady Janet Mary Young.

[Dickie] For the first time in her reign,

the Queen put family before duty.

[man] We could now be witnessing the end of the

monarchy and the reigning Queen could

possibly be the last.

[theme music plays]

[Michael] She was being the Princess

and working very hard.

He was still in the Navy.

Now, in our innocence we thought this was going to go

on for a very long time.

After all, the King was quite young.

There might have been 40 more years as princess.

[Pamela] When we were on that Commonwealth tour,

and we were in Kenya.

And the people of Kenya, had as a wedding present...

had given them little Sagana Lodge.

[Michael] We had a day or so there to do, to adjust,

rest, and do things.

Prince Philip went, went to sleep in a,

in a little room that was off to one side.

The Queen was at a desk, writing letters.

The phone rang.

My colleague said,

"Mike, there's a ghastly rumor

going around that the King has died."

And he was sitting amongst all the press people there,

and then they were saying that they'd heard.

So I said, "Well, Martin, that's frightening but I

cannot do a thing on a rumor like that.

I mean I just won't do anything."

And he said, "I'm not suggesting you should."

Down went the phone.

I saw a radio on the shelf above me.

And there's a, a door open to where the Queen is sitting.

So I shut the door, and switched on the radio,

and hunted about for the BBC, and then I could hear

the bell of Big Ben.

I thought, "Ye gods."

So my hair stood up a little bit more.

[man over radio] This is London.

It is with the greatest sorrow that we make the following announcement,

at 10:45 today, February the 6th, 1952,

that the King passed peacefully away in his sleep

earlier this morning.

[Michael] And that was that.

So, I whizzed around into where Prince Philip was

sleeping and told him.

His first reaction was one of almost as though a huge weight

had hit him.

And he just stood there,

silently, in thought.

The implications to the fact that she's becoming Queen.

And, then he straight, he straightened himself up and he went in to

tell the Queen...

and she was, you know,

weeping desperately for the loss of her father.

They walked up and down together, very close.

And then she straightened up,

fully conscious of the fact that she was Queen,

and that she must tend to that affair immediately.

And she went into the desk that she had been working on,

and started to send all these telegrams off,

round the Commonwealth and to friendly countries like the

United States and so on.

There was no time then

for her, if she had wanted to...

to grieve.

And a very typical reaction actually.

She said, "Oh, I'm so sorry.

It means we've all got to go home."

As the plane was about to touch down at London Airport,

and the Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

and my parents and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester,

and all the receiving line of the cabinet were drawn up there

in their black clothes.

And she sort of leans across, looks out,

and says, "Oh god, they've sent the hearses."

Meaning that instead of her car,

one of the big black cars.

And somehow, the way she said it,

one knew this twenty-five-year-old realized that the

end of her private life had come.

And that for the rest of her life,

she would be a public figure until the day she died.

[Elizabeth II] I ask you all, whatever your religion,

to pray for me on the day of my coronation.

[man over TV] And as the storms of cheering surge with

the approaching procession along the river, here,

in contrast, the abbey holds its ancient peace.

[Tim] I think what changed for the Queen at the moment that

she succeeded her father was the sense that she

was on her own.

I think that that's what really changed for her.

She did have the enormous advantage of being trained by her own father.

But I think she must have enjoyed those training sessions with Papa...

because it was something so special between those two.

Nobody else had it.

I remember her once saying to me that,

"My father told me I must always remember...

that whatever I said or did to anyone, that they would remember it.

So if I showed disapproval, they will remember that I showed disapproval."

Therefore I think she's very, very careful not to

give any sort of impression that might be construed as disapproval.

[man over TV] The Duke of Edinburgh comes to vow

lifelong allegiance to his Queen.

She's the Queen.

And he, perforce, is the husband.

So what does the husband do?

[Robert] Elizabeth, as Princess and Queen,

has always been guided by her sense of duty.

But it's one of the extraordinary things about

the Queen is that she fell in love and married just about

the first man she met.

My father happened to be there when the King and Queen

took the two girls to Dartmouth...

when, I think, Princess Elizabeth was only about 12 years old,

and as Prince Philip was almost a senior cadet.

And, of course, this absolute Greek god.

