All language subtitles for The.Royal.House.Of.Windsor.s01e01.720p.HDTV.x264.mkv.eztv

This year, the Royal House of Windsor

celebrates 100 years
on the British throne.

They are now the most famous
Royal family in the world,

and have prospered while other
great dynasties have fallen.

They've seen their relatives
overthrown, murdered and exiled,

overcome family feuds, fire and betrayal.

And they have always
followed one crucial rule…

survive, whatever it
takes, whatever the cost.

The Windsors learned the dark art of

survival in the days of war a century ago.

They've never forgotten it.

Now, Channel 4 can uncover their secrets,

with the help of family insiders,

Royal experts and some of the most
closely guarded papers in the world.

We've combed through letters,
diaries, government memos,

confidential Royal reports,
and, for the first time,

cameras have been allowed into the

Queen's personal family
archives at Windsor.

What we found rips aside
the mask of royal pomp

to reveal the human frailties and
the secrets of the family that built

Britain's most powerful dynasty.

On the morning of the 13th of June 1917,

14 bombers took off from a base
in German occupied Belgium.

Their destination, London.

By mid-morning, they
were over the East End.

The children of upper North
Street School in Poplar

were just starting a maths class.

"I was on my fifth sum and
this plane was coming over,"

"so the teacher saw everybody's
eyes lit up and said,"

"'That's one of ours.'"

"I'm still thinking
this as I finish my sum."

"Somehow I managed to climb out,"

"and as I went out the classroom door,"

"I stepped over a little boy."

"He was dead."

18 small children were killed.

Across London, 162 people died.

This was something totally new. It
was horrific. It killed children.

It was plastered all over the newspapers,

and the bombers that did it had the
same name as the Royal family…

Gotha bombers, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

And suddenly the Royal house

discovers that it has the wrong branding.

Time to change.

At the start of the First
World War, in August 1914,

the monarch was 49-year-old King George V.

George V had none of the
qualities you'd expect in

or want in a war leader.

He was a very cautious,
conservative character, blinkered,

very much of his class.

His official biographer complained
that for 20 years of his life before

he became king, he seemed to do

nothing except shoot pheasant and
stick stamps into his stamp album.

Dull, plodding, unimaginative…

George was not a man to inspire sacrifice.

The writer HG Wells famously

described George's court
as "alien and uninspiring".

King George V reacted to that.

He said, "I may be uninspiring,
but I'm dammed if I'm alien."

The problem for the King
was that he was alien.

People forget that the Windsors
were originally a German family.

Queen Victoria was as
German as German could be,

spoke German as well as she spoke
English and married, of course,

Albert of Coburg, another German,

so that meant that Edward VII
was also completely German.

His son, George V, who's
the first Windsor,

was half German and half Danish,
because his mum was Danish.

So there's not a jot of English
blood, technically, in them.

Eight of Victoria and Albert's nine
children had married into other

European royal families.

Before the First World War,

you have this massive
sort of dynastic network,

this monarch's trade union.

All Queen Victoria's
grandchildren, great-grandchildren,

all sitting on most of the thrones
of Europe, marrying each other,

cousins marrying each other,
this huge family network.

George was first cousin to both
the Russian Tsar, Nicholas,

and the German Kaiser, Wilhelm.

George's wife, Queen Mary,

was also German and spoke
English with a German accent.

King George V, all his relations

were spread across the thrones of Europe,

and I think he probably began the
First World War thinking that those

family relations would be able, in
some way, to bring a quick solution,

and the aspiration was that it
would only last a few months.

The King still saw himself as part
of an international brotherhood of

monarchs, but he had
misjudged the public mood.

The outbreak of war sparked
anti-German rioting.

My grandfather came from Wirtemberg,
which is in south-west Germany.

He managed to open a
shop in South Shields.

His name was Seitz, which
is demonstrably not English,

and so that was up above the shop.

It was very, very prominent,
and so it became a target.

There were so many people gathered
in the market square throwing bricks

and what have you, my grandmother
was there and my 14-year-old aunt,

and the younger children, down
to my mother, who was three.

And so, when the bricks started
coming through the window…

Terrified.

The King didn't realise it,

but it became manifestly
clear that everything German,

even dachshunds walking along the
street were being kicked by people.

Anything that had a link to the

dreaded and hated Germany was anathema.

The most obvious link to Germany
was the Royal family itself.

As casualties mounted, the
government introduced conscription.

A few months later, in the summer of 1916,

British forces were decimated
at the Battle of the Somme.

The mood is changing.

The public are just fed up with this war,

and the number of people dying,
and the privations and the agony.

People are not going to put
up with this any longer.

The old order, the great

institutional monarchies of
Europe are themselves buckling.

In March 1917, King George
received terrible news.

His first cousin, the Tsar of
Russia, had been overthrown.

It was a first blow to the
international club of monarchs,

and for George, deeply personal.

As children, King and
Tsar had holidayed together

and had always been close.

George constantly writes in his
diary, "I am devoted to Nicky".

