The.Diamond.Queen Ep.3

a queen has reached 60 years on the throne for the first time in modern history queen elizabeth ii is part of the background of every british life but what matters to her no matter where she is who she's with what time of day is she always has this ability to to bring what I could describe as energy and fun to the occasion in this final episode of the diamond Queen we look at the defining moments of her reign we examine how she's coped with decades of changing and sometimes tense relations between the monarchy and the media what I say to you now as your queen and as a grandmother I say from my heart it was a very difficult thing for her to balance from silver and gold to diamond we look at those unusual celebrations royal of Jubilees in the run-up to every jubilee there's a kind of institutionalized pessimism as if it can never be the same as last time but so far it always is and for the first time ever all of the Queen's adult grandchildren have they're saved about the diamond Queen Lycians grandmother will have massive respect for an elaborate event she's led the way and long way that continued this is London it is with the greatest solo that we make the following announcement it was announced from Sandringham at 10:45 today that the king who retired to rest last night in his usual health whilst peacefully away hid his feet earlier this morning 60 years ago February 6th 1952 the Queen's father King George the sixth died here at Sandringham previous day he'd been out shooting rabbits a favorite occupation and he went to bed with his usual cup of cocoa he wasn't a well man he'd survived some very serious operations but he was all of 56 years old and his death came as a terrible shock when this defining moment the start of the Queen's reign happened she knew nothing she was thousands of miles away in Kenya on the first leg of a Commonwealth tour Prince Philip was told first when he heard said an aged he looked as if the whole world had dropped on him he broke the news to his wife delayed by thunderstorms it took her 24 hours to get back to British soil she was seen sitting alone tearful and white-faced staring out of the aircraft window but by the time she landed she was poised already ready met by Winston Churchill and Britain's political Grandy's this 25 year old mother of two young children began a life sentence even if it was a gilded cage and a fate she accepted you think one of the most interesting things as I'm to approaching the age that she was when she became Queen that you think about you know she was 25 when she became Queen and you think about how young that is for somebody to take on this incredible responsibility and give up her life in in service she took the helm from the man who had saved the monarchy after the abdication crisis and on the day of King George the sixth funeral the Queen with her grandmother and mother looked shell-shocked a vast weight of expectation now sat on her shoulders it took 16 months to plan but on Tuesday June the 2nd 1953 the Queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey through the gray dawn of that day came people from all over the world making from the route of the royal procession the day that started cold and wet with some 30,000 people estimated to have slept out overnight on the pavements and stones of the processional route and another 20,000 trying and failing to find a good spot it was less than 10 years since the end of World War 2 s Blitz a tough people but people - who were reaching forward for better times the coronation was a genuine national carnival but also a hoped-for moment of patriotic rebirth we had coronation mugs at school and I bought a dinky toy version of the golden coach and it seemed to me as a young boy that this was Zenith really I was only six and as a young six year old going on the trolley bus from Finchley central to Barnet to Auntie Gwen's to watch it on this tiny little screen wonderful people poured into London a shabby post-war Capitol now decorated at last around Britain there was dancing and parties and a bit of silliness plenty to eat a new dish coronation chicken was specially invented and has become a kind of British classic a coronation who was the most important moment in the Queen's life certainly the most important official moment as a 27 year old she'd thought long and hard about what was ahead and she practiced in the Buckingham Palace Boram using sheets pinned together as her 21 foot long train she also walked around wearing the crown on her head so that her neck could get used to its very considerable weight as the Queen left for Westminster in the gold state coach there are two small figures watching from one of the windows at the front of Buckingham Palace one was young Prince Charles dressed in the silk suit and the other was Princess Anne and one of them would soon leave to become the first British child ever to see his mother crowned monarch Princess Anne wasn't quite three and she was told she was too young the only thing that I remember if that's the right expression is feeling just to touch grumpy then I wasn't allowed to go and after that nothing no I should have been aware of being on the balcony but you say I'm not entirely sure whether I was aware of that or whether it's just the fact that you see photographs new you think I must have remembered it a novel aspect of the coronation was that it was televised both Churchill and Buckingham Palace courtiers had been against letting such a vulgar new medium inside the Abbey but the Queen herself wanted the cameras in and back then BBC presenters could almost have