The Rest Is History - 231. Queen Elizabeth II - part 1

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

The death of the Queen at the age of 96 brings to an end seven decades of her reign over Britain and the Commonwealth. In the first of a two-part series, Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland look back at the early years of Elizabeth’s life, leading up to her coronation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. And Dominic, this is, I mean, a properly historic moment, isn't it? We are recording this the day after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. I think we're, well, I'm 54. I'm getting old. I'm moving on.

But the Queen was an absolute constant throughout my entire life. And I, well, you know, I'm not surprised at the sense of bereavement I felt, because I knew that I would. I knew that I would be surprised at how I felt. And so in a sense, I'm not surprised at how surprised I am at how I felt, if you see what I mean. I know exactly what you mean. Hello, everybody. It's a very sad moment for us in Britain, for people who love history, who are interested in history, because, of course, a link with history. In other circumstances, we would have been recording this morning about the life, the early life of Winston Churchill, who was, of course, the Queen's first prime minister, who she met, of course, two days before she died, was Liz Truss, who was born in 1975, almost 101 years later. And that sort of, that extraordinary fact,

that longevity, that sweep, I mean, you're talking, you know, the Queen in a way is a link with the Victorian past, isn't she? She is. So many of the people she knew when she was young were Victorians. And I think that that is another dimension of how, of the way that people are feeling moved, perhaps even if they're not royalists,

is that the Queen is part of our personal lives because she's been a kind of background presence on the television, her jubilees, all that kind of thing. But also she serves the country and perhaps the world as well as a kind of living link to earlier ages and perhaps specifically to the Second World War, to the victory in the Second World War. And she really is the kind of the last great figure from that age.

Well, that's why when COVID struck, Tom, and loads of our British listeners will remember this, and the Queen gave a national TV address, you know, we will meet again, referencing Vera Lynn's wartime hit. And of course, it coincided, didn't it, with the, was it the anniversary of the Battle of Britain? Yeah. with Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. And there were all kinds of celebrations planned that then didn't really come to fruition. And there was a sort of sense, wasn't there, that she was the embodiment. I mean, some people may find this too mawkish, but I think during COVID there was an absolute sense that she was the embodiment of the spirit of 1940

and that people sort of projected. I mean, of course, that's what we've always done with the Queen is project onto her. She was, after all all a mortal human being but people projected onto her a huge amount of meaning of sort of patriotic national meaning didn't they which is must have been i mean we'll talk about this in the podcast must have been almost intolerably heavy at times to bear knowing that tens of millions indeed hundreds of millions when you can include the commonwealth of people are watching at every move but also they've laid a new down with so much emotional and kind of psychological baggage i mean i think kind of

literally the the crown with which she was um placed on her head is physically very very heavy and i think that that weight is absolutely there. And scholars talk of, you know, the monarch's two bodies. So the individual human being, and then the kind of symbolic role that a monarch has to play. And I think that one of the things that is remarkable about the Queen is how she kept her, in a way, her first body, her private role, so private. You know, there was so much about her that we don't know even though she's probably the most familiar face perhaps of i mean she was the most famous woman in the world yeah but the other thing that's striking about her is how incredibly adept she became at using

the inherent symbolism of her role so thinking of covid her role in covid the um the symbolism of her presence at the husband at the funeral of her husband duke of edinburgh when um isolation rules were were still very much in force and she sat alone in a pew and she served i think i talking to a lot of friends a lot of friends lots of of whom my i would not particularly put down as enthusiasts for monarchy. But all of them, it was like she was serving as a lightning rod for the feelings of grief and bereavement that people had suffered generally throughout the pandemic. And I think that the very last photographs of her,

you talked about how she met Liz Truss, the new prime minister. She looked so frail, but she was still doing her duty. I have found myself more moved by the spectacle of her as a very old woman, I think, than almost anything else. I found it incredibly powerful. And it's to do with the fact that she reminds me of my own mother. But it's also to do with the thought of what an entire lifetime of living in the public eye means. And she must have known she was on the verge of death when she did those last kind of duties at Balmoral. And yet she was still carrying on. And I think I find it very moving.

I think there's something moving about any life lived to its conclusion, no matter how long that life lasts. I mean, the BBC montages, which are brilliantly done, I think, of the sort of all the sort of the film clips of her from her, you know, she was filmed from a very young age, which is obviously not true of most people who were born in the 1920s. And that's sort of there are very few people whose lives have been charted in that way from kind of giggling toddler all the way through to, you know, mid-90s and yet still going about all the duties. And I think that's part of the thing that gives it the emotional heft, that you see the whole sweep of the life, don't you? Yeah.