And I think the princess fell headlong in love with him at that moment.

The Queen was too young. Nobody thought of her falling in love...

And remaining in love with that person for the rest of her life.

I mean, she was a child!

[Hugo Vickers] But clearly, he made a great impression on her,

and the romance, if you like, developed rather gradually.

[Robert] Now it caused her parents great anxiety.

What parent wouldn't be anxious about a daughter

who wants to marry the very first man she's fallen in love with?

It was a matter of her personal happiness.

It was a matter of the stability of the crown.

Her parents, in fact, while accepting Philip and having Philip,

because he was after all a member of the family,

to stay, wouldn't let her actually get engaged until she was over 21,

several years after she wanted because,

you know, she wasn't just taking on the man she thought she loved,

she was taking on the man who had to shoulder

almost half the burden of the monarchy.

I was at his bachelor party

the night before the wedding

to Princess Elizabeth.

He was scared.

His face was white.

This man just began to realize what he was getting into.

And now he finds he doesn't like it.

It was very much...

a conventional British household.

He was very much the man of the family.

He took the decisions.

She looked up to him...

in their private life.

Obviously, as Princess...

she had a lot of official things to do.

But they were still able, with these two small children...

to have this family group.

[Michael] Prince Philip was basically a man.

And he was a big man.

And he was a man's man, too.

I think there must have been moments

when it would have been pretty heavy for him to take.

This extremely active

enthusiastic young man.

Who suddenly finds his...

whole life is going to be taken away from him.

And probably thinking he will become a yes man...

for the rest of his life.

This really devastated their lives...

actually, as a married couple.

Could you tell me, what is your job in your own mind?

Well, I haven't got one. I'm self-employed.

But surely you must have some clear idea of what role

you'll fulfill in modern society.

Very difficult to answer.

[Ingrid] The Queen can't be the wife anymore, the mother.

She really had very little time to be with her children.

So Prince Philip in a way sort of became the househusband.

And he was the one that looked after the children.

Not actually physically looked after them,

but he organized them.

[Ann] When she became Queen, they would see her perhaps for

half an hour in the morning, 9:00,

for half an hour.

And then she would go off for a week, maybe a month,

maybe several months, but in a good week,

she might be there in the evening and go up to see them

having their baths and sit on a little gilt chair,

which would be brought in by a lackey.

Not take part in bath time or splashing or anything like that,

but just sit there rather uneasily,

and then dash away after half an hour.

I don't think it was, you know, in that respect...

Prince Philip and, indeed, the Queen were significantly

different from an awful of...

upper-middle class British parents.

That was the way that you...

behaved and you didn't cry in public...

you don't cuddle in public, etc.

And, life may be a lot more civilized now.

But it wasn't something peculiar to...

to Prince Charles's relationship with his parents.

And it wasn't...

that anybody was being deliberately...

unkind... or cold.

It was just that that was the way... you did things.

What the Queen and the Duke did with their children...

boarding school would often have...

strict discipline...

and... didn't always produce...

rounded human beings, emotionally,

at the end of the process.

[Ingrid] You know, she's really sacrificed

her family in a way.

Duty really came before personal happiness,

and she had her work and that came first.

[Nicholas] Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret were

always very close as children, but both of them knew that in

the end Elizabeth would be on the throne

and Princess Margaret would need to find a role for herself.

I don't think she ever really settled to that, to be honest.

[man over TV] The arrival of Princess Margaret and her

husband is greeted with the cheers from the crowd,

the flashing lights, and nervous children.

Dignified bedlam reigns.

Most adults remember Margaret growing up

with her sister and the two children were as loved by

Americans as they were by Britons.

[man over TV] The British and European press has tried to

make Margaret the subject of romance with 29-year-old Roddy Llewellyn,

but despite pictures of them in the Caribbean together,

there has been little substance to back

up the perennial gossipmongers.

[woman] Queen Elizabeth has ruled out divorce

for her sister Margaret.

Instead, the 45 year old princess may obtain a legal

separation from her husband, Lord Snowdon.

They've been married for 16 years,

but ten of those years have reportedly been stormy,

and recent stories of princess Margaret's involvement with a

28-year-old jetsetter named Roddy Llewellyn provide

motivation for the current separation talk.

