Original subtitles

The British Royal Family.

One of the most famous dynasties in the world.

God save the Queen.

For more than a century,

the lives of the Windsors have enthralled the nation,

mesmerised the press,

and inspired some of the most popular films

and dramas of recent decades.

But what's fact, and what's fiction?

There were rumours

that not everything was right in the marriage.

He was only on

extremely lose terms with monogamy.

That was the moment

when the Palace absolutely lost grip of the narrative.

In this series, we delve deep into the archives

to reveal controversial documents concealed for decades

This is a hand-written note

saying: "We're going to tap the King's phone".

And meet royal insiders

who witnessed history first-hand.

She steps out

and we realise this is a horror story.

About four feet from the Princess.

It was the first sign something was wrong.

In this episode, we explore

how the Queen has managed some of her greatest trials

and tribulations.

Anything that could go wrong did go wrong.

It was like slap, slap, slap

across the face of the royal family.

From scandal and disaster...

The flames seemed to be 200 feet high.

She's standing there,

this small figure in a raincoat.

You could see it in her face.

The emotion was palpable.

To tragedy and murder...

My brother and I were at the castle

and we actually heard the bomb go off.

Blew it to smithereens.

And of course, there was nothing left.

And find out what it takes to be Queen

when your family, and the nation,

are tested to the limit.

She's getting out of the car...

Nobody knew what the reaction would be.

It was a very dangerous time for the royal family.

Being Queen, monarch, is a very lonely job.

Captions edited by Ai-Media ai-media.tv

Grenfell Tower, June 2017.

The worst residential fire in the UK

since World War II.

Seventy-two people were killed.

Dozens more were injured.

As survivors struggled to cope,

politicians became the target of public anger.

I was down there at the time.

Tempers were at breaking point.

I remember standing in the crowd

at the sports hall just under the A40,

and suddenly this...

well... silence.

Here was the Queen.

"It's appalling sight", she said

after hearing about the flames.

But she has clearly noticed how this community

has pulled together to help.

She was talking to people,

without any the of protocol

and people surrounding her. It was just the Queen.

Defusing some of the anger and some of the emotion.

I think when you have a colossal tragedy or national shock,

all the usual responses are there:

anger, incomprehension.

And the Queen somehow rises above that.

When she appears, it's a different mood.

I think it's come over very strongly

how good the community has been to help.

There she is, looking strong,

smiling, giving comfort.

And that's what the Queen does at times of national tragedy.

Just three weeks before Grenfell,

the Queen had gone to Manchester

in the wake of the concert bombing.

Throughout Manchester's Children's Hospital

there was a ripple of excitement when news spread this morning

of the Queen's unexpected arrival here.

The royal family in general,

the Queen in particular, are meant to act

as national conduits of feeling.

So when the Queen turns up

at the site of the Manchester bombings,

at Grenfell tower,

it is as if the whole nation

is showing their sympathy,

and that perhaps is their function.

What the Queen called a wicked act

had, she said, brought this city together.

Very interesting how everybody has united, haven't they, here.

It's been amazing.

The thing with the Queen is that she's always herself.

She's not some actress putting on a part.

So, she's going there because she feels

it's her duty to be there.

It's a hard role

to tread between, on the one hand

being stoical, being brave.

You enjoyed the concert,

- Yeah, it was really good. - Was it?

And on the other, showing that they feel

and perhaps the balance has swung

over the Queen's reign.

I got to meet her before the concert, she was lovely.

- Really? - Yeah.

Perhaps at first it was about showing

courage, steadfastness.

Now it's a little more about showing feeling.

But the important thing is just for the Queen to be there.

It's almost like as the mother of the nation,

as she is supposed to be.

You just want mummy

to be there in times of national trouble.

By rushing to Grenfell and Manchester

immediately after those disasters,

the Queen got the mood of the nation right.

But 50 years earlier,

her judgement was not as sure.

On the 21st October 1966,

a slag heap collapsed

upon the South Wales mining village of Aberfan,

engulfing the local primary school.

The school lay in the direct path

of the disintegrating man-made mud...

144 people were killed,

116 of them children.

Their children were buried in that mud,

mud almost filled the classroom.

With shovels, if necessary, with bare hands,

they pitted themselves against the uncounted

tonnes of slimy filth.

Aberfan was one of the first

great national disasters

that the Queen had to handle.

She issued a statement expressing her condolences,

but rather than going straight to the scene

she waited and sent Prince Philip instead.