In a way that you don't with most, even with presidents and prime ministers, most of their early lives are almost, you know, they're lost in the sort of mists of memory. But that's not really true the queen that is that is the weirdness of monarchy isn't it i mean that is that is the kind of the power that someone who has has has lived in the public eye really from from kind of you know her birth but as as a queen for 70 years it's that that enables her to serve as a kind of image of the country yeah that is why i think you know the country will feel dislocated as a result of her loss well britishness itself we'll come to this when we but britishness itself um had at the beginning of the 20th century or

indeed when she was born in the 20s britishness that there were lots of different things that connoted britishness said that know, you read Orwell or something and the Royal Navy or the people going into the factory or the imperial sweep, the sense of industry. Yeah, the clogs on the old maids bicycling to Holy Communion, whatever, whatever. So many of those things actually are lost and so many institutions have been tarnished,

including in some ways, actually, the monarchy itself has come in for a beating various times since the 1980s. But the queen remained untarnished, didn't she? Almost entirely untarnished. There were one or two blips that we'll perhaps come to later on in the podcast in the 1990s and so on. But it's extraordinary how much people – see, this is the thing about the monarchy, isn't it?

You keep two things in your head at once, that there is a there is a genuinely mortal human being there who has ambitions and anxieties and fears and all of these things. And at the same time, it is this avatar for Britishness. And the fact that she was able to keep both those things in play. I mean, that's that's a cunning and I mean, cunning is perhaps might seem to some people a loaded word, but I don't think it is. It's a very, very clever political act. I mean, the Queen was a political animal. And I think if people don't realise that, I mean, of course, the monarchy is political. And I think that's, you know, you could argue, given her success in preserving the institution, she is one of the most effective British politicians, if not the most effective, of her lifetime.

Yes. And I would go further and say that I think that in terms of what the monarch has to do, I think she is probably the most successful British monarch. Yeah. A few people have talked about this, haven't they? Well, yes. She ticked all the boxes that were available to her in a more effective way. Yeah. So obviously, she hasn't invaded France ored all the boxes that were available to her in a more effective way. Yeah. So obviously, you know, she hasn't invaded France or any of the things that a monarch in the Middle Ages might have been expected to do. But, you know, that was never on the agenda.

She was never going to be asked to do that. But what she was asked to do was to serve as a symbol of the country. Because I think that saying, you know, that there might be the risk of a kind of slightly elegiac tone about, you know, so much has been lost in Britain. But actually, I think that the Queen's real achievement was that she was able to adapt and in some ways, perhaps, encourage other people to adapt to as profound a process of change as any period in this country's history. And I think that so many of those changes have been for the better. And the Queen has moved with those changes.

So, you know, Britain has become, for instance, a multiracial, multicultural society. And strangely, the Queen's background, she was raised as a child of empire. Yeah, absolutely. But she doesn't die, I think, as an emblem of empire. No, I think you're absolutely right. She may do to the odd angry academic, perhaps. But by and large, I don't think she does, because I think that no one has ever thought that she had a racist bone in her body and i think that her palpable interest in say africa or the caribbean which was unfashionable in the 40s and 50s most people in britain were not interested in the degree that

she was or in india or in australia or you know across the whole span of the world means that when people from across the world have come to Britain, they too can feel that the Queen is interested in them. And I think that perhaps has facilitated the transition of Britain from a largely monocultural society to a multicultural society. I don't know whether you'd agree with that. Tom, I totally agree with you. I remember you talking in this podcast many episodes ago about Prince Charles and the enthusiasm with which he was greeted in Brixton. Something to do with opening, as he's done, had sponsored projects that have- Yeah. Including, magnificently, some riding stables, which are wonderful.

Some riding stables in Brixton. Very nice. But I think that's an element that people often miss, particularly outsiders. They think that the royal family and the queen have become symbols of this sort of pith-helmeted Victorian imperialism. So, for example, there was a predictably and almost comically wrongheaded opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday, just within hours of the queen's death, saying that she was a symbol of Britain's bloody disengagement from the world. And, you know, she'd papered over the horrors of empire and stuff. And I just thought that is a prime misunderstanding of the way in which the Queen's image actually worked because her palpable enthusiasm for me, as you say, for dancing with Kwame Nkrumah in 1961 or whenever it was. And being insulted for it by the South African press.