Several occasions. He felt Nicky
was a real sort of soul mate,

somebody who he could talk to.

The King wrote a telegram to the Tsar.

"Events of last week have
deeply distressed me."

"My thoughts are constantly with you,"

"and I shall always remain
your true and devoted friend,"

"as you know I have been in the past."

But the fall of the Tsar presented
the King with a dilemma.

Here are Nick and George,
Emperor and Tsar,

who looked like twins here.

Olga Romanoff is the Tsar's great-niece.

They're wearing each other's uniform.

Some tourist asked me if it was swapsies,

and I said, "No, not swapsies."

Nicholas, here, is wearing the
uniform of the Scots Greys,

who he was Colonel-in-Chief too.

Princess Olga lives in Kent.

A century on, she still finds it

difficult to speak about
the events of 1917.

I don't think the Tsar
had much inkling of stuff,

because he was so wrapped in
his sick child and his wife,

who he absolutely adored.

My grandfather had been
one of Nicholas' advisors.

I think if he'd taken
my grandfather's advice,

it's possible disaster
would have, you know…

Not happened.

Sorry.

The new Russian government was democratic,

but there were fears
of a communist takeover.

This would leave the lives of the

Tsar and his family hanging by a thread.

The Russian government asked the
British ambassador if the Romanovs

could be given asylum in Britain.

The British ambassador goes
back to the British government,

of whom Lloyd George is the
leader at this point and says,

"What should we do, what shall I say?"

"I feel that we ought to say yes."

And Lloyd George initially says,

"Yes, I don't think we can refuse."

At this point, an extraordinary
sequence of events unfolded,

events that would remain
secret for more than 50 years.

At their heart stood King George's
private secretary, Lord Stamfordham.

Lord Stamfordham was
my great, great uncle.

He was a very wily character,

and I think he was probably one of
the first courtiers to be PR savvy.

He was a monarchist through and through.

He was dedicated to them.

He was there, he saw it, to protect

them from anything that
went on in the world.

It was Stamfordham's
role to advise the King,

and he feared the mood in the country.

The fall of the Tsar may have
horrified the Royal family,

but it delighted Britain's
war weary people,

who saw the Tsar as a tyrant.

Mass rallies were held,

where socialists and republicans
offered passionate support for the

Russian Revolution.

Stamfordham compiled a
file that he gave the title

Unrest in the Country.

It contained newspaper clippings
and letters he'd received

from a network of informants.

Stamfordham's top-secret file
is now kept at Windsor Castle.

Tens of thousands of records going
back hundreds of years are kept here,

and our cameras have been granted

access to the Queen's own private archive.

The Unrest in the Country file

includes this letter from a
Salvation Army colonel in Essex,

which was typical of the type of

information Stamfordham was receiving.

"I have noticed since the news came
to hand of the Russian revolution,"

"a change has come over a certain
sector of the people in respect"

"to their attitude towards
the King and the Royal family."

"A friend of mine saw written in
a second-class railway carriage,"

"'To hell with the King,
down with all royalties'."

It is a panic that's going on,
certainly a panic in the palace,

which is beginning with Stamfordham

and I'm sure that he communicated
that panic to the King.

The King instructed Stamfordham
to write to the government.

His letters about the Tsar
lay buried for half a century,

but are now available at
the Parliamentary Archives.

For decades, people thought that
the key decisions were taken by

Lloyd George, the Prime Minister,

and these documents reveal that
this was not in fact the case.

This is a letter from Windsor Castle,

dated the 6th of April, 1917,

to ask Arthur Balfour, who
was the Foreign Secretary.

"Every day the King is becoming more
concerned about the question of the"

"Emperor and Empress of
Russia coming to this country."

"His Majesty receives letters
from people in all classes of life,"

"known or unknown to him, saying how
much the matter is being discussed."

This is the second letter on the
same day from Stamfordham to Balfour

and it shows the degree of
agitation that's going on.

"The residence in this country of
the ex-Emperor and Empress would be"

"strongly resented by the public."

"The opposition to the Emperor and"

"Empress coming here is so strong that we"

"must be allowed to withdraw from
the consent previously given to the"

"Russian government's proposal."

It's very significant, I think,
the language that is used.

King George V was a
constitutional monarch,

who was supposed to take
the advice of his ministers.

Here's he's using words
like "must" and "ought",

in other words he is attempting to

instruct the government in the
policy that it should pursue.

Balfour capitulates.

As a result of this, he writes to
Lord George and suggests that they

probably ought to withdraw
the offer of asylum.

In Russia, the Tsar was oblivious to
his cousin's decision not to provide

him with refuge.

"Sorted my belongings and books and
the things I want to take with me,"

"if I go to England…"

But for the Tsar and his family,
there could now be no escape.

In March 1917, the Russian
Czar was overthrown.

An initial offer of asylum was
secretly withdrawn by King George V,

anxious about anti-royalist
feelings in Britain.

Six months later, the Bolsheviks
seized power in Russia.