Divorce is a thorny subject for the British royal family.

She was a divorcée, I think.

And the question of whether it was appropriate for the

King of England to be married to a lady who was twice divorced.

[man over radio] This is London.

A quarter of an hour ago,

the Prime Minister came to the bar of the house and handed to

the speaker a message from His Majesty the King.

[Edward VIII] A few hours ago,

I discharged my last duty as King and Emperor.

That I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility

without the help and support of the woman I love.

[man] We therefore do now hereby now proclaim

that the high and mighty Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George

is now become

our only lawful and rightful king.

God save the King!

The two girls were in the house of Hyde Park Corner when Elizabeth heard...

all the noise of the cheering when George became King.

And Elizabeth ran downstairs to see what all the excitement was.

And the footman told her that her father was King.

She came back and told her little sister, who was six.

And...

Princess Margaret said, "Does that mean you'll be Queen?"

And she said, "Yes, someday."

Princess Margaret said, "Poor you."

[man over TV] Princess Margaret has been

leading an active, and for royalty,

a somewhat untraditional social life.

Now, England is intrigued by the rumor that Margaret has

fallen in love.

The man is Peter Townsend, a war hero,

a captain in the RAF.

Townsend, however, has been once divorced,

and powerful social and religious forces are marshaled

against the romance.

Still, Margaret wants to marry Townsend.

The Queen and Prince Philip very kindly

invited me to dinner and we talked about this

very disturbing situation, obviously.

But the Queen, I shall never forget, her reaction was on of great sympathy,

although, no doubt, she harbored the greatest anxiety, I expect.

Marriage seemed to be the least likely solution.

[Hugo Vickers] The Queen was in conflict because as head

of the Church of England, she could not really permit

her sister to marry a divorced man.

But as the sister of Princess Margaret,

she obviously was very keen that Princess Margaret should be happy,

and it wasn't easy.

[Nicholas] I don't think for a moment that the Queen said to her,

"Listen here, Margaret, you can't do that."

The Queen would have been told by advisors that it was not on.

Very painful for all concerned.

[Camilla] It's sometimes been misreported that the Queen

that said that this relationship couldn't be allowed.

Actually, she was devastated that when push came to shove

it was the government who said,

"Actually, we can't allow you to marry this man."

The following statement has just been issued from Clarence House,

by Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret.

I would like it to be known that I have decided...

not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.

Mindful of the church's teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble,

and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth,

I have resolved to put their consideration before any others.

[Camilla] I think she had a lot of sympathy for Margaret because,

after all, the Queen knew what true love was,

she had married the man of her dreams.

[Nicholas] I don't envy the royals their life at all,

really, they have to live under the glare of publicity all the time,

everything they do is reported and quoted and criticized.

But Princess Margaret, she had a really difficult life.

[Nick] I think this is one of the tragedies of her life that

she never knew who she was,

never knew who she was supposed to be,

and she left it to others,

not least the media, to work it out for her.

[man] Fall back, please.

Fall back!

Fall back. Fall back.

[man] I don't mean to disturb you at all.

[woman] Will you please...

[man] We need to see, ma'am.

[cameras clicking]

[man over TV] It is a scene of chaos and destruction.

This castle, dating back to the ninth century,

the fire started in the private chapel near to

St. George's Hall.

[woman] The events read like a tabloid re-do

of Old Testament curses.

Plague and pestilence have been replaced by fire, rumor,

and outright scandal, rocking the British royal family.

[woman] With three broken marriages among her four children,

the Queen's efforts to promote an image of family harmony

are now under the severest strain.

[Robert] Look at how the great problems of the Queen and the

monarchy in her lifetime have been all about love and

marriage and sex.

The abdication.

Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend later.

And that creates problems.

[man over TV] Buckingham Palace has condemned the

publication of a series of photographs of the Duchess of York

and the Texan businessman John Bryan.

Divorce?

[man] Very well.

Never been mentioned. By anybody.

I just feel very sad.

I think it's very sad when two people who appear to be so

happy married quite suddenly divorce.

[man over TV] Royal composure collapsed as Princess Diana,

under extraordinary media attention,

broke down in tears, since a book detailing her

unhappiness was published last week.