Who felt betrayed by it, didn't they? I mean, they did. They thought that she should have gone woke, as it were. Yes. And the sort of the queens and, indeed, Prince Charles or the current kings, you know, their very visible delight and enthusiasm when they would meet black schoolchildren or whatever, the very clear lack of sort of overt prejudice there,

all of that sort of stuff I think was very powerful, you know, and encouraging the idea of Britain as a multiracial nation. But anyway, Tom, we should crack on with the narrative, shouldn't we? Because we want to – it's often sort of said, and I may in very poor, unpatriotic moments have said so myself myself that the Queen's life is uneventful and not worthy of study. But actually it's a brilliant window to talk about how Britain has changed. Oh, I see.

You've changed your tune. I have changed my tune, yeah. I have changed my tune. It's too late for all those Channel 5 documentaries. Yes. But I reserved my best energies for this podcast, Tom, as you would expect. I would expect nothing else. I like to think we are, of course, the People's and the Nation's podcast.

I like to think so, yes. So the funny thing about the Queen, of course, she wasn't born to be Queen. So she was born in April 1926, and her father was the second son of George V. So her father, Prince Albert, as he then was, the Duke of York, the future George VI. And I think that obviously the two biggest influences, I would say, on the Queen, apart from Prince Philip, whom she later married, George V and George VI. And there's an obvious continuity, don't you think, Tom? I mean, we've talked about George V. I think we can safely call him a friend of the rest

of his history with his stamp collecting. His creased trousers. With his creased trousers. The wrong way. Yeah. Well, he would say the right way and the rest of us if we grease our trousers which i actually don't but uh doing it the wrong way but yeah the sort of he had made himself george v her grandfather she called him grandpa england he had made himself this sort of incredibly humdrum symbol of stolidity i suppose and you know, all the stuff about duty and service

and all those things. It was really George V who instituted those. That is the sort of the guiding mantra of the institution because, of course, his father, Edward VII, had been Edward the Caressor and had been quite a bad boy. But George V, his boringness, what we would now call his boringness was his great asset in time of political turbulence and i think his son albert comes to to emulate that when he becomes king and obviously he is a massive influence on the late queen yes so she's born now

on 21st of april 1926 yes not born in a palace not born in a palace. Not born in a palace, Tom. No. And she's brought up in a kind of townhouse. Yeah, Piccadilly. Yeah. It's not exactly, you know, it's not a slum. No, it's not. It's not a palace. No. But you say that there would have been no prospect of her becoming queen when she was born.

Well, not no prospect, but she's not born to be queen, as it were. Yes, agreed. But she is, I mean, she's absolutely in the line of... Yes, yes. At that point, she would have been third in the line of succession, I guess. Third in the line of succession. So there is a sense that she's, you know... There's a possibility.

A possibility there. And she is George V's first grandchild. didn't she and she used to kind of he used to kind of crawl around on the floor didn't he and she would pull him by his beard and that's right yes yes it was great larks yes so um that's absolutely right and actually she was quite close to her grandparents because and this will um probably astonish some listeners uh when she was very small, so in January 1927, so she's not even one, her parents abandoned her for six months. They went on an imperial tour.

But that's very royal behavior, isn't it? Well, they wouldn't have said this was abandonment. They would have said this is choosing, you know, we have to do our duty over, you know, what our natural inclinations might be. So she's basically brought up by her nurse and the king and queen, her grandparents. So, you know, George V is sort of writing to his son,

who's off touring the world, saying she's got four teeth, she's driving around in a little carriage, you know, in her nursery. She was a pretty girl, wasn't she? And everyone kind of enthused over how lively she was. She was actually at that stage regarded, I think, as quite jolly. Yeah, so the jolliness, you know, she gets a reputation as quite a solemn child, doesn't she? And there's a magnificent story of her, I think when she's about three, she says, my goodness, in public. Yeah.

And is told off for it. You're very sternly told off for it. My goodness. Imagine not being able to say my goodness. I know. So maybe that's why she, in her public pronouncements, increasingly comes to seem solemn. And in due course, indeed, will be called priggish, won't she?

Yeah, later on in the 1950s. So much later on, isn't it, sir? But you're right. You're right. There's a sort of sense of a retreat, I suppose, that starts quite early. I mean, interestingly, the Queen was not especially well-educated, I think it's fair to say. So when she was about, what, 1933?