The Czar and his family were moved
to this house in Yekaterinburg

in the Russian Urals.

Shortly after arriving,

they were taken down to the cellar in the
middle of the night and brutally murdered.

George consigned the House of Romanov
to history and his cousin, Nicky,

to the firing squad…

…in order that the House
of Windsor should survive.

I think this decision to refuse
asylum is characteristic, certainly,

of the British Royal
Family, which is pragmatic,

realistic but a certain ruthlessness.

When their survival is at stake,

they will make the decision
that ensures they survive.

King George did eventually
allow the Czar's sister, Xenia,

to come to England.

She was rescued by a British
battleship with her son, Prince Andrei,

who was Princess Olga's father.

Only now has Olga become aware of
the Stamfordham letters and the role

played by King George in
the death of the Czar.

My father never, ever said
that it was George's fault.

He always thought it was the Prime
Minister, but apparently it wasn't

the Prime Minister's fault at all
…it was all George's fault.

I'm very glad my father died
before the letter was found…

…because he would
have been really upset.

George, the Czar and my grandmother…

…were great friends,
they played together…

…they did things together…

…and eventually George gave refuge to
my grandmother and was wonderful to her.

He used to put Queen Mary's nose
totally out of joint, was really,

really nice to her, and I
suspect a lot of that was guilt.

George's ruthless abandonment of his
cousin in April 1917 marked the death

of the prewar international
club of monarchs.

But for the King, a bigger challenge
remained… to forge a connection with

his own long-suffering subjects,

now entering the fourth
terrible year of war.

Once more, it was his private
secretary, Lord Stamfordham,

who took the initiative.

In the spring of 1917,
he wrote a historic memo,

setting out his strategy for
the future of the monarchy.

"We must endeavour to induce
the thinking working classes,"

"socialist and others, to regard
the Crown not as a mere figurehead,"

"but as a living powerful good,"

"affecting the interests and
social wellbeing of all classes."

It was Stamfordham's
particular insight, I think,

that the British monarchy did
not depend on the aristocracy

nor on the middle class,
the second-class carriages,

but on the acceptance and
approval and, ultimately,

the love of the people.

If the top wanted to survive,

it was at the bottom
layer that mattered most.

Stamfordham encouraged King George
and Queen Mary to do something

British monarchs had rarely done before…

to go out and meet the people.

George is the first modern monarch…

the first monarch who is prepared
to not just go round in a big car,

waving at people, but to get out
of the car and visit factories,

go into people's homes, go down even coalmines,
you know, talk to people, get out there,

- be seen.
- This is a completely different

notion of monarchy, it's a total change.

Stamfordham ensured that it was not
just the King and Queen who appeared

in the news reels, but
also the Prince of Wales.

Known in the family as David,

the future King Edward VIII was serving
as a staff officer and emerging as

a major asset in Stamfordham's
rebranding of the monarchy.

David was the David
Beckham of his day, he was

a megastar of his day. He was the most

popular bachelor of his day,

everybody wanted to be seen
with him or dance with him.

One can only use the term… corny
though it is… charisma to attach to him.

He was like Princess Di.

He glowed, he glittered.

The Prince was angry because he
was kept away from the front line,

but he played a key
role in boosting morale.

The King's second son, Bertie, was
also doing his bit in the Navy,

but Bertie, the father
of the present Queen,

was a completely different personality.

He had knock knees, he
had his legs in splints,

he had a terrible stammer,

which inhibited him, and he was not
helped by the fact that his father was

utterly unsympathetic towards this,

and when Bertie was
trying to say something,

with great difficulty, he would
say, "Get it out! Get it out!"

It's not just a question of stuttering,

it's a question of these awful panic
attacks sort of completely gripping

him and making it really difficult
for him to appear in public.

Suffering from a chronic but
undiagnosed stomach ulcer,

Bertie would spend much of the
war convalescing with his parents.

Fortunately, his big brother generated
enough attention for both of them.

But as the Prince of Wales and his
parents worked to forge a new bond with

the British people, a
major obstacle remained…

…the family's German name.

Who is the King? Who is this man
I'm fighting for in the cold,

in the misery, in the fear of
every day of the Western front?

Well, he is King George V,
and he is your sovereign.

Hang on, but he's called
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha!

Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was the name
given to the Royal Family by

Queen Victoria's German
husband, Prince Albert.

The King knew what had happened
to other Germans in Britain.

It must have been an intensely
worrying time for the family.

Is this going to happen to me?

It's happened to those German
immigrants out there in our country.

After all we've done, after all the
length of time that we've been here,

do they still see us as German?

Will they chuck us out, perhaps?

In the wake of the Russian Revolution,

Lord Stamfordham was finally instructed
to come up with a British name for

the British Royal Family.

Papers at the Royal Archives reveal
him rummaging through the history

books, feeding possible names to
the King and the Prime Minister.

"The King bars Plantagenet
and does not care about Tudor."

"Tudor Stuart has been suggested."

"Mr Asquith advised against Tudor,"

"with its recollections of
Henry VIII and Bloody Mary."