The book claims Diana's marriage became so miserable

that she tried to take her life.

1992 is not a year on which I shall look

back with undiluted pleasure.

In the words or one of my more sympathetic correspondents,

it has turned out to be an "Annus Horribilis".

No institution, City, Monarchy, whatever,

should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give

it their loyalty and support,

not to mention those who don't.

[Elizabeth II] But we are all part of the same fabric of our national society

and that scrutiny, by one part of another,

can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of

gentleness, good humor, and understanding.

As a result of the occurrences over the course of

the past several months, and the pushing of the

self-destruct button by the monarchy,

that we could be witnessing the end of the monarchy and

that the reigning Queen could possibly be the last.

[woman] Britain's Queen Elizabeth says she has had it.

It's time for Prince Charles and Princess Diana to officially

end their troubled marriage.

[man over TV] The Prince, who made his televised admission of

adultery over a year ago, is said to agree.

The Princess, who made her televised admission of

adultery a few weeks ago is said to be devastated,

and will give her response after the holidays.

[Ingrid] The Queen actually tried to bring Diana under her wing,

but Diana was very reluctant.

I think, the Diana phenomena...

obviously Charles couldn't handle it, and neither could the Queen.

[man over TV] The Princess of Wales embroiled now in a fresh

round of personal controversy.

[man over TV] The polo-playing former guards officer claims he had a

three-year affair with the Princess.

[woman] This morning as she left her exclusive London health club,

the Princess of Wales was saying nothing.

[woman] Rugby star Will Carling and his wife Julia are splitting up,

and everyone's asking,

"Is the Princess of Wales to blame?"

[man over TV] Confirmation of Princess Diana's first serious romance

since her split with Charles will be shown in

London's Sunday Mirror tomorrow.

The evidence of photograph of a kiss with millionaire Dodi Al-Fayed

during a Mediterranean cruise costs $400,000.

[woman] This is BBC One.

We have interrupted our programs for a news report.

We now go over to Martin Lewis in the news studio.

[over TV] We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting

reports that Diana, Princess of Wales,

has been badly injured in a car crash in France.

[over TV] Just to confirm the news that Diana,

Princess of Wales, has died in a car accident in Paris,

which also killed her companion, Dodi Fayed.

[over TV] The question a lot of people here in Britain

are asking here this morning is, "Where's the Queen?"

The oceans of flowers from Diana's mourners are piling up

in front of Buckingham Palace but they haven't been

acknowledged and, unlike the rest of Britain where the

flags are at half-staff in Diana's memory,

there's no flag flying over the palace.

Nobody's home.

When the Princess of Wales died, the Queen was up at Balmoral

with the two little Princes whose mother had been killed.

And yet, she was castigated

for not leaving them and coming to London

to mourn in the streets with people who'd never even met the Princess.

She had two grandchildren,

who must have been very cut up at their mother's rather sudden death.

To rush them down to London

for the hype of publicity, seemed to me unnecessary.

Why you could be less feeling at Balmoral than at Buckingham Palace.

I do not know.

I'm now looking through the walls of the shattered school into the main hall,

which is a mass of people and firemen and policemen.

Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, and everybody.

The South Wales disaster.

It's now feared that nearly 200 lives were lost

when the coal tip at Aberfan near Merthyr Tydill

slid forward today.

[Gyles] One of the few regrets that the Queen has

about her reign was that she felt that she reacted too

slowly in Wales, in a place called Aberfan

back in the 1960s.

[Gaynor] There's always been a controversy and criticism

about the Queen not actually coming earlier to Aberfan or

immediately to Aberfan, because obviously Lord Snowdon

was the first royal to actually come to Aberfan.

[Snowdon] Princess Margaret couldn't understand why I

wanted to go down.

I just did, you know, thought I, I must.

And I stayed there, just going into people's houses,

making cups of tea.

They wanted to talk,

but they were in a state of terrible shock.

[Gaynor] So for the Queen, I think her decision not to come

at that time wasn't probably the right decision for

surviving people, and I think to this day,

the Queen actually had a bit of guilt about that, herself.

[man over radio] The Queen stood there as a mother,

knowing that had circumstances been somewhat different,

her child's name might be fastened to the sandbag,

to mark his place of honor,

in death's final ceremonial occasion.