So she's about seven. Her parents decided that she and her new sister, Margaret, needed a governess. And they get this Scottish woman called Marian Crawford Crawfey who is quite sort of you know I think when you have a Scottish governess in the 1930s you know what you're getting really yeah I don't think it's kind of hurling jelly around the nursery and kind of singing songs but she doesn't have you know a massive amount of formal education but so that's i mean there's this her grandmother the queen mary is actually quite keen for her to have a good

education but it's her mother um yes but the future queen mother who's not in favor of that at all she she just thinks that so every time the you know uh princess elizabeth as she was then is having a lesson her mother comes in so let's go for a pony pony ride or let's play cards or that kind of thing. But she does get taught in two key subjects, and that is constitutional history and French, for reasons that are entirely to do with the dramatic events of the abdication, which bumps her up from third in line of the throne to second in line of the throne. So George V dies, succeeded by the king who takes the name Edward, so he becomes Edward VIII.

He is an absolute shower, isn't he? I mean, that's... I think it's fair to say he's not a friend of the rest of his history, Tom. So he's a very bad king. And he runs off with an American divorcee, abdicates. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely scandalous. Shocking behaviour.

Shocking behaviour. I mean, thank God that kind of thing doesn't go on now. Would never happen again. Thank goodness. So Albert, who will take on the name George, and it's all terribly confusing, but let's call him George from now on. So he becomes George VI and Princess Elizabeth is now in line to the throne. Yeah, and I think that was so famously, George VI, I mean, people who've seen the king's speech will know this story, really.

He never wants to be king. He's extremely upset when his brother abdicates. He's terrified by the role and by the public demands. Of course, he famously has this sort of stammer and doesn't really like public appearances and so on. His daughter, who is now what? She's about 10. She is suddenly the heir apparent. She had already said, I think, oh no she she already has a very clear

idea of what she wants to be she said she later says that she wants to be a sort of country lady with horses and dogs i mean that outdoorsy education has has yeah reaped its rewards already that's what she wants and that possibility has immediately denied her and there's a sort of story that they move into buckingham palace and she says surely we're not moving in here forever and um yeah somebody says no yeah forever you know this is it now and um i i don't know i mean it's easy to sound too mawkish i suppose but uh that must have been an awful thing for a 10 year old i mean a 10 year old who's not really who's already conscious they've missed out on a lot that other children have because they don't go to school,

they don't have loads of huge classroom of chattering friends. And now they're told you have to live in this very chilly, drafty palace and your life is going to be defined by a kind of emotional austerity. That's tough, I would say, Tom. But she does get the Deputy Provost of Eton teaching her constitutional history. So that's the i would say but she does get the the um deputy provost of eton

teaching her constitutional history so that's the upside that's an upside you would have welcomed that at the age of 10 i think so yeah absolutely i don't believe and um and uh and she gets taught french there she speaks very good french and um and that's an upside too is it i think that's an upside well she's a huge Francophile, isn't she? She is, actually. She loves France. And to be fair, since you mentioned the French, I have to say, because he hasn't always had the respectful treatment on this podcast that he might have done.

The current president of France, Monsieur Macron, his tribute to the Queen was very heartfelt and moving and put some other tributes, which you'll maybe come to later on, rather in the shade, I thought, because I thought it was brilliantly done. Anyway, that's enough francophilia. He said, what was it? The Queen of 16 Nations loved France and France loved her in return. And I think the Queen really did love France.

Her mother was a great fan of France. She could play the Marseillaise on a mouth organ. You surely never saw that, did you, Tom? No, it's my extensive reading in The Life of the Queen Mother. Well, they have this sort of – so there's a very famous account, isn't there? I think it comes from A.N. Wilson talking about how T.S. Eliot once went to visit Buckingham Palace. So obviously now that they're in Buckingham Palace, they're installed,

they can receive all kinds of famous people. And T.S. Eliot went and read The Wasteland to them. And it's actually one of the stories that I like best, yeah, that they all got the giggles, which you can get, because Eliot's incredibly sort of serious. I mean, they're a very chilly, serious man reading The Wasteland. And they all started laughing. They couldn't look at each other.

I mean, that's a nice. Anyway, I don't want to sound like a royal correspondent. Anyway, yeah, so he's crowned George in May 1937. And the Queen, you know, Elizabeth wrote a little essay, which is actually quite sweet because she sort of says how wonderful it was. And the arches and beams were covered with a sort of haze of wonder as Papa was crowned, at least I thought so. But then, if you're thinking, oh, this sounds sort of too good to be true,

she says at the end, at the end, the service got rather boring as it was all prayers. I love that. And I know, Tom, thanks to you and your book Dominion, we have an awful lot of vicars who listen to this podcast. So there is a lesson there for them. If the Queen said it was all a bit boring. Well, you say that.