The reason that she gave for this delay

was that she thought that if she was there,

she would attract attention,

when people should be dealing with their grief,

and that's what she wanted to avoid.

She said that she was terrified

that all the fuss, that would accompany her visit,

might mean, god forbid,

that some child was missed in the wreckage.

But it was misunderstood.

A lot of people were incredibly critical,

"the monarchy doesn't care", etc.

It was a huge national tragedy

and still the Queen did not show up.

But now, Daily Mail journalist, Robert Hardman,

believes there was another little-known reason

the Queen didn't rush to the scene.

What everyone I've spoken to about it

says is that the Queen was really worried

that she would let the side down.

She didn't want to go there

and make things worse for these families.

She was a young mother. Prince Edward was a baby

and she knew that she was going to be

as overwhelmed as everybody else was.

And the last thing people want is a sobbing Queen,

crying on their shoulder.

The tragedy of Aberfa

presented a dilemma for the Queen

as leader of the nation.

How much of yourself do you show,

when you are confronted with death,

with trauma, with a disaster?

Of course, you don't want to be seen as apathetic.

But also, we don't want to see the Queen

collapse, unable to cope,

overcome with emotion at times when we are looking to her

to keep the nation together.

Finally, eight days after the tragedy,

and under mounting criticism,

the Queen made the journey to Aberfan

to pay her respects.

When eventually she did go,

at the end of the week,

you could see she was genuinely moved by the tragedy of it.

When she actually arrived,

she spoke with families.

There was one woman who'd lost seven members of her family.

And the Queen just sat with her,

quietly, saying nothing, for half an hour.

That was the Queen showing her humanity.

The occasions when you see the Queen display

her grief, those occasions are very few and far between.

But you really do see that emotion in her face.

She saved the situation

and I think the lesson was,

that it's really important to make an instant appearance

and not to wait.

The Queen learnt from her mistake at Aberfan.

Over the past 50 years, she has worked hard to make up for it,

returning to the village four times to meet bereaved families.

If you ask anyone who's worked with the Queen a long time

to name her regrets,

one that usually pops up is Aberfan.

The Queen said that she has to be seen to be believed,

it's one of her favourite mottos,

but she has also to be seen to feel, to care.

But 13 years after Aberfan,

the Queen would again be tested by tragedy,

and this time it would strike at the heart of her own family.

The bomb was placed in the decking just under here.

We saw the police rush back.

There was utter mayhem.

Winter 2019.

Britain is bitterly divided by the Brexit crisis.

On the 24th of January,

the Queen makes a telling speech

to the Sandringham branch of the Women's Institute,

that's read as an allusion to Brexit.

She talks of the importance

of "respecting the other person's point of view",

seeking out "common ground"

and "never losing sight of the bigger picture".

This is the stuff of what being a sovereign is.

Uniting rather than dividing.

It would be very interesting to know

what the Queen thought about Brexit.

But she has transcended all that.

The monarchy should be a unifying factor.

People up and down the country admire her,

even republicans admire her.

They may dislike the principle,

but they cannot fault the woman.

She is all things to all man

and that really works.

In a divided country,

it often falls to the monarch

to lead the work of reconciliation.

But some of the most painful conflicts

the Queen has had to deal with

have been within her own family.

It's fitting that here, the present Queen

should meet the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

He is her uncle and when he gave up the throne,

Princess Elizabeth was a girl only ten years old.

In 1972, the Queen would attempt to make peace

with the man who nearly brought down the monarchy.

The vendetta had been incredibly

long lived, bitter, horrible.

And the Queen Mother had been utterly unforgiving.

The Queen's mission would coincide

with a state visit to France

as Britain prepared to join the EEC

the following year.

In the National Archives at Kew

Royal biographer Robert Hardman

has uncovered some remarkable documents

revealing the planning of the trip.

Here is this very, very important state visit,

today we go on about Brexit, but what we're looking at here

is effectively "Brentry".

This is Britain going into Europe

with a lot of grandeur, with balls and dances

and all the pageantry Britain and France can deploy.

So, this is a very big moment.

But for the Queen,

the visit also had a personal dimension.

Paris was the home of her uncle the Duke of Windsor,

formerly King Edward VIII,

exiled to France after giving up the throne

for American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

This was the man who had abdicated in 1936,

and the abdication had really shaken the monarchy.

It was a dereliction of duty.