been mistaken for somebody else we take you first to Buckingham Palace there which will see the departure of the Queen's procession to the Abbey there she goes more than half the adult population 20 million people managed to watch I was 10 at the time and I remember my family scraping together their savings and buying a small black and white television to watch it but it was hugely exciting everybody was really uplifted and for most of the adults present it was the first great event since the dreary days of the war and the tough days that immediately followed was symbolic of a new life people thought and the Queen looked terrific she was beautiful and she had this dashing consort and it was one of those moments in a country where we tend to be a little bit ill at ease with ourselves and didn't nitpicky that it was gilded and it was gonna get better oh god the crown of the faithful yes we beseech thee this part and so sanctified I servant Elizabeth the father who was hit this days I just face it for a sign of royal majesty things which I have here before promise I will perform and keep filling up my bed as a historian put it at the time no Moloch was ever crowned more fully in the presence of the people and yet there was one moment in the ceremony where the cameras were kept away which was veiled and never seen then or since and it happened here when the Queen was anointed with the holy oil because for the Queen being called by God was not a metaphor it was absolutely serious what do you think that meant to her in a direct spiritual way I think it meant a profound sense of vocation about all this not simply stepping into a role exercising a function but actually becoming a certain kind of person which is what a vocation is about and I know that it mattered a great deal to her that in the months leading up to the coronation the venn Archbishop of Canterbury provided her with a little book of private prayers to use which she still has and clearly she took that entirely seriously as as a matter of spiritual formation at times of difficulty and certainly in the midst of a hugely demanding and busy life she comes across as somebody who is at ease serene confident and that gives me the impression that her faith is something that she really can draw upon and makes a great difference to her life so quite a day exciting but exhausting all those hours and hours of standing and remembering and concentrating and greeting and the waving of hands and the noise of the crowds a long day and ahead of her a long life of much the same thing for the Queen the 1950s would be the most glamorous years when she was a young and glittering international icon buoyed by the barely critical enthusiasm of the patriotic post-war press and the broadcasters she could have been viewed as some sort of global celebrity but she represents something rather more enduring than that she doesn't care for celebrity and I think it's it's very important to be able to retreat inside and be able to sort of collapse one's thoughts and collection you know your ideas and and and the way things are going a mentor sort of move forward and to be eyed project those ideas and those thoughts to other people and I think she does that extremely well in order to project those ideas the Queen began an annual tradition which has carried on to this day one which allows her to be heard and seen happy Christmas it's Christmas 1957 and sitting here in the library at Sandringham at this desk which had been used by her father and her grandfather before her the Queen did something that no British monic had ever done before she made a television broadcast King George the fifth and then King George the six had made radio broadcasts at Christmas and during the Second World War they'd been very important for this was something different the Queen was having to deal with the new medium of television and furthermore she was having to broadcast completely live which is quite an ordeal 25 years ago my grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages today is another landmark because television has made it possible for many of you to see me in your homes on Christmas Day there is something wonderful in the way these old familiar warm hearted words of the traditional Christmas message never seemed to grow stale no longer live but recorded she's now done 54 of these and she's known in the trade as one-take Windsor a pro who knows about lighting or the sound mic picking up a flight overhead therapy and she's relaxed into this as the content it's serious and sincere rather than surprising this is the real Queen on what matters most to her faith family the Commonwealth and the military this year I'm speaking to from the hotel calvary barracks in windsor because i want to draw attention to the many servicemen and women who are stationed far from home this Christmas support for British forces has always been fantastic second to none I personally being her grandson as well as her employee is I mean it's a huge honor it's fantastic for me the guys that I spend time with at work undoubtedly have huge amounts of pride the fact that they I mean they work for such a fantastic woman I mean it really is that simple for us I certainly recognize that much has been achieved in my lifetime like the rest of her life the Christmas message is about just that the message not the personal image the Queen is no doubt proud of many things especially her family what she doesn't seem to be is vain even though her image is inescapable when she was born in 1926 the BBC had barely started films were still silent as it were and we now live in a