"Mr Asquith was equally adverse to Stuart,"

"one of whom was beheaded and
the last driven from the throne."

"He does not like Fitzroy
and hinted at Guelph,"

"though that is too foreign and is
not at all liked by Their Majesties,"

"who also do not approve of Fitzroy
and its bastard significance."

Royal history was proving a minefield.

Stamfordham was that his wits' end.

"It is disastrous."

"The King is all for a prompt settlement."

It was at this moment,
on the 13th of June, 1917,

that London was raided
by the Gotha bombers.

It was a cataclysmic moment.

Just imagine bombs falling from the air.

We're used to it, as an
expression of warfare.

This was something totally
new, it was horrific.

Now it went beyond de-Germanising,

went beyond cutting off
from the club of monarchs,

it was a question about the very
identity and name of the dynasty,

it could not be Gotha any longer.

That same day, Stamfordham
finally struck inspiration.

The answer, he realised, lay in
the very place he was working.

"I hope we have now discovered
a name which may appeal to you,"

"and that is that Queen Victoria
shall be regarded as having founded"

"the House of Windsor."

Windsor is a brilliant idea, a
fantastic piece of branding.

It symbolises safeness, cosiness,

those lovely, luscious green
rolling landscapes, tea, cakes.

It at once says exactly what George
wants the British Royal Family to be.

At Windsor Castle,

the Royal Archives contain a letter
from the same Salvation Army colonel

who'd written earlier, warning
of anti-royalist feelings.

Now he praised the King and Queen.

"Their strong efforts to remove
in every possible way the German"

"influence and power from the court
will have its fruit in the abiding"

"and affectionate loyalty
of their devoted subjects."

This is the beginning of
the idea of the monarchy,

the Windsor family, as being
quintessentially British,

which allows it to identify
with British nationalism,

to become the visible figurehead,
embodiment, of the British nation.

Stamfordham received a letter of
congratulation from the former

Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery.

"Do you realise that you
have christened a dynasty?"

"There are few people in the
world who have done this."

"None, I think."

"It is really something to
be historically proud of."

"I admire and envy you."

On the 11th of November, 1918, huge
crowds celebrated the end of the war.

Britain and its empire had
lost close to a million men.

Across Europe, no less than nine
monarchs had lost their thrones,

including King George's
cousins in Germany and Russia.

But in London, the King and
Queen were cheered to the echo.

The House of Windsor was forged in war,

but it grew out of a national crisis…

…threatening national survival, when
the nation was saved by the people.

A new monarchy had emerged,
adapted to the democratic age,

one in which King George's
dullness had become a virtue.

In his ordinariness, there was a humility.

He wasn't a leader.

He was, in many senses, a follower,

and so this essential
humility that George V had

proved to be the reason why his
monarchy emerged from the war intact

and the grand,

imperial monarchies of Russia and Germany

and Austria fell by the wayside.

For dull, plodding George
V, humility came naturally.

But would it come so easily to his sons?

In the years following
the First World War,

the rebranded Windsor
dynasty was hugely popular.

The King and Queen continued their

punishing schedule of public appearances.

Their second son Bertie was starting
to carve a modest niche for himself,

although his stutter made
public appearances a torment.

And fair…

…that we are all…

…happy to feel…

…that the generosity of His Majesty…

…has set an example to all…

…and which has been widely followed

throughout the country.

But it was the older brother,
David, Prince of Wales,

who continued to attract
all the attention,

embarking on a series of
headline-grabbing world tours.

He is a kind of rock star prince.

He's fabulously successful

and, you know, crowds are
sort of completely captivated.

He became famous the world over.

Here he was with his
boyish, blonde good looks

and he became known in the press as
Prince Charming, the adored Apollo.

Everyone fell in love with him.

On one tour, the Prince
shook so many hands,

he was ordered by his doctor to
rest his right hand and use his left.

But beneath the surface,
there were tensions.

King George had been a
distant, cold father.

In a word, he was a rotten father.

And he was conscientious, he cared,

but he did not know how
to handle children.

And he was sort of gruff
and aloof and bullying

and intimidated them and enraged them.

The relationship did not warm
as his children grew older.

To his children, he was austere.

George V, for instance, took
against his children when they

started to press their
trousers fore and aft.

Because he always pressed
them from side to side.

And he thought it was caddish.

And also when they
started wearing turn-ups.

George V set these kind of standards
and he used to pick out these things

and whatever they did, he'd point
out what they hadn't done right.

His relationship with his oldest
son was particularly difficult.

By this time, David, the Prince of Wales,

had begun an affair with a
married woman, Freda Dudley Ward,

the wife of a Liberal MP.

His letters to her reveal
that for all his success,

the Prince hated the life
that fate had given him.

"Each day, I long more and more to
chuck this job and be out of it."

"The more I think of it all, the
more certain I am that, really,"

"the day for kings and princes is passed."

"Monarchies are out of date."

"Now I know it's a rotten thing for
me to say and sounds Bolshevik."

