God save the Queen
The Fascist regime
God save the Queen
She ain’t no human being.
There is no future
In England’s dreaming. The Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen
In the build up to the Coronation the two sides would clash repeatedly. The Queen was caught in the middle. The Queen’s Coronation: Behind Palace Doors, 2008
Sixteen months were given to plan and rehearse this event. ibid.
Prince Philip and the Queen Mother were moving in very different directions. ibid.
Deferring to her daughter was one thing, dealing with her son-in-law’s negative views was another. ibid.
Behind the scenes there was no such cosy family. ibid.
This tyranny of tradition extended beyond the coronation into every area of royal life. ibid.
Buckingham Palace already had an occupant – the Queen Mother ... So Philip reluctantly found himself living with his in-laws. ibid.
Soho nights were just a short escape. ibid.
The BBC was still fighting to get their cameras in. ibid.
Finally it was her moment. ibid.
Behind the scenes some family tensions continued. ibid.
Overall, the Coronation had been a stunning victory for the traditionalists. ibid.
The nation was entranced by the spectacle. ibid.
I think that he [Prince Philip] felt that what he’d got was a billet for life. Piers Brendon, author The Windsors and Our Own Dear Queen
The Queen can do no wrong. Winston Churchill
London, May 1953: Dr Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, crowns Lavinia ... These are the final rehearsals ... On June 2 1953 a nine-hundred-year-old rite was enacted. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, BBC 2013
15th February 1952: The funeral of George VI. The King had died in his sleep at the age of fifty-six. ibid.
She was quickly escorted home to take up her new responsibilities. On the runway in London to greet her – the prime minister Winston Churchill and members of the Privy Council. ibid.
Would its cameras be allowed inside Westminster Abbey? ... A lot of television sets would be sold as a result of the U-turn. ibid.
20,000 troops were going to be involved on the day. ibid.
Hyde Park was transformed into an enormous emergency camp. ibid.
She rehearsed in the Abbey on four occasions. ibid.
The BBC’s live television broadcast was in black and white. ibid.
In the eyes of her family, courtiers and the public the young Prince Philip of Greece was a far from ideal suitor. Rough, uneducated and unlikely to be faithful, thought the court. The Queen's Wedding, Channel 4 2007
The princess was smitten by the good looking, much older cadet. ibid.
He [Dickie] wanted to put himself and the Mountbattens centre stage. ibid.
His background was far from ideal ... In royal terms Philip was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. ibid.
Philip’s unfortunate links with Nazi Germany: Philip’s family had Germanic origins. ibid.
The new government had inherited a dirty little war in Greece. ibid.
Having played the field during the war, Philip was now set on Elizabeth. ibid.
Next big hurdle: the public’s dissatisfaction over cost. ibid.
In June 1953 in a ritual dating back nine hundred years the Queen was crowned ... Royal weddings came and went. Marriages were dissolved. Royal homes inflamed. Royal children tragically lose their mother. And a new woman arrives. H M Queen: A Remarkable Life, 2002
Trained by Queen Mary, the young Princess Elizabeth was very much like her grandmother. ibid.
The current pack of corgis is the tenth generation descended from Susan. ibid.
Horseracing has always given the Queen enormous pleasure. ibid.
The young Princess Diana was thrown into the public spotlight totally unprepared for the demanding nature of the job. ibid.
The Queen did not fully appreciate the gulf between her and her daughters-in-law. ibid.
Buckingham Palace has said that the Queen is aware of reports that two of her cousins have been kept secretly in a mental hospital but added it was a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family. Today the family said that entries in Burke’s Peerage showing the two women had died many years ago were the result of vagueness and not the result of cover-up. BBC News
Every family has secrets ... Two of the Queen’s cousins have been absent from the feast declared dead to family and society. For decades the cousins remained hidden in an institution for so-called mental defectives. Many thousands of others condemned as idiots and imbeciles shared their fate and were hidden out of sight and out of mind. But the Royal secret was exposed. The Queen’s Hidden Cousins, Channel 4 2011
Katherine Bowes-Lyon, niece to the Queen Mother and cousin to the Queen, is still alive today. ibid.
Katherine and Nerissa were born with learning difficulties and they disappeared from view. ibid.
The advice given to parents was to put their deficient children away and to forget about them. ibid.
In 1941, at the ages of fifteen and twenty-two, Katherine and Nerissa were consigned to the care of the Royal Earlswood institution. ibid.
They found a further three members [Fane sisters] of the [Bowes-Lyon] family had been admitted to the Royal Earlswood on the same day in 1941. ibid.
After the press exposé, a headstone for Nerissa was provided by the family. ibid.
At the height of the Second World War in August 1942 a very special passenger boarded a flying boat in northern Scotland. He was a high-ranking member of the royal family whose outrageous private life had been a source of damaging rumour and scandal ... Minutes into the flight the aircraft crashed into a mountainside ... Prince George, black sheep of the House of Windsor. The Queen’s Lost Uncle, Channel 4 2003
A world of hard drugs and casual sex with both women and men. ibid.
The fifth son, Prince John, was born with learning disabilities. He was shunned by most of his family. But not by George. ibid.
The king’s artistic young son [George] was an instant hit in London high society. ibid.
Egged on by Edward, George was able to indulge his passion for music, theatre and dancing. ibid.
Noel Coward ... It was to be the start of a passionate affair. ibid.
He began to leave a trail of compromising evidence in his wake. ibid.
He’d got himself a serious morphine addiction. ibid.
Edward dragged George back from his slide into oblivion. ibid.
Princess Marina ... Troublesome young George was finally hitched. ibid.
They had more relatives in Germany than they did in Britain. ibid.
George’s seaplane departed from the flight plan. ibid.
George’s body was later pulled from the wreckage. He was 39 years old. ibid.
One of the oldest and grandest monarchies of all. Andrew Marr, Diamond Queen I BBC 2012
As a young girl she didn’t expect to become Queen. ibid.
Her father was George V’s second son, Albert of York. ibid.
1936 would become the year of the three kings. ibid.
Oddly, perhaps, she seems to have established a very warm relationship with her first northern Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. ibid.
It’s her government but she is not the government. ibid.
A lot of the Queen’s life has been about travelling abroad. ibid.
She is also Queen of 1.6 million British Muslims. ibid.
The Queen has modernised quite a lot, but it’s worth remembering what she hasn’t. Andrew Marr, Diamond Queen II BBC 2012
The Windsors have always been acutely aware of public opinion and changing attitudes. ibid.