world where there's 24-hour news we live in a world of IT of Facebook of Twitter all of which means that she is the most remorselessly represented figure probably ever to have lived in human history it is an amazing thought even when we're barely aware of her the Queen's image is stamped on our imaginations get paid the Queen is with you go and buy a drink the Queen's there too for though she may lack vanity the Queen's been very protective of her image as monarch when Tony Benn tried to remove her head from British stamps in the 1960s he was thwarted this rebellious decade also brought her tougher media atmosphere and satirical mockery journalists were more questioning and less deferential than in the first years of her reign Media is a professional intruder wouldn't it wouldn't work if it did live in that's what it's doing all the time you can't complain about it the monarchies responds to the anti-establishment 1960s of the greater media curiosity was to agree to let some light in with an observational documentary called royal family the driving force was a member of the royal family all about marriage John Bree born who was a filmmaker and thought if only people could see what the royal family is like they'd feel much much better disposed towards them for 75 days the crew filmed some of the ritual and pomp with a ceremonial year but were also allowed to capture the Royals at home we didn't invite them into the bathroom people have judgment to put onto a secret society so why people shouldn't know what's going on much better that they should know than speculate he did have some very strange habits well father I wrote when I used to come up to run Lodge I asked when I arrived and as it was the king and they said oh he's in the garden and and I went out at night there's nothing to be seen except a lot of exteremly rude words and language coming out of a rhododendron bush so I've actually found him there hacking away wearing a bear skin when it was first shown in 1969 it became the most watched documentary in British television history with 2/3 of the population watching a triumph except that almost at once there were second thoughts were parts of it a little embarrassing too much since the year of its release the full version has never been broadcast again there was a feeling this is done all that was hoped of it it's restored a sort of respect and affection for the royal family that at least within the press and the media didn't seem to be there that's it finished that we've done it it went very well put it back in the box and let's not look at it again once you're there at the Royal barbecue and you see the sausages sizzling there's an extra layer of penetration and expectation that's created for the future and the problem with all these things is not that the film that gets made with careful supervision but what happens next and we were all greedy in the media we want to take it a stage further film royal family that I don't remember a great deal back when I was in e89 that was that was the moment when went went when the sort of that the veil was lifted to a certain extent and the the interactivity and it's just got greater and greater and greater the 1970s was a relatively easy decade for the Queen's family with Prince Charles as a bachelor in his naval uniform or careering around on polo ponies Princess Anne taking part in the 1976 Olympics relatively innocent times but for the country there were hard times industrial strife inflation angst about national decline so at when the Queen's Silver Jubilee arrived in 1977 was a certain amount of uneasiness many socialists argued the celebrations would be a waste of public money some handed out role on the red republic badges and punk rockers sang god save the queen but not in a good way salute to Her Majesty the Queen in the event the Silver Jubilee was a great success I remember the the national celebration though and just the staggering size of the crowds and the noise the cheering it was the most infectious atmosphere and then going out onto the dock no food and I hadn't really sort of registered particularly how important the year was looking back at the pin as you can you can see how it just caught everybody's imagination and you just became a bigger and bigger event but for silver jubilee turned out to be a prelude to the most melodramatic story of the Queen's reign from 1980 onwards are more aggressive media and a fresh target to hunt what do you think above all caused to change to the world that we live in that in two words Rupert Murdoch he bought the Sun newspaper I was there on day one and became involved in royal stories quite early on and it's quite clear that he didn't want to belong to that old school at all he wanted to treat the like ordinary people and most of all which I agreed he wanted them treated as news stories his newspapers all fell in love with Diana because of course she was a count a superstar which was the queen is not my editors has once said to me the torah's of the Queen and Prince Philip they're not good box office now Murdoch was only interested in good box office as Lady Diana into the Hall for the concert there were audible admiring gasps from those present his lady had well and truly arrived in a manner a few of those present were likely to forget in a hurry well the Queen in many ways and Prince Charles were were very much ignored I mean she was they the number one attraction you know this woman was just a gift for the newspapers a gift for television and she was not just a great member of the royal family but she was a megastar a staggering 750 million people