But of course, one of the things that i think we will talk we should talk about perhaps a bit later on or maybe we should talk about it now is the fact that the queen is very very devoutly christian yeah and i think that um that is one of the great animating things throughout her entire reign and i think it so when in due course she comes to be crowned and she's anointed, this ritual of awful ceremony that dates back to the time of Athelstan, pretty much a friend of the show. Very much. But ultimately has its roots in the Old Testament and the anointing of David and Solomon and so on.

She takes it very, very seriously. She sees her role as a sacramental one. And I just want to put that on the record, Dominic. Do you know, Tom, when we said we'd do this podcast, I absolutely knew you would use the words sacral queenship or kingship at some stage. But now I've done it, so you don't have to. You have? No, no, no, you're absolutely right.

I think the Christianity is absolutely fundamental to her sense of mission and service. It's obviously very unusual, very unusual. And some of our American listeners may not be entirely, maybe only very vaguely acquainted with the extent to which Britain has become an intensely secular country in lots of ways. You know, going to church is such a minority interest. Apologies to the vicars who are listening, by the way. But the Queen's – people always respected her, I think, for that.

Don't you think, Tom? I do. I mean, the Christianity, the Christian belief was part of the sense of her as a link with history. That's absolutely true. I mean, because it is an overtly Christian monarchy. She's the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the rituals, as we said, of the coronation and of her queenship are intensely rooted in Christian assumptions. But I think that paradoxically,

that is one of the things that has helped her to rule over an increasingly multi-faith society. Because I think, you know, there are lots of Jews, lots of Muslims, and you saw that in kind of the tone of the tributes from Jewish and Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders to her, that because she took her faith seriously, they felt that she took their faith seriously. Exactly. I think there's a feeling that a ruler who took this stuff seriously was likely to understand Jewish or Muslim or Hindu devotions

in a way that perhaps a more overtly secular monarch would. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think that's absolutely right. There's somebody else who is a believer, basically, and treats these things with solemnity and respect, will therefore be more, as you say, more understanding. So anyway, yes. So George V has died.

George VI is now now king replacing his brother and the queen is sort of sentenced at that point i suppose to this you know this sort of looming destiny and there's a there's a story that she later told one of her portraitists she says um she used to stand there at buckingham palace looking out of the window and as a girl and she says i used to wonder what people were doing and where they're all going and what they thought about outside the palace and that's actually quite a sad image that's that's the image of the of that's almost an image of a prisoner the gilded cage the gilded cage exactly and then of course um he's only been king you know what is it less

than three years three years um when britain's plunged of all crises yeah i mean that's what that's what obviously gives the king's speech the film it's enormous emotional heft is that somebody who never wanted the role so obviously very unlike churchill who did want the role and felt that he had you know all his life had been a preparation for this trial that's not true of george vi or indeed really of his family um and he george vi now as his daughter later would be finds himself you know he's absolutely sort of weighed down with meaning by the people of the the empire and the commonwealth because he's become a symbol of resistance to Nazism.

Yeah, and they could have been evacuated, couldn't they? I mean, lots of children, so the princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, could have been evacuated, say, to Canada. Lots of British children were, and they didn't. Yeah. I think it would have been terrible PR if they had gone, actually. Of course it would, of course it would, but it could have happened.

So they're evacuated out of Buckingham Palace to windsor castle aren't they yeah right that's right windsor castle um it's pretty empty i mean you know some sort of more unsympathetic listeners will say oh well it's still a castle but you know it's kind of pretty bare um there's all kinds of restrictions so they're sort of um there's a sort of bare light bulbs and and all this and i think there is something pretty gloomy about a deserted castle or palace that's all a bit gray and a bit sort of well so we talked about we talked about the queen's speech she gave when covid hit and the lockdown hit yeah and that was at windsor and the memories must have been very very intense for her yeah of you know that previous time of crisis she gives her first broadcast about this time.

So it was October 1940. And that actually is a broadcast of children who have been evacuated to Canada. Yes. And to America, right? Yeah. And to America. It's broadcast across the whole of North America. So obviously it has a kind of propaganda point.