It was the worst thing for the monarchy in the 20th Century.

And it had defined and shadowed the reign of the Queen.

As the Queen prepared for the state visit,

her uncle was dying of throat cancer.

Here we have a letter from the Palace

to the British Ambassador in Paris,

saying "Please make sure there is time

in the Queen's schedule for her to visit

her uncle, the Duke of Windsor.

On the assumption that His Royal Highness

and the Duchess are going to be in Paris during the visit,

the Queen would like to pay them a private visit".

The Duke of Windsor is very, very unwell.

The Queen fully understands this may be the last chance

she gets to see him alive.

The Queen realised

that for the sake of unity,

to heal this terrible internecine family rift,

that she should make a gesture

to the Duke of Windsor at the very end of his life.

But for the organiser of the State visit,

the Queen's meeting with her uncle

was fraught with danger.

At the Embassy, at the Elysee Palace and at Number 10,

what they're worried about is what happens if he dies

either during or just before the visit?

And this causes terrible diplomatic seizures.

What we have here is a memo to the Prime Minister

explaining all the various options.

"The reports of the duke's health

are becoming more discouraging and the duke himself

has recently cancelled a visit to Spain...

Up to what point can he die

without it ruining the visit?"

What it boils down to is he can die

some weeks before the visit,

he can die after visit.

Just can't happen during.

Finally, on the 18th May 1972,

the Queen, with Prince Philip and Prince Charles,

arrived at her uncle's home in the West of Paris,

and was ushered upstairs

to the duke's private sitting room.

It would be a historic moment

as the two of them met.

The Duke of Windsor was so ill

that his Doctor had implored him to stay in bed,

and he insisted that he had to get out of bed

and stand up and bow to his niece, the Queen.

He even put on a blazer over his pyjamas

so that he looked smart for the occasion.

And it took all his strength to do that.

He had tubes sticking into his neck.

And he got up and he bowed to her.

And it was a most moving moment, really,

because he had been bitterly hostile

to George VI, her father whom she had adored.

It was a very emotional moment.

The Queen was seen to dab her eyes as she left,

because she knew that was the last she'd see of her uncle.

And it took all his strength to do that

and he then went straight back to bed,

and then the Queen had a chat with Wallis Simpson.

And just a few days later,

he was dead.

I think this is really a significant

and rather moving moment.

In a sense, his death

releases the Queen from the shadow

of his abdication.

There was a sense of closure,

this is the end of what had been

a turbulent period for the monarchy.

That was an example of her ability

to draw the curtain over the past

and to act as a reconciler, a healer.

And that's the crucial about monarchy,

that it should draw people together,

and that's what she did.

Over the course of her reign the Queen has acted

as a unifying force for the nation.

But 40 years after her truce with her uncle,

the Queen would be called upon to perform

an even more demanding gesture of reconciliation:

making peace with a man who had overseen the murder

of one of her closest relatives.

Lord Mountbatten was Prince Philip's uncle,

and also a very key player in the political, military,

social life of the nation.

And he was very close to the Royal Family.

He was, after all, great-uncle to Prince Charles

who worshipped him.

Every August, however

Mountbatten was off the royal scene,

gathering with his immediate family

at their summer holiday home,

Classiebawn Castle in the north-west of Ireland.

The whole coast was so remote,

quiet, it was blissful.

It was one of the most enchanting places in the world.

William Evans was Mountbatten's valet for 10 year

and remembers his boss's love for the castle and its location.

First morning of the holiday,

he couldn't wait to get out to sea.

Every second that we had was spent out lobster fishing.

Shadow V, my grandfather's fishing boat

was incredibly simple. There were no frills whatsoever.

And he loved it.

India Hicks, Lord Mountbatten's granddaughter

has spoken only rarely about the holidays

she spent with her grandfather at Classiebawn.

He would try and get

as many grandchildren as possible

to come every single day,

and the excitement of when the lobster pot

was pulled out of the water and you could smell it,

that Irish smell, the salt water, the lobsters...

But idyllic Classiebawn

is just 18 miles from the border with Northern Ireland

and in 1979, the Troubles were at their height.

It is extraordinary

that just when tension and violence

were at their most acute,

Mountbatten still did his summer holiday in Ireland.

All the family tried their best

but there was no way they would stop him going to Classiebawn.

August 27th, 1979 was a glorious day.

Mountbatten and his extended family,

including his daughter and twin grandsons,

set out on Shadow V.