around the world tuned in to watch the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 but the Queen was soon becoming uneasy about the pressure journalists were piling on her daughter-in-law feasts tree editors will call to Buckingham Palace by Michael che their Queens then press secretary when they turned up the doors opened and then walk the Queen who then proceeded to give them a severe dressing-down for what she thought was harassment of the Princess Diana in particular there had been an incident where they honored going to a sweet shop in temporary the village where a hybrid was situated and had been pursued by photographers and a lone invoice piped up that of the then editor of the news of the world berry ask you who said one man couldn't she sent one of her servants for the chocolates and the Queen said mr. askew that's one of the most pompous remarks I've ever heard in my life the editor left his post weeks later and as their marriage broke down both Princess Diana and Prince Charles turned to journalists to tell their side of the story Diana who was a child of this media culture who takes it for granted that she should pose for the cameras and that she should know the first names of the cameramen and then the reporters and then actually confide in them and then even as her marriage starts breaking down sits in cars in in Kensington Gardens pouring her heart out to sympathetic journalists this is the absolute opposite of the Queen's attitude she's from the reticent buttoned-up wartime generation she doesn't give interviews the only time if she's spoken about her life came in 1992 for a BBC documentary Elizabeth our to mark the 40th year of her reign this was the period of the young Diana the young Sarah Ferguson in the family they were attracting the attention and you tended not to get very much coverage of the Queen and I think there was a there was a feeling that perhaps it would not be a bad idea to remind people of the Queen's role and the words we heard were about her duties they were about other people not herself I was absolutely fascinated by the people who come all the things that they they've done I think that's very important that the system does discover people who don't and some things you know them I think that's very satisfaction I think people need Pat's on back sometimes it's a very dingy world I was but it was the absence of words which created the biggest media storm of the Queen's reign when in 1997 on the southern death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash the Queen stayed at Balmoral for another four days for the Queen I think it was it was a very difficult thing for her to balance because her first priority was to look after her grandchildren make sure that they were properly cared for and and helped through this this period of grieving when there was all this huge Ferrari going on around but at the same time obviously for the country because Diana was revered in the door that there was a need for her to be there with with the country I remember being in my room in Buckingham Palace and the crowd lining Birdcage Walk waiting for her car to come back down and those are a very quiet and quite threatening atmosphere there almost a mutinous almost a mutinous feeling and the moment the car appeared people started to clap and the whole atmosphere changed and the very fact of just responding and returning to the palace and becoming the public figure again not the private grieving family sort of did it she took this one step further using the media herself to talk to the nation what I say to you now as your 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 what you say to the country was hope you have to understand this is my family and and and I'm approaching this as a grandmother but I knowledge my duty to you as as Queen and it was interesting when she realized that that's what she had to do she did it and by the way those those words and that speech were her own though they weren't written by new labor because they were absolutely not written by new labor no she was and and the the very personal touch was was actually hers it was a terrible time for the Queen as for the rest of the royal family and as the media has kept changing so has the monarchy these days the British monarchy has a Facebook page a royal channel on YouTube and a Twitter page though no tweets from the Queen herself doesn't seem quite right or likely is she in touch with what's going on in your generation much do you think she's on Facebook I mean certainly Buckingham Palace is using some of the social networking sites I think I think that's nature of the world today that you have to be in touch to a certain extent but I think the wonderful thing about the Queen is that she's timeless she's in touch with every generation just instinctively because she is this matriarch of society now reading and responding to the British public mood is a daily art but the mood in the Queen's other realms is crucial to Jamaica now wants to end the royal connection while there are Republican movements in countries such as Australia Canada and New Zealand as with the changing media at home the Queen has had to cope with some tricky challenges in 1954 she arrived newly crowned in Australia where she was an unknown quantity this was the first visit of a reigning monarch she hadn't faced a tour on this scale before so how would she cope and how would they react it's reckoned that 3/4 of the adult population turned out to cheer the Queen is queen of Australia only because in 1770 a bold explorer Captain Cook was bouncing along the coast and obeying orders