Absolutely. And she's 14. I mean, thinking about myself at 14 the idea of being told you have to broadcast i mean probably i'd have loved it actually um you know the the me yeah exactly exactly and i'm on the radio and i think that but i think obviously the queen wasn't a me me me kind of person really um duty dominic well i mean that's what everybody always says isn't it and sometimes people say these cliches because they're true yeah you know you can't escape true yeah of course it is of

course it is i would say duty is probably the defining word for her of course it is sort of service duty and these are the things that every single profile repeats so some listeners may say oh gosh this again but it's impossible to escape from them, Tom. Because even if you are, I mean, I know it pains me to say so, but there are anti-monarchists out there who say, oh, well, they have the palaces or they have this. But I mean, the queen, I think when she got up every morning, she didn't think I'm going to luxuriate in a massive golden bath. I mean, she sort of thought I'm going to go and open a community center in Northampton. And people may say, oh, well, that's not very arduous. But I think if you've done a thousand of them.

But Dominic, the sense of duty is specifically, I mean, of course, she's raised to it. There is this kind of ideal of duty that the monarchy has come to embody under George V and then under George VI. But it is also shaped by the sense of duty that everyone in Britain owes to the country in a time of war, isn't it? I mean, these are her teenage years. This is where her entire character is being shaped. I've often thought also about the Queen, that it's a time of privation. And even for, you know, princesses are on ration books and everything. And actually it's easier to be dutiful when there's a lack of choice. It's, it's the kind of the, the superfluity of choice that makes duty, I think more challenging. You know, if you can

do other things, follow other paths, you know, as we see with Harry, but if you're raised in an environment where there is nothing else to do except do your duty and these are your formative years i would reckon it sets you on a kind of you know a groove that you can follow throughout your entire life and i would imagine that that no matter i i mean i can't imagine a monarch ever displaying that understanding of duty again both because she they won't have had the formative experience, but also because there are too many other things now that people can do. Too many distractions.

It becomes much harder. I think she would have had to have been an extraordinarily rebellious person not to have embraced that because, of course, her parents, I mean, they believe that they incarnate duty and her father is so sort of self-abnegating and self-effacing. And of course, as you say. Well, her sister.

I mean, her sister. But of course, it's different for the younger. Of course. First of all, you've got that classic thing that we've talked about. We're both older siblings. It's such a recurrent pattern. The older sibling is more dutiful more keen to please their parents and all this sort of thing the youngest sibling is you know the entertainer

the rebel i mean those are those are archetypal parts aren't they but i think it would have been i mean if their roles had been reversed you know the characters would have been different because the pressures that margaret would have been put under as child one would have been very different. I agree. But I think that Margaret, she's also a child of the war. She does her duty, all that kind of thing. But when the 50s and 60s come, there is more choice. And she embraces that choice in a way that the Queen is steeled not to. Well, I mean, to think about it this way in 1945 she is about 19 is she yeah she joins

the auxiliary territorial service and she learns to drive a jeep and to you know they're all these sort of pictures that go all around the world of her with a spanner kind of yeah repairing engines and things but still she's 19 years old and she has still she has led such a cloistered life and there's this sort of detail that again i think is slightly poignant that when ve day comes she and margaret are allowed for once allowed out of the palace yeah so i pulled my uniform well down over my eyes um going out then she lines of people linking arms and walking down whitehall and all of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief yeah so the lines of people i mean how many times have you seen lines of people and then all of us and she will never

again be able to say that no well as you say she'll never be part of us she'll never be part one of the part of the line she'll always see line, but she'll never again be part of the crowd, just one of the crowd, because they're sent out. I think there's a couple of guards officers who are sort of escorting them. But otherwise, they're pretty and they have for once the cloak of anonymity. I mean, again, it's such a weird thought, isn't it? What that must have been like to every time they looked out of the palace, they saw the great crowds and all those things but i mean she's the one person who could never

be allowed allow herself to really enjoy the jubilees in her name and all those kinds of things because she's the person at the center anyway i guess the next big thing is um philip so philip is five years older than her they first meet meet when he's 18 and she's 13. He sort of takes a fancy to her. He himself is slightly on the fringe, isn't he? Because he's a sort of royal. A bit loose, isn't he? It's kind of a hint of looseness.

He is, exactly. He's a man's man, I think it's fair to say. He's got a slight raffishness to him. Yes. Which means that some of the courtiers kind of raise their eyebrows a bit. Which you could he had a beard, of course. Which you could see would be appealing to someone who has lived a very kind of cloistered, dutiful life. When you see the pictures of them, of course, he's famously played by Matt Smith in The Crown, isn't he?

But when you see the pictures of them in the late 1940s, their wedding in 1947 or whenever it is, he's tall, he's very slim. He looks like he was born. He's very slim. He's clearly, you know, he looks like he was born to wear a naval uniform. He's a decorated war hero. So that's got to help. So some of the sort of courtiers say, oh, he's not really a gentleman.

