Queen Elizabeth II: Her Story, Our Century (BBC1)
One word was repeated by almost everyone: ‘Duty.’ Former U.S. President Barack Obama described the late Queen’s ‘combination of a sense of duty with a very human quality of kindness and consideration’.
Dame Helen Mirren, describing how she studied one particular clip of Her Majesty getting out of a car, as she prepared to play the monarch on screen, said: ‘She naturally had a sense of self-control and duty.’
The present Queen, Camilla, expressed it most emphatically: ‘I think duty has overridden everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody have a sense of duty like she had.’
Camilla may inadvertently have revealed more than she intended. One inference of her comment is that neither King Charles nor his heir, Prince William, can match Elizabeth II for her commitment to duty.
But that’s hardly a criticism. And I think we can all agree Prince Harry doesn’t have quite the same single-minded devotion to his royal role.
Trawling the palace archives for home cine-clips, Queen Elizabeth II: Her Story, Our Century discovered a scattering of previously unseen moments.
Some of it was from her childhood, almost certainly filmed by her father, George VI — ‘Lilibet’ with her pony, or laughing with a bird perched on her shoulder, or adopting an air of mock gravity as she danced with her younger sister, Margaret.
We also caught rare glimpses from the 1969 documentary Royal Family, about their private life, unrepeated on television for almost 50 years. Gyles Brandreth commented astutely: ‘It was the beginning of them being seen as celebrities.’
Sir David Attenborough, born a couple of weeks after Her Majesty, recalled the first time he saw her, in 1947. He was a naval officer, and she was a new bride: ‘One evening there was a formal dinner, and Prince Philip brought this beautiful princess on his arm. I was standing there as she walked past with a beaming smile.’
Perhaps the most moving segment was a scrap of colour footage, less than ten seconds long, shot by the Duke of Edinburgh on the day that his young wife became Queen.
Filmed in Kenya, in a darkened room, the 25-year-old Elizabeth sat with her face half in shadow. She wore three strands of pearls around her neck, a single pearl stud in each ear, and a blue jacket that intensified the startling blue of her eyes.
Her lips were parted in that smile the English do after tears, the one that says, ‘There! This is silly. Crying won’t do any good, will it?’ Earlier that day, she had learned of the death of her father.
With his passing, she assumed the throne. The grief in her face, though, was for her personal loss, and as she turned, she looked directly into the lens with a gaze of imploring love — plainly adoring her husband, and asking for his support. It was all written there, fleeting as a breath.