planted a flag and said on behalf of George the 3rd will have this now Australia has long been an independent and very powerful country full of people from all around the world many of whom have absolutely no connection to Britain even in modern Plains it's an 18-hour flight from London to here put like that it seems bizarre that the Queen reigns here in 1986 the Australia Act formally severed any rights of the United Kingdom to interfere in Australian politics and references to the Queen were removed from the country's oath of allegiance in 1999 however a hard-fought referendum came down narrowly in favor of monarchy today members of the Australian Republican movement still calling for radical change we think that we've outlived the role that a British Queen can play in Australia that the time of Empire and then in more traditional days of monarchy that to have a British monarch as a head of state and to have her representative the governor-general as the de facto head of state was probably a system that's worked well enough in the past but the time to move on has come so in October 2011 how might the Queen be received on her 16th visit to Australia the press is full of questions asking whether this is the last time she'll visit she certainly puts in the legwork taking in Canberra Melbourne Brisbane and Perth and wherever she goes the mood on the streets is sunny she finds plenty of the old British spirit at events such as this garden party you've got some nice music you've got the canapes and the little cakes it's a little bit like Buckingham Palace well only a little bit Buckingham Palace they offer you a very nice cup of tea here we are in Australia and you get something rather more interesting unless you're working there's no doubt that the visit of a traditionalist octogenarian monarch to this sun-baked continent will have its odd moments the Queen has kept her dignity traveling in many royal vehicles a golf buggy complete with aquarii and royal crest something else in the past the Queen has explained away her durer expressions by saying that often she's just trying not to giggle well this may be one of those moments in Australia's national capital Canberra the Prime Minister Julia Gillard holds a reception for the Queen as she said to be Republican minded but there's little evidence of that today many heads of state and government are welcomed within these walls but in this the home of Australian democracy you are a vital constitutional part not a guest just as in this nation you can only ever be welcomed as a beloved and respected friend and she's not the only welcome member of the royal family the Queen's grandson has made several visits the last in March 2011 in the wake of the floods and the cyclones which hit Queensland and Victoria Prince William really touched the hearts of Australians including talking to those who had lost family members who had lost their mother and was able to talk to them about his own feelings about what that was like in his own experience so it was a very emotional intense engagement his visit and his wedding has boosted enthusiasm for the monarchy people stood for hours to catch a glimpse of him there as he was to represent his grandmother when I came back then I got a letter from her saying you know congratulations well done it's a very good trip and you know words like that there's a lot of gravitas behind them and you feel know you've done you've done a good thing it's swears I'll outlive mean an awful lot the Queen ends her journey in the remote city of Perth venue for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held once every two years at as head of the Commonwealth the Queen tries to open every meeting she considers this organization one of the greatest achievements of her reign by the end of her father's reign the Empire had been wound up and now newly independent states could reject the British monarchy and choose republicanism and yet stay inside the grouping as part of the Commonwealth of the 54 members today only 16 have the Queen as head of state the Commonwealth is not one of the world's essential organisations but it's a very popular club even for countries that were never part of the British Empire and don't speak English it is perhaps the only political passion that the queen is allowed to express she's called it the original World Wide Web but essential or not it's popular with members big and small I think as a head of the Commonwealth she has given inspiration she has given encouragement and indeed by her very presence on every sugar um she came to my country for the spin when we hosted sugar in 2009 she was an apple to Spain there and she's gone to any part of the camera she's been referred to as the glue that binds the Commonwealth together and I think the stability and certainty of her role and her pursuit of Commonwealth values of democratic values as health find the Commonwealth together these Commonwealth visits a lot of people particularly in Britain I suspect scratch their heads and wonder what they're really for does it matter anymore well the Commonwealth is an amazing network it has more than a quarter of the world's population more than a quarter of the world countries it actually has an increasing share of the world's economic output and so a remarkable network is something actually more relevant as the 21st century goes on than perhaps it was at the end of the 20th century because we live in a networked world now from the starts you saw the value and the benefits of Commonwealth I think she's really trying to explore and expand and you know make it more of a more of a