I mean, unbelievable, given that he's got all this sort of royal ancestry. He's got about 400 kings and queens across Europe. He asks the king for his daughter's hand. George VI says you have to wait until she's 21, 1947. And so it's in the meantime that she does this very famous foreign trip, so her first foreign tour. She goes to South Africa and she gives this radio address,

which has been much replayed on the BBC in the last few hours and her voice her accent well experts on what a sort of language experts say that she's a brilliant case study don't they because they don't have so much evidence um they they have more evidence of how her voice has changed than for anybody else I think pretty much who's ever lived um because they've got her when she was very young and then got her later when she had such a long life. And you're absolutely right. Her voice has...

Well, she was born... I mean, I can't believe... It's, again, one of my great regrets that we didn't mention this earlier. She is, of course, born under the premiership of Stanley Baldwin, very much a friend of the rest of history. How did you miss that?

How did we miss that, Tom? But actually, you listen to anyone from that generation, from Baldwin's generation, the politicians, Baldwin and McDonald, Ramsay McDonald, their voices, actually Churchill is the outlier because by and large their voices seem much more high-pitched and much readier than ours do to us. And the Queen's does sound extremely sort of strangulated when she gives that speech on her 21st birthday.

All my life life whether it be long or short should be devoted to your service this famous line um and of course her voice is mellowed i suppose is the way of putting it as our voices do tend to do i guess um so uh they get married november 1947 it's a relatively by the standards of royal weddings it's quite austere i mean when i say because they're rationing aren't they because it's a relatively, by the standards of royal weddings, it's quite austere. I mean, when I say by the standards. Well, because they're on rationing, aren't they? Because it's a rationing. On the other hand, there are 12 cakes.

One of the cakes is four feet high. She has a very nice dress and all this. Norman Hartnell. Norman Hartnell. Yeah, I mean, there's a sort of, there's an effort to, you know, it's an austerity wedding, but it's lavish at the same time. So they actually tread that balance. I think the public wanted a bit of escapism and a bit of sort of razzmatazz,

as it were, amid the Attlee government's kind of rationing and austerity. But, you know, they managed that, I think, quite successfully. They have the honeymoon, you know where they have the honeymoon, Tom? I mean, you've got the notes, but you can pretend not to know. No, Dominic, tell me. It's in the New Forest. Is it? Yeah. Wow. Wow. Who knew? not to know uh no dominic tell me it's in the new forest is it yeah wow wow who knew because actually the place she loves to go on holiday and she died there is uh is balmoral in scotland i mean that's really i mean that seems to have been her favorite place yeah happy place and what's

what is it about that it's the outdoors in this isn't it it's the slight sense of it being i suppose with with all due respect to people in balmoral slightly old-fashioned well you know you said that that the queen said that had she not been queen she would have been a a country lady surrounded by dogs and horses yeah i suppose in balmoral that's what she can do that's what she can be she can need be her alternative life yes i think that's absolutely right i mean what's striking at looking at her the course of her life she you know she could have got and princess margaret would be the obvious contrast i mean she could have gone on holiday anywhere she has very few she has very few private holidays outside scotland i mean that i think that they're all so she goes to france which you know she loves i think of all the

foreign countries all the countries of which she's not the head of state, I think she loved France most. Yeah. She likes Malta. She loved Malta. So she went for the first two years when they were married. She has Prince Charles the King, I should say, pretty quickly, doesn't she? So she goes into – she has him in November 1947.

And Philip is off playing squash at the time squash yeah which people always find a funny detail but of course that was pretty much that's how chaps behaved that's i mean the norm right at any sort of walk of life uh in the 1940s is that you know men were not sitting by the bedside holding their the their wife's hand and sort of applying flannels to the brow they were off in the pub or talking to their mates or just sort of pacing nervously outside the room or something. Driving sports cars very fast. Right.

Was that what you were doing, Tom? That's what I would have done had I been a parent and a father in the 40s. They go off to Malta. They spend a lot of time in Malta. She loves Malta. I love Malta. I have to say I agree with the late queen about the exit to Malta. Well, again, it's probably the closest she comes to experience of life

as someone who's not in the absolute eye of the world's attention. She's a naval wife. So the focus is on Philip. I mean, it's a brief, brief interlude. So in a sense, she is the one who's walking two feet behind. Yeah. Her spouse for that brief period. And I think he liked that.