His letter to Freda from York Cottage,

his parents' home on
the Sandringham estate,

at Christmas 1919, left no doubt
how much he hated the place.

And how much he missed her.

"I love you, love you,
darling, and you know it,"

"how you mean absolutely all
and everything to me in life."

"Nothing else seems to matter now,"

"not even my bloody job,
of which I'm so, so sick."

David's letters to Freda Dudley
Ward are extraordinary in the way he

expresses his hatred of the
life that he's leading.

I think basically his problem was
that he liked the pluses of being a

royal and not the minuses.

He didn't like the duty aspect of it.

He didn't like all the flummery,

all the ceremonies that
he had to go through,

all of the sort of formalities,
which he found odious and tedious,

all the sorts of things that
royalty do, he hated all of that.

What the Prince of Wales
did like was parties.

Like many young men
returning from the war,

he was captivated by the new Jazz age.

His parents disapproved,

particularly since he appeared to
be leading younger brother Bertie,

the present Queen's father, astray.

Bertie in his early 20s spends a lot
of time with David and does become

involved with this very attractive
Australian married woman,

Sheila Loughborough.
Apparently, the original Sheila.

Who's part of this very kind
of irreverent social set.

Sheila happened to be Freda's best friend.

She was brought in to match up with
Bertie so that the two brothers

could go together and not seem to
be a duo with two married women.

Like Freda, Sheila was a glamorous
society beauty and like Freda,

she was trapped in an unhappy marriage.

She and Bertie soon began an affair,

and the four were inseparable,

as David commented crudely
in a letter to Freda.

"What marvellous fun we four
do have, don't we, Angel?"

"And fuck the rest of the world."

In the summer of 1919,

David and Bertie spent a golfing
weekend with Sheila and her

alcoholic husband, Lord Loughborough.

David wrote about it to Freda.

"After tea, I managed to lure
Loughie away on the pretext of"

"wanting to play a few more holes
of golf on the local course,"

"so as to give Sheilie a chance
of being alone with Bertie."

"They said they were
tired and we left them."

"It's all so sordid, though."

"I'm sure Loughie doesn't
suspect Bertie at all."

The King did not approve,

and demanded Bertie end
his affair with Sheila.

But he also dangled a carrot, as

Bertie confessed to his brother, David.

"He's going to make me Duke
of York on his birthday,"

"provided that he hears nothing
more about Sheila and me."

And of course, George V had been
made Duke of York by Queen Victoria,

so it was a very special thing
for Prince Albert, as he then was,

to be made Duke of York by his father.

David was furious, as
he wrote to Freda.

"Christ, how I loathe and
despise my bloody family."

"As Bertie has written me three
long, sad letters in which he tells"

"me he's getting it in the neck about"

"his friendship with poor little Sheilie."

But Bertie caved in.

In the spring of 1920, he ended
his relationship with Sheila.

Bertie was very different to his brother.

He was a shy young man, but he
always would put duty above love and

he acquiesced to his father's
demands to be the Duke of York,

provided he never speak
of the Australian again.

The King wrote to his
second son to thank him.

The letter, in the King's own hand,

is in the Royal archives and has
never before shown on television.

"I know that you have behaved very well"

"in a difficult situation for a young man"

"and that you have done
what I asked you to do."

"I feel that this splendid old title
will be safe in your hands and that"

"you will never do anything which
could in any way tarnish it."

The King's oldest son was determined
he would not be dictated to in the

same way, as he wrote to Freda.

"If HM thinks he's going to
alter me by insulting you,"

"he's making just about the biggest
mistake of his silly, useless life."

"All he's done is to infuriate me
and make me despise him and put me"

"completely against him and
I'll never forgive him."

"God damn him!"

David and Freda would continue with

their scandalous affair
for more than a decade.

Bertie, by contrast, was about
to start pursuing a girl

who perfectly fulfilled all
of his father's expectations.

In the spring of 1920, the
King's second son, Bertie,

broke off his relationship
with the married Australian

Sheila Loughborough, because
his father had told him to.

He was rewarded by being
made Duke of York.

Bertie now began to spend time
at Glamis Castle in Scotland,

where he had developed a
new romantic interest,

the 19-year-old Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the ninth
child of the Earl of Strathmore.

The Strathmores went back

into the Dark Ages, practically.

They were a very grand family,

with royal connections.
They came from Glamis Castle,

which was one up on the ordinary castle,

which might have a ghost.
It was haunted by a monster.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon is
an incredibly attractive,

kind of, magnetic young woman.
And she has so many admirers.

And you get this sense
of her as being the sun

and all these people revolving around her.

Everybody was in love
with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Bertie is immediately captivated.

The convention that princes
could only marry royalty

had been removed at the same
time the family name was changed

to Windsor, in 1917.

For the first time,

David and Bertie no longer had to
fish in the tiny pond of Protestant,

normally German, princesses.
Women like their mother.

You had a huge new pool of
what one might call talent

available for the Royals.
Elizabeth was perfect.