But just as they reached open water,

tragedy struck.

My brother and I were up at the castle

and we actually heard the bomb go off.

We saw the police rush back for their binoculars.

There was utter mayhem.

The bomb was placed in the decking, just under here,

which is just close to where the steering wheel is.

This is exactly as the Shadow V would have been,

coming out of the black rocks.

Lord Mountbatten's on the wheel,

and up above is a coast road,

where the terrorists were waiting

to remotely control the bomb.

Blew it to smithereens.

Of course there was nothing left.

Lord Mountbatten, one of his twin grandsons,

fourteen-year-old Nicholas Knatchbull,

and a 15-year-old crew member, Paul Maxwell, were killed.

Another passenger,

the Dowager Lady Brabourne,

died the next day in hospital.

It would be hard to define a more cowardly attack

in the annals of high-profile terrorism

than to blow up a grandfather

with his children out fishing on holiday.

The Queen was at Balmoral

when she received the news

of Mountbatten's death.

The twin who was not killed,

later came up to Balmoral.

And he arrived late at the night and the whole house was shut up,

and the Queen rushes down the corridor

to greet him, to sort of enfold him, if you like.

And that's a side of the Queen we don't often see.

Mountbatten's death

hit the Royal family really hard.

I mean, he was very close to Prince Charles and the Queen.

The day of my grandfather's assassination,

of course, is embedded in my memory.

I was lucky that I was at an age where I was able

to get all of the emotion out,

so I am possibly more able to look at it

more in the eye than other members of my family,

who have never recovered.

19 years after Lord Mountbatten's assassination,

the Good Friday Agreement

brought the Troubles to an end.

Martin McGuinness, an IRA commander

at the time of Mountbatten's murder,

would become Deputy First Minister

of Northern Ireland.

From childhood, the Queen has known

that duty comes first, it trumps everything else.

Whatever your personal, private feelings are,

duty calls

and maybe you're not feeling very well

and you don't want to do something

or it may mean you've got to shake hands

with someone who murdered a member of your family

and tried to kill you.

He was second in the receiving line,

and it lasted for just a moment.

Extraordinary, nevertheless, the British sovereign

and a former IRA commander shaking hands.

She showed magnanimity,

and astonishing political savvy

in shaking hands with Martin McGuinness,

the man who was probably responsible

for the death of Lord Mountbatten.

Two years later in 2014,

the Queen invited Martin McGuinness to Windsor Castle,

for a state dinner in honour of the president of Ireland.

As Head of State,

she is constitutionally bound

to do what the state wants her to do,

and if the state wants her to bury the hatchet,

then that is what she has to do.

We'll never know how, privately, she felt about it.

Private grief is not allowed to trump

public need for a political reconciliation.

She has embodied

the whole business of reconciliation

in her own person.

And that is really quite something

in an age where old hatreds

are extremely difficult to extinguish.

Over the decades, the Queen may have mastered

the art of diplomacy.

But mastering her own family

has always been more of a challenge.

I do not know the Queen coped

with all those catastrophes.

If you think it's "horribilis" now, just you wait!

1992 should have been a year of celebration,

marking 40 years since Elizabeth became Queen.

Instead it'd become one of the most challenging years

of her reign, when her skills as monarch and mother

would be tested to the limit.

1992 was extraordinary.

It was month after month, every month

a different scandal.

Started in January,

those pictures of Fergie

and Steve Wyatt.

Anne and Mark Phillips announced

they were to divorce.

Divorce? -Daily Mirror.

Never been mentioned.

Then there was the tour of India

that was supposed to mark a reconciliation

and instead we saw Diana photographed

ostentatiously alone.

Andrew and Fergie split up.

She's been accused of extravagance,

bad taste and an over-exuberant manner...

The Squidygate tapes,

late night conversation between Diana and her lover

recorded and broadcast to the nation.

It was like slap, slap, slap

across the face of the royal family.

I mean, it just didn't stop.

And the paparazzi were out there

trying to get the photographs to go with all these stories.

Fergie is photographed

having her toes kissed

by her financial advisor.

Papers say the pictures show the truth

about his relationship with the Duchess.

What is your relationship with the Duchess of York?

And they were all at Balmoral when the news broke

and the Queen had to come down to breakfast

and see them all reading the papers.

Some of the stories were really

things you wouldn't have wanted to discuss

with your own family,

let alone with the Head of State.