[Gaynor] I know with all the tragedies in the world,

I think Aberfan has been the main one that's touched the

Queen forever and ever in a day, really,

until the day she dies.

[man over TV] Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the royal

family are on summer holiday as usual in Scotland,

and apart from a customary trip to church on Sunday,

the Queen's made no public appearance and no public statement.

But to those who are close to the royal family,

that's no surprise.

And If ever the Monarchy was wobbled, it was in those

48 hours when they were stuck up in Balmoral,

when the country wanted the Queen in London and grieving.

[over TV] On the eve of Princess Diana's funeral,

the royal family is returning to London,

hoping in perhaps to quell some of the criticism of their

actions since Diana's death.

[man over TV] The Queen's convoy arrived in London.

As it swept up to Buckingham Palace,

the limousine halted at the gate,

and the Queen and Prince Philip got out to take in the

mass of floral tributes.

[Ingrid] The Queen was actually extremely nervous because she

could feel the hostility, and actually she heard them say,

"Oh, it's about time you've come."

You know, you, they could hear an awful lot of things that

the crowd was saying.

And then, I think a woman actually gave her a bunch

of flowers and she said,

"Would you like me to place it for you?"

and the woman said, "No, Ma'am, it's for you."

And that sort of broke the ice,

it was that moment, and I think suddenly people saw her,

instead of feeling all prickly and angry,

they suddenly thought,

"My goodness, this is, this is a grandmother

and she's got to deal with all this."

[man over TV] Queen Elizabeth will speak publicly

today about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Joining me from London is NPR's Michael Goldfarb to talk

about the extraordinary move from the Queen to speak to her subjects.

Any idea what she will say today?

[Goldfarb] Uh, it will be a very carefully crafted speech

because people will listen to it with great interest.

Since last Sunday's dreadful news,

we have seen throughout Britain and around the world

an overwhelming expression of sadness at Diana's death.

So what I say to you now as a Queen and as a grandmother,

I say from my heart.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself.

She was an exceptional and gifted human being.

In good times and bad, she never lost her

capacity to smile and laugh nor to inspire others with her

warmth and kindness.

I admired and respected her for her energy

and commitment to others.

I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are,

join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss and gratitude

for her all too short life.

I thought she said everything she

should have said.

I can't think of anything she left out at all.

I think it's completely appropriate.

[man over TV] And they're gathering now at the entrance.

This is an extraordinary view we're seeing here.

We've never, as far as I'm aware,

seen the royal family standing like this at the gates

of Buckingham Palace.

[Ingrid] At the funeral, the Queen was very dignified and

she bowed her head when Diana's coffin went past.

And It was spectacularly done.

[Elizabeth II] I, for one, believe there are lessons to

be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and

moving reaction to her death.

It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation

united in grief and respect.

[over loudspeaker] Mr. Speaker, today Her Majesty the Queen becomes

the country's longest-reigning monarch.

And it is of course typical of her selfless sense of service

that she would have us treat this day just like any other.

But Mr. Speaker, while I rarely advocate disobeying Her Majesty,

least of all in her own Parliament,

I do think it's right that today we should stop and take

a moment as a nation to mark this historic milestone,

and to thank Her Majesty for the extraordinary service that

she's given our country over more than six decades.

In 63 years and 216 days, she's worked with 12 Prime Ministers,

six archbishops of Canterbury,

nine cabinet secretaries.

She's answered three-and-a-half million pieces of correspondence,

sent over 100,000 telegrams to centenarians

across the Commonwealth, and met more people than any other

monarch in history.

She has served this country with unerring grace, dignity,

and decency, and long may she continue to do so.

[crowd] Yeah.

[Robert] The important thing to remember about the early

upbringing of Princess Elizabeth was that although

she was a princess, she was not in line for the throne.

And I believe this gave her a modesty that people respect.

I think the only thing she might allow herself

to feel is to say to her father,

"Look, I've done it.

I've been queen for such a long time,

and I've tried to do it the way you taught me."

[Elizabeth II] There is a motto which has been borne by

many of my ancestors.

A noble motto, I serve.

I should like to make that dedication now.

It is very simple.

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.