global institution and you know it's you know two billion people you know in the Commonwealth and growing it's all people want to join all the time that exactly I mean that is testament to her that really is her leadership her guidance is what's really seeing the Commonwealth through the Queen made a promise to uphold the Commonwealth and she takes it very seriously in 2009 the actor and writer Kwami Guam are set out to replicate the Queen's first-ever Commonwealth tour for a Channel 4 series to try to discover what its impact had been what was very interesting for me about making this documentary about the Queen is I went in slightly fascinated by power and by how power presents itself and came out actually an admirer of the Queen's work ethic and and I don't feel ashamed to say that at being a spirit Republican actually my understanding is is that she really does understand the world of high politics really understands and cares for her position and her job and her work ethic seems to be absolutely magnificent but what are the future of the Commonwealth without her her air will not automatically become head it will be up to the Commonwealth leaders to decide do you think the Commonwealth will survive in its form after the Queen absolutely because it's almost impossible to to disentangle because there are this myriad of connections it's not just about the Heads of Government it's not just about sport there are so many other different connections that you can't rule you cannot disassemble it now by the end of this trip it's absolutely obvious that the Queen's visit has been hugely popular Chinese Australians Japanese Australians Indian Australians are among those waving flags when a queen and the duke arrive for what's billed as the world's largest barbecue around a hundred thousand people turn up in Perth we should stop coming said one leading Republican she sets the cause back twenty years every time she does with fond memories of our time here and the warm Australian welcome we have received on our 16th visit for this beautiful country after all those head shaking stories about this being the last trip to Australia and perhaps the last time a Moloch will ever visit but by the end neither of these things seems particularly likely if she can make it back she will and even that Republican Prime Minister doesn't see a republic looming anytime soon right now I think in the life of the Australian nation it is not the question at the forefront of people's minds we are a wonderful democracy a vibrant democracy and ultimately I believe Australians will have their say again on our ongoing constitutional arrangements but it's not the center of national life or national debate at the moment the Australian visit also marked a legal change which will affect the entire future of the British monarchy at that Commonwealth meeting the leaders of the 16 realms agreed to amend the 1701 Act of Settlement so that the first born of Prince William and Kate girl or boy will succeed to the throne ending 300 years of monarchical male discrimination the process of change for an institution like that is constant you have constantly have to change and adapt that's the best way of maintaining what we have and I think this was the right time to make this change the queen is now the oldest lived monarch in British history who's reigned for sixty years this summer brings her Diamond Jubilee and the Diamond Jubilee is a very rare event this country's only seen one before in 1897 Queen Victoria marked hers at the zenith of Britain's worldwide Empire plenty to celebrate frail though at 78 rather younger than our Queen Victoria enjoyed every minute the cheering was quite deafening and every face seemed to be filled with real joy I was much moved and gratified today as at earlier celebrations in the Queen's reign times seemed tough and the future uncertain but the historians perspective suggests this may mean that Jubilees matter more not less if you live in a republic if let's take the United States of America and you think about the periods of history that the countries chopped up into it's four years for president eight years if you're lucky and then it's a hundred years for centenary Zoar Centennial's and that's about it really whereas if you have a monarchy especially if you have the present queen who has reigned for twenty-five years then fifty years then sixty years what you get is this sequence of Jubilees which provides you with the opportunity for structured retrospection looking back 25 years 50 years and 60 years that otherwise you don't have the 2002 Golden Jubilee saw the Queen tore the country the weekend itself so a million people flock to the MAL to show they still cared for their Manik the first time the Queen allowed Buckingham Palace to be the setting for a pop concert which opened live from the rooftop was there something you particularly want to do for the Queen yes permit yes and for many reasons really because in a sense the Queen razón was like of course yes the Queen yeah I mean she presided over that the birth of rock and roll really also which I pointed out at the time so in his sense I was symbolizing 50 years of her reign and 50 years of rock and roll about 2002 was also a year of family sadness in the run-up to the Golden Jubilee weekend the Queen's mother and her sister Princess Margaret died within weeks of one another losses which struck the Queen heart we all knew that it never to be a Queen Elizabeth was going to have to die soon because of her age but I think that in pop princess margaret it becomes cereal with various strokes things but in a way it