The Queen herself

is reported to have said to a friend,

"Where did I go wrong?"

One event did more than any other

to shatter the picture-perfect image

of the Royal Family:

a biography of Princess Diana

by journalist Andrew Morton.

There was a huge build up

to the Andrew Morton book.

And we had an idea of what was coming but not quite sure

what scale of it was going to be.

We were told to batten down the hatches

and try and deal with it as best we can.

But how do you deal with something that is there in print?

The book contained astonishing,

intimate revelations about Diana's married life.

Diana had spoken via an intermediary

to Andrew Morton about the horrors of her marriage,

about the coldness of the royal family,

about everything that you would never ever,

in a million years, expect a Princess to talk about.

It went crazy, it was in Parliament,

it was discussed in every television programme.

You hear stories about Diana

throwing herself down a flight of stairs

in front of the Queen Mother, about bulimia,

about you know unfaithfulness in the marriage.

Royal advisers love to control

as much as they can.

Suddenly here was evidence of a total loss of control.

That was the real earthquake behind Morton.

The problem that the Queen faced

was that the younger generations of royals

were not adhering to these high standards

that she herself had set,

and therefore she was being undermined.

In the 1980s and '90s

managing the succession of family scandals

would become one of the Queen's biggest tests of judgement.

The Queen's style has been

laissez-faire, sometimes

I thought too laissez-faire.

There were many times when I was working

for Princess Diana when I wished The Queen would intervene more,

and I think there were times when a bit more direction

from above, could have produced a much happier result.

Sir Martin Charteris, who was her private secretary,

said that the Queen could judge when things were going badly,

and she worked to try and put them right.

Not so good in taking initiatives,

in doing something new.

The Queen may have taken a hands-off approach

to her family troubles,

but later in 1992

she would face a disaster

where she could do little more than react.

I remember, it was a Friday morning.

I got the call that there was a small fire at Windsor.

I got a call from a local radio station

at about quarter to 11, asking about the fire.

I said, "What fire?" I didn't know about it.

And I jumped in my car, and got there in 35 minutes.

There were already something like 400 media outside.

From five miles away, you could see smoke

and you could actually see flames from about a mile away.

It was horrific.

I was probably the first BBC reporter there

and it was just astonishing

to see this seemingly impregnable building in flames.

The fire began in the north wing

when an unattended builder's lamp set fire to a curtain.

What started as a fire

in a small private chapel soon spread

to some of the most famous, famous rooms

where some of the most important moments

in modern royal history had happened.

At one point there was this extraordinary scene

of soldiers, castle staff, cleaners, cooks,

all passing Leonardo drawings, carpets,

vases, priceless items

from hand to hand to get them out of the path of the fire.

The only member of the royal family

who was in residence at the time was Prince Andrew.

Shock, horror, that it took hold so quickly.

Her Majesty was shocked.

The Queen arrived to see the house

that she'd grown up in, a place with so many memories,

the place from which her family take their name,

and there it was going up in smoke.

At one stage you think,

"Well, they've dampened it down".

and the next thing, the Brunswick Tower right over

in the north east corner was like a chimney

with flames shooting out.

The massive salvage operation

helped save most of the priceless furniture.

But the fire had destroyed over 100 rooms.

The Queen was devastated by it.

You could see it in her face.

The emotion was something palpable,

you don't often see that utterly depressed

look on her features.

There is a photograph of her,

while the fire rages.

This castle that she has loved.

And she's standing there,

this small figure in a raincoat

with a hood put up over her head.

What a terrible blow,

personally, that must have been for the Queen.

She must have felt, "I'm the custodian of this place

and I've failed in my duties".

In the evening, I drove along the M4

on the way back to London,

and the flames seemed to be 200 feet high,

which you could see from a couple of miles away.

And it seemed like the end of the world,

the metaphorical end of the monarchy.

Four days after the fire,

the Queen delivered a speech at the Guildhall in London.

It was being made to mark her jubilee,

but at the end of a year of scandal and disaster

it became a plea for understanding.

She had a very bad cold

and she'd also breathed in quite a lot of smoke.

She was having some difficulty speaking,

and she said to her private secretary,

"I think I'd really rather ask

the Duke of Edinburgh if he can deliver this".

And her advisor said, "No, look,

I think you need to make this speech".

1992 is not a year

on which I shall look back

with undiluted pleasure.

It's a speech that's remembered for two words in particular.

It has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis.