That was a bit of a halcyon moment for him because, of course, later on he'll chafe at the restrictions of the role. But destiny is looming, as it were. So at the end of 1951, her father is diagnosed with lung cancer, which is obviously kept a secret. And then in the new year, she's already gone on one tour of canada in the united states where it's been tremendous success and she's about to go on another one to east africa and i guess people may wonder why is she going on so many tours and it's partly i think because this is a moment where

the british establishment thinks it's really important to kind of renew the empire because the war had been so disruptive. Obviously, large swathes of the British empire had been occupied. So there's this sort of sense, oh, well, you know, we need to reassert these links. And sending the young couple is the way to do this. So if they go to Kenya and they famously stay at a place called Treetops, this kind of game lodge, and they look at baboons and rhinos and stuff. And then it's on the 6th of February, they go off to another lodge at a place called Sagara, Sagara, I don't know how you pronounce it,

in the foothills of Mount Kenya. And one of our aides gets the news that the king has died in his sleep. And it's Philip who famously goes in and i mean anyone who's seen the crown will have seen this scene i imagine goes in and breaks the news she's 25 years old she says uh to the staff and stuff i'm so sorry we've got to go home i've ruined everyone's trip which is a extraordinary thing to say. And they fly back to London. And she's asked, what name will you rule under? And she says, well, my own name, of course.

I mean, she could have chosen a different name, couldn't she? I mean, Elizabeth is an obvious one that you would choose. It doesn't have any, you know, she'd been christened Audrey, some other mid-century name. It would have been Boudica, did you say? Yeah. You'd like to say Queen Boudica or athelflad athelflad i think you're going to have to be waiting quite quite a while for an athelflad tom i mean the thing the thing about elizabeth certainly for the english

is that the elizabethan age is remembered as a golden age it's the age of shakespeare and drake and the armada and all that kind of stuff um and so there is hopes aren't there that there will be a new elizabethan age yeah and churchill churchill who is all over kind of romantic uh notions of english history like that i mean he get he piles straight in famous reigns of our queens some of the greatest periods in our history have unfolded under their scepter. I cannot believe that on such a day as this, you took over Churchill yourself, knowing that there was a brilliant Churchill impersonator involved with this podcast. Well, Dominic, do you know?

Do you know? Yeah. Do you know? I saw that coming. I knew you were going to want it. And like a kind of a genius forward spotting a gap in the defence, I darted forward and hammered it into the back of the net. All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe,

could not have found anyone so suited to the part. That's what the Churchill said of the Queen. The listeners can judge. I mean, he cried. He cried when he thought of her becoming Queen. He would look at pictures of her in tears. I mean, Churchill was a great blubber, as he said himself. He was very proud of it, actually. He was not ashamed of it at all.

He's very sentimental. He proclaims the new Elizabethan age, and there's a lot of talk about that in the 1950s. And, of course, the coronation itself seems like this tremendous high point. Actually, it rained on the day she was crowned. It rained so heavily. The day she died. On the day she died.

The 27 million people watched the coronation. I mean, the coronation is a great event that propels the sales of television. That is true, is it? Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. I always thought that was the kind of urban myth that you would – No, no, no. Absolutely.

People rushed to get televisions or to rent them. I mean, there are so many stories of people going to their neighbour's house to watch The Coronation on this sort of little box, flickering black and white picture. But they don't show the actual anointing, do they? No, they don't. That is viewed as too holy to be gazed on by the proper TV cameras. We're coming right to the end of this first episode.

I mean, that's an appropriate moment on which to end, isn't it, Tom? Because that moment, the anointing, I mean, you know much more about this than I do. So that goes back to what, the Anglo-Saxons? In English terms, yes. But as I say, I mean, ultimately it's from the Old Testament. It's the idea that the chrism, the oil, the anointing oil kind of seeps into your skin and you are anointed. You know, you're God's anointed.

Sacral monarchy, Dominic. Sacral monarchy. It's a sacral monarchy. And she takes that very, very seriously. And that really is a perfect place, I think, to end this probably first of two episodes on the Queen's life, because it's that in a way the tension between the antiquity of that ritual, the solemnity of the role that she takes on and the country she rules, which over the course of the decades that follow will be increasingly sceptical of such notions that, as you say, makes it such a kind of fascinating figure. Well, it's the antiquity of the anointing and the modernity of television, I suppose. Her coronation perfectly captures the tensions that are going to define her reign in the decades to come.

So we'll get onto that in the next podcast, I think, and we'll see you all for that next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.