She was delightful to look at. She
appealed terrifically to the Royals.

The only problem was that, initially,

she wasn't interested in
the shy, stuttering Bertie.

Her letters to friends at
this time are still held

in the Glamis archive.

"P.S. Prince Albert is coming
to stay here on Saturday."

"Ghastly."

But photos that are kept at Glamis

reveal a slowly-warming relationship.

Bertie was enchanted by a home atmosphere

entirely different from his own.

Glamis is a, sort of,
paradise of party games,

hide and seek, in this
huge, haunted castle.

Lots of loud gramophone music,
lots of dancing, lots of singing,

lots of boisterous games.

Totally different from his own experience

at Sandringham or Balmoral.

Elizabeth's attitude to the
Prince was also changing,

as her letters reveal.

"Prince Albert was very nice and
very much improved, in every way."

But Elizabeth remained wary
of entering the royal clan.

She saw it as a, kind of, gilded cage,

which, of course, it
was, and she wasn't sure,

really, whether she could cope with
Bertie with all his difficulties.

The photos at Glamis suggest there
may have been another reason

for her reluctance…

the presence of a man called James Stuart.

There are these constant references

and photographs of them being together

and statements from different people

who were close to her, that they
were in a romantic relationship.

James Stuart was the youngest
son of a neighbouring aristocrat

and also equerry, or gentleman
in waiting, to Prince Albert.

He'd joined the army when he was
17. He'd got two Military Crosses.

He was clearly brave, he was
clearly very attractive to women.

Very handsome.

In 1921, out of the blue,

Stuart was suddenly
offered a lucrative job

in the oilfields of America.

He was offered this job
through an eminent courtier

of King George V's court.

It is pretty clear that
there was some way in which

he was spirited away, that
there was a conspiracy between

his mother, the Countess
of Murray, her mother,

the Countess of Strathmore,
and Prince Albert's mother,

Queen Mary. So, you have the whole weight

of the Crown and the
Royal family behind this.

I would suspect that my great
grandmother, his mother,

who was apparently a wise woman,
would have wanted to protect him

and would have seen that he
was better out of the way.

Stuart took the job,

hoping to make his fortune and
return to marry the girl he loved.

Prince Albert now moved in on Elizabeth.

But she remained torn and uncertain.

At times of emotional stress, the
future Queen Mother hid her feelings

by writing backwards in her diary.

"I am most perplexed.
I am thinking too much."

"I wish I knew."

Twice, the Prince proposed.
Twice, he was rejected.

Only on the third occasion did
Elizabeth finally accept him,

as she wrote to a friend.

"I must tell you, I am going
to marry Prince Bertie!"

"I do hope you like him. I feel
terrified, now I've done it."

"In fact, no-one is
more surprised than me."

James Stuart was devastated.

He was alone. Suddenly, he reads
in the papers that she's engaged

to his old boss, Prince Albert.

Clearly, my grandfather started
as a favourite and a front-runner

and ended up as a, kind of,
also-ran and then felt very bitter.

You know, it's like he was the
casualty, in a way, in this.

Bertie and Elizabeth were
married at Westminster Abbey

on 26 April, 1923.

If you look at their letters,

it's very plain that they
are in love with each other.

I think that what she particularly
liked about him was not just that

he was rather informal, easy-going,

but also that he was vulnerable
and his vulnerability, I think,

was probably something
she found attractive

and felt that she could help him.
And she most certainly did help him.

The couple quickly had two daughters

and Elizabeth would prove the
perfect partner for the prince.

It transformed his life.

In his eyes, she was the most
wonderful woman in the world

and his home life became his anchor.

Bertie had settled down and
finally won his father's approval.

"You have always been so
sensible and easy to work with"

"and you have always been so
ready to listen to any advice"

"and to agree with my opinions
about people and things,"

"but I feel we have always
got on very well together."

"Very different to dear David."

Dear David, the Prince of Wales,

continued to be bored and
frustrated with royal life.

"I am so heartily sick of being
cheered and yelled and shrieked at."

"It almost hurts sometimes."

"I suppose the fact of the matter
is that I'm quite the wrong person"

"to be Prince of Wales."

David was rebellious.

He felt constrained by being
an heir to the throne,

didn't particularly like it.

And was determined to go his own way.

In 1934, the Prince turned
40, still unmarried.

The clock was now ticking and
the elderly king was in despair,

as he confided to his Prime
Minister, Stanley Baldwin.

"After I am dead, the boy will
ruin himself within 12 months."

The following year, huge
crowds turned out to cheer

the king on his Silver Jubilee.

In his Christmas broadcast that year,

George chose to focus on the
bond he shared with his people.

The year that is passing has
been, to me, most memorable.

It called forth a spontaneous

offering of loyalty
and, I may say, of love.

It is this personal link
between me and my people

which I value more than I can say.

It binds us together in all
our common joys and sorrows.

Just four weeks later, he was dead.

King George had created a
new style of monarchy…

one based on sacrifice and duty.

Now, the crown passed to a
very different personality.