was probably almost a merciful release you know there is no doubt that losing your mother and your sister in the same brief period is is really hard because both of them in a way had a very close relationship pretty well on a daily basis and that's pretty hard to lose probably on closest sounding boards in such a short space of time part of getting over that the experience is to keep going and okay that's been ways handsome a traditional and bit old-fashioned but I don't believe that's necessarily bad I think that's you that gives you a way of dealing with things it was tiled when when she died so I remember the last few years we spent a lot of time together and she again was this energy when you walked into the room you just felt she was there and everyone listened and learned and sat with her and it was just this another silent sort of great being in the room she's a very special lady but I only as you get older do you really do I really appreciate because when I was growing up it oh it was just gang gang and then now it's like no oh my goodness it sort of does it takes you by surprise a little bit this Diamond Jubilee year is marked with the release of new stamps and coins for a March the Queen will once again crisscross the United Kingdom in June there'll be an extra bank holiday over the central weekend of celebrations and 2012 beacons will flare around the country and the Commonwealth on the River Thames Thor with a splash and Eddie of a Jubilee pageant a thousand boats with the Queen in a specially designed royal barge boats of all shapes and sizes rode boats and motorized boats and historic boats and working boats and these boats have come from not just from London and the the Thames region but all over the UK the party continues when a rather surprised Queen Victoria hosts a pop concert from her memorial outside Buckingham Palace I hope that I'm gonna be around for it job wise I don't know exactly who I'm gonna be but fingers crossed I'll be around a concert in the garden would always go down well I'm sure for us what do you think the silver and the golden Jubilees tell us about what's going to happen this year at the Diamond Jubilee in the run-up to every Jubilee that's a kind of institutionalized pessimism on the part of some commentators and some papers as if it could never be the same as last time but so far it always is the people come up trumps the Marxists always say the masses let us down well the masses don't let the Queen down when in these Jubilees I don't believe that there's any real risk of a Jubilee flopping Oh contraire this gloomy foreplay is always confounded and long may it be so throughout the Queen's reign of course she's not stood alone beside her has been a constant presence it's often said that the Queen has done everything expected of her but he's not quite true when she was young all sorts of establishment figures had all sorts of clever ideas about who she might marry the sons of grand landowners titled guards officers but from the time she was a teenager she knew exactly who she wanted and none of the more conventional candidates proposed by friends of the family had a chance the man who captured her heart was of course Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh at the age of 90 despite recent heart surgery he's always been there to steer and steady when the water gets choppy in November 2011 she made him her Lord High Admiral there's has been the closest Union he is someone who doesn't take easily to compliments but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years trying to imagine what it is actually like to be the sovereign where that's where the buck stops in many ways it can be a very lonely place to be because at the end of the day of was gonna to defer to you having somebody there with it sure you can share that that load I think is really important I think we do fembra has been able to do that particularly well without ever stepping across that magic line I think the story Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh is the unrealized success story of the monarchy here is a man a man's band no-nonsense man who has managed throughout his life with total loyalty not to upstage his wife he's been popularly known for his salty and sometimes crotchety sayings but the truth is that for a long time this was a restlessly reforming figure once voted the most popular member of the royal family chivvying British business taking risks like letting television cameras into the palaces appearing on television to promote wildlife and helping urban youth from his Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme to campaigning for children's playing fields and he gave up his naval career to spend his life by her side some people have said he could have gone all the way to the top as a professional he could have been sitting in your uniform as a professional I think all the indications of the manner in which is conducted his royal duties since nineteen fifty to three indicate that he had everything that was appropriate to doing my job the Queen may be head of the nation but he is still head of the family the support that he goes to and to my grandmother is I mean phenomenal I mean I'm still doing engagements by myself you know Williams also you know got Kathryn and other members of family you know have their other halls which I think makes a huge difference and regardless of whether my grandfather's what seems to be doing his own things or wandering off like a fish down the river the fact that he's there I personally don't think that she could do it without him especially and when they're