His 41-year-old son, who would
reign as King Edward VIII.

Overwhelmed, the new
king wept uncontrollably

on his mother's shoulder when
told of his father's death.

As he was proclaimed King,
Edward broke with tradition,

by watching from the
windows of St James' Palace.

God save the King.

At his side, a mysterious woman.

Her name, Wallis Simpson.

Wallis Simpson was an American divorcee

who had married an Englishman and
was, sort of, a social climber

in London in the 1930s. She'd
had a rather rackety youth.

Her first husband was a drunk and violent.

And she had chosen her new husband,
who was called Ernest Simpson,

because, really, she had come
to the end of her resources.

Edward had begun his
relationship with Wallis in 1934.

He'd jettisoned Frida Dudley Ward

and appeared to come
completely under the spell

of his new American lover.

I think the delight of Mrs
Simpson for King Edward VIII

was that she was totally
lacking in respect.

She had no deference, whatsoever,
and she'd speak to him like dirt.

And he loved to be treated like dirt.

I'm sure there was a
strong sexual element in it.

Mrs Simpson was the dominatrix
to beat all dominatrixes.

She was a tough cookie and
you could see her wielding

the whip without any trouble
at all and, on one occasion,

he asked for a light for his cigarette

and she made him beg for it like a dog.

The new King's private
secretary, Alec Harding,

was horrified by the relationship.

As was his wife.

My grandmother detested Mrs Simpson.

Just didn't like her, at all.

She thought she was vulgar and pushy.

And this sounds snobbish and,
in fact, it was snobbish,

but I think Mrs Simpson got on
better with men than with women

and there was a certain
kind of upper-class

Englishwoman who she was always
going to rub up the wrong way.

The new private secretary and
others were also concerned

about the couple's politics.

I don't think Edward VIII was a fascist,

but he was attracted to fascism
because it was fashionable.

It was known at the time
as "Savile Row fascism".

Hitler seemed to have solved

the main problem of the age,

as people saw it, namely,
the unemployment problem.

That he had reinvigorated Germany

and he had done this by sacrificing
German rights, no doubt,

and the business about the Jews
was no doubt very unpleasant,

but still he was showing what a
strong autocracy could achieve.

Two decades on from when his
father had cut the Royal family's

German links, Edward appeared
to want to restore them.

Some of the guests he and
Wallis invited to their home

at Fort Belvedere near Windsor
were the despair of the King's

private secretary and his wife.

My grandmother certainly
implied to me that they thought

that some of the people visiting
Fort Belvedere were potentially

security risks, essentially.

She told me that state
papers that went to the King

came back with the stains from the
bottoms of wine glasses on them.

And that Edward VIII's guests
might just have seen them.

In August 1936, seven
months into his reign,

the King and his mistress set off
on a cruise of the Mediterranean.

Wallis was about to divorce
her second husband.

But as head of the Church of England,

Edward could not marry a divorcee.

Pictures of Edward and Wallis
were now being printed in papers

and magazines around the world.
Everywhere apart from Britain.

At home, the King remained hugely popular.

When, finally, the Simpson story
broke at the start of December,

the public were stunned.

You know, people were just shocked.

It's hard to get across today
just how shocked they were.

It was almost disbelief.

At first, there was widespread
support for the King.

Elizabeth, the wife of the
King's younger brother Bertie,

wrote in desperation to Queen Mary.

"Every day, I pray to God
that he will see reason"

"and not abandon his people."

And it must have dawned on Bertie,

with the most inexorable sense of horror,

that the buck was going to stop with him.

And he couldn't persuade his elder
brother to stay on and do the duty,

which after all, his generation had

ALL been expected to do in the First
World War, for King and country.

They'd laid aside everything. And
here was the King choosing to follow

his own romantic instincts over duty.

Determined to marry the woman
he loved, on 10 December, 1936,

Edward became the first
monarch in British history

to voluntarily abdicate.

Shy, stuttering Bertie
instantly became King.

His reaction was identical to that
of his brother 11 months before.

He finally gets to Marlborough House
where his mother is and breaks down.

He weeps on her shoulder for an
hour, beyond a mother's consolation.

At that moment, you know, the
future King of Great Britain,

Emperor of India, head
of the Church of England,

Commander-in-Chief of the
Army, appeared a broken man.

God Save the King!

On the 12th of May 1937,

Edward VIII's younger brother,
Bertie, was crowned King.

He took the name George VI,
in honour of his father.

The new Queen, Elizabeth,

could not forgive Edward
and Wallis Simpson

for the burden they had
placed on the shoulders

of her vulnerable husband.

She realised

that now, it would be duty all the way.

And she was uneasy

about her husband's capacity
for fulfilling the role.

She was very unforgiving.

She was steely to beat the band.

Cecil Beaton described
her as a marshmallow

made on a welding machine.

She was really tough.

The Duke and Duchess of
Windsor, as they now became,

were married in France in June 1937.

At Queen Elizabeth's insistence,
Wallis was denied the HRH title

or any of the trappings of royalty.