both of this age so sixty years on the throne quite an achievement for this small woman with a world familiar face a thousand years of history at her back who since a twist of fate at the age of ten has known her destiny too much in the last 18 months in pursuing in the background auditor for her children and grandchildren it's a different story next in line of succession the Prince of Wales is the oldest heir apparent in British history the age of 63 half the battle isn't it is how to adapt in the best way without losing that element of continuity not easy to feel your way gently and her legacy also of course lies in the hands of her eight grandchildren there's quite a lot pressure or someone like me as a junior boy coming through as well because of the example you know the queen of SATs while she's still and and providing such a good example it allows me to learn and to be able to develop and to be able to understand better what of sort of role plays and I think she she defines it brilliantly every time I find myself wedging about wives tasks for the dinner jacket and go ahead and do this again to that I know and cotton recently I've been things myself actually I can't complain at the end the day you know she has put this country way before way before anything that she'd ever want to do I mean it's it wasn't it's her job understandably but she a very young age was put in a position that I would love to see anybody handle and I don't think they would be able to as well as she has family is a massive thing in her life and even though she is the monarch she's the most caring just a person that you could actually just go to and ask anything and we'll have massive respect for an inner lover Tibet's just the consistency that she has shown throughout those 60 years the support that she's had from the family from grandpa the support that she's given to her family as well and you know don't forget he or she may have visited of many countries it's been in the last in the last sixty years and have so many engagements in this and the other she's also being a mother and a grandmother and and now great grandmother and she's to get that balance and do both so incredibly well it's probably her and greatest tribute take a bow 13 month old savanna daughter of the princess royal son Peter Phillips and his wife autumn the Queen's first great-grandchild queen elizabeth ii has been part of all our lives for 60 years doing her quiet phlegmatic relentless best during her reign she's been a witness to the most rapid changes in society more than 21,000 days since the age of 25 she has dedicated her life as the servant of her people she's seen triumph and disaster family heartache and family delight and she has come through the rapids into Carmel waters I've seen the Queen over the years and I just are inspired by her ability to listen to to consider and to be able to alter things and suggest things that's where she's been so clever I think their ability to keep pace with the changes understand what those changes mean but also that the role of the monarch Eden doesn't change very much in that sense so that degree of continuity Constance remains no reason for that not to be able to go on my home but if these are karma waters for the Queen they're hardly calm times for her country will Great Britain survive or will Scotland leave how will the British deal with the rest of Europe now struggling with its greatest crisis since the Second World War and in hard economic times how well will we hang together as one people that's politics but the state is more than its politicians one of the things you want for Prime Minister is to have a safe space where they can talk to someone very openly about what's working and what's not and actually to have someone really senior really independent really discreet who will have those discussions and very wise and the seen it all before that's priceless in my book you think in our lives how many mistakes we all make politically professionally personally I mean it is extraordinary 60 years you know she has just been a unbelievable model public servant and we've just been so lucky to have someone like that on the throne for such an extraordinarily long period confronted by trouble and argument the British have someone at the top of the tree who didn't fight or elbow her way there who's there because she's there modern monarchy is not inevitable it's not a part of nature it's a choice the Windsor dynasty was created at a time of crisis and national soul-searching and for 60 years this queen has reigned knowing that monarchy works when it sustains and supports the democracy in the future as in the past the British monarchy will not be made by monarchs or by princes or princesses or by politicians in the end as in the past it depends on the people who turn up and the people who don't it's in their hands it's in our hands I declare before you all with my her 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 I think she's brought life energy and passion to the job she's managed to modernize and evolve the monarchy like no other and it just shows the strengths of women at the top I think it's fantastic and she's on her you know she's really set set the bar very very high details of how you can become part of the Diamond Jubilee concert coming up while on bbc4 now saving priceless books in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war in store evil

Channel: CH NG

Views: 31,774

Keywords: The, Diamond, Queen, S01E03, READNFO, HDTV, XviD, FTP

Id: 14aGmX8VrKU

Length: 58min 53sec (3533 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2012