I think he had visualised himself
as coming back to Britain

as a, kind of, subsidiary prince

and enjoying the kind of life… all
privilege and no responsibility…

that he'd enjoyed as Prince of Wales.

But of course, George VI couldn't
countenance this, at all.

He was constantly looking over his
shoulder to somebody who was much

brighter and smarter and more alluring

and had more charisma than he did.

And so, the Duke of Windsor
had to live abroad.

King George knew that,
if his brother chose to,

he could easily become a dangerous
alternative focus of loyalty.

And the King's worst fears
were about to be realised.

Berlin. A huge crowd greeted
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

and they were especially
welcomed by Dr Ley,

the Reich's organisation manager.

In October 1937, less than a
year after the abdication,

Edward and Wallis toured Nazi Germany.

'Pathe captures the moment.

'There he is with Wallis at his
side, turning up in Berlin,

'surrounded by a crush of 2,000 people, '

who were all longing to catch
a glimpse of the fairy tale.

You know, the man who's
given up his throne for love.

He was feted by the Nazi leadership.

There were smiles and
handshakes all round,

even the occasional Nazi salute.

And of course, what he wanted to do

was fashion a role for himself
on the international stage

and give Wallis a taste
of what it would be like

being feted like a queen.

He did this, I think, to bring
himself back into the limelight.

And I think it bespeaks a sheer,
sort of, naivety, ignorance,

stupidity on his part that he didn't
see what a monster Hitler was.

Within two years, Britain
was at war with Germany.

King George now feared the rift in
the Royal Family might be exploited

by the Nazis and could
threaten the very survival,

not just of his dynasty,
but of his country.

The records in the Royal
archives do shed a real light

on the degree to which the
King saw his older brother

as an increasing liability.

For instance, in his diary,

when the war breaks out
and he has a meeting with

the Chief of the General
Staff, General Ironside,

and General Ironside is asking the King,

"Can I trust your brother?"

And the King says no, effectively.

Eight months later, France fell.

Edward and his wife were
ordered to return to London.

Instead, they fled to neutral Portugal.

Shortly afterwards, the
government in London

received an extraordinary document.

A document only recently discovered
at the National Archive in Kew.

And shown now for the first
time on British television.

So, this is a letter to Alexander Cadogan,

who was an under-secretary
at the Foreign Office.

And it's British intelligence,
actually, from a source in Prague.

The 7th of July 1940, and
it says on it, "PM to see."

We know the Prime Minister saw it that day

and the King pretty shortly afterwards.

And it says, "Germans expect assistance"

"from Duke and Duchess of Windsor,"

"latter desiring at any
price to become Queen."

"Germans have been negotiating
with her since June 27th."

"Status quo in England,"

"except undertaking to
form anti-Russian alliance."

"Germans propose to form opposition
government and the Duke of Windsor,"

"having first changed public
opinion by propaganda."

"Germans think King George will abdicate"

"during the attack on London."

You can imagine what this was like
for the nervous King, reading this.

The ex-King appeared to be
negotiating with the Germans.

Whatever the Duke's actual
intentions were will never be known.

He agreed shortly afterwards to
become Governor of the Bahamas,

where strict instructions were issued

that women should not
curtsy to the Duchess.

The couple had effectively been banished.

I very much doubt that the
British government has it in mind

at the present that my official
activities should extend

beyond the confines of the Bahama islands.

The Duke always denied he
had contemplated treachery

in that fateful summer of 1940.

But he and Wallis Simpson
would remain royal pariahs

for the rest of their lives.

In Britain, meanwhile, King George
went from strength to strength,

touring bombs sites with
his wife during the Blitz.

Buckingham Palace itself was bombed

and the King's refusal to leave London

made him a popular symbol of resistance.

♪ … Royal Standard waves
above for everyone to see.

♪ The King is with his people cos
that's where he wants to be… ♪

He proved to be a steady
and reliable focus

for a nation that had to

fight back, on its own in 1940,

to make sure that Germany was defeated.

♪ Like Mr Jones and Mr Brown The
King is still in London town! ♪

At the end of the war, King
George stood on the balcony

at Buckingham Palace,

just as his father had 27 years before.

It was like the quintessential
moment of victory

and the King had done it.

You know, all the doubts
about the monarchy

at the time of the
abdication were dispelled.

The Windsor dynasty and the
new model of popular monarchy

had been tested in the fire of
war, twice, and come through.

It had been threatened
by the rise of democracy

and the danger of revolution
and had come through.

And when threatened by internal division,

it had been ruthless in
cutting out the weak link.

The Windsors present
themselves to the world

as an amiable, constitutional monarchy.

But I think their main duty is
to ensure their own survival

and nothing has got to be
allowed to endanger that.

Duty and sacrifice

were the foundation of
the new Windsor dynasty.

There could be no place for
personal passions or desires.

It was a heavy burden to
lay on the next generation.

Next time, using unseen footage,

a lovesick princess and an ailing King

keep up appearances, as
a crisis looms at home.