Or to transpose it into the Sun's charming argot,

"One's Bum Year".

I think she felt those two words really summed up

the year that she'd been through.

I sometimes wonder how future generations

will judge the events of this tumultuous year.

I dare say that history

will take a slightly more moderate view

than that of some contemporary commentators.

I think that was another rare moment

where you saw the vulnerability of this woman.

She may be monarch, but she is still,

underneath it all, a woman who feels and...

and hurts just as we all do.

I think everybody realised, yes, of course

various members of the Royal Family

have made mistakes, things have been done

that shouldn't have been done.

But that speech and that moment summed up

this is a human institution.

And it did have that effect of turning things round.

But five years later,

the Queen would face an even greater tragedy

that would shake the monarchy to its core.

The country was desperate

for some sign of grief

from this royal family.

It's disgusting that they've not appeared or said a word.

It was a very dangerous time,

I think, for the royal family.

On the 31st August 1997,

The Queen was at Balmoral

on her annual summer holiday

when she was awoken in the early hours of the morning.

We have reports from Paris

that Diana, Princess of Wales,

has been killed in a car accident.

They were apparently being pursued by paparazzi on two motorcycles.

In terms of the death of an individual,

it was perhaps the biggest story in the world

since JF Kennedy's assassination.

And it just was astonishing

how many people seemed to be personally affected

because she had been this universal

much-loved figure.

Diana's death shocked the world.

But rather than rush back to London

to lead the nation in grief,

the Queen remained at Balmoral.

Well, I remember I came up to London

and when I got to the top of The Mall, I realised

that Buckingham Palace was totally... shut.

There were no lights, there was nothing.

Yet thousands of people, very quietly had come there,

and there was nobody at home.

There was no information coming out.

They weren't briefing the press,

they were kind of on lockdown, there was no information.

Clearly, the country was desperate

for some sign of grief

from this royal family, who just seemed

to be carrying on as normal.

For the past five days,

most of the royal family, including the Queen

have been 521 miles away at Balmoral,

leaving the palace empty with no flag flying.

People wanted to see the Queen.

Where's our Queen?

Where are you, ma'am? Where's our flag?

Speak to us ma'am, your people need you.

Show us you care.

Very, very, very disgraceful and I find their behaviour

very disgraceful. -What do you think, Madam?

It's disgusting they have not appeared or said a word.

I think it's a disgrace on the whole royal family.

It was...

a very dangerous time, I think, for the royal family.

It was perhaps the single clearest moment in her reign,

when she and her people were at odds.

But since Diana's death,

the real reason for the Queen's silence has become clear.

The week after Diana died,

the Queen...

I think probably rightly,

decided to stay in Balmoral to look after the boys,

because they boys were her prime concern.

They were very young, 12 and 15, and they'd lost their mother

in the most horrifying of circumstances.

I mean, the most horrendous tragedy for any family,

but to have to play it out in the public gaze...

She decided to keep the family very private,

put her family first.

In Diana's death you saw

a tragedy hit a family.

They may have been royal, but they were just a family.

Princes William and Harry

looked uncomfortable in front of the cameras,

but this was their first opportunity

to read for themselves the touching messages

left for them by a grieving public.

I think that outpouring of grief and shock

took the royal family hugely by surprise.

Certainly, I think the Queen was quite shocked

and didn't really know how to deal with it.

More than any other tragedy

of the Queen's reign, the death of Diana was a conflict

between her two roles.

On the one hand there's a public grief

and the Queen is expected to lead that.

And on the other hand, a really

terrible, traumatic tragedy for her

as a private individual, and these two things meet

in a way that they hadn't met before in her reign.

Finally, five days after Diana's death,

and as public anger was reaching boiling point,

the Queen returned to London.

There we see the Queen leaving Northolt airport

on the way down from Balmoral.

To me, the most significant turning point

of the Queen's reign,

and I was there covering it for the BBC live,

was the day that she returned from Scotland.

Wesley.

What is the mood outside of Buckingham Palace at the moment?

It's extremely sombre mood

and a very sombre scene, that there are literally

thousands of people here.

She did two extremely significant things.

One of which amazed me, which was that

the car came down Constitution Hill

with her and the Duke and the car stops

outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

It looks as though the Queen is about to...

She's getting out of the car, and is going to talk to people.

It's extremely unusual,

this is almost unprecedented. I think perhaps

the last time that the Queen was among her people

outside the palace was the day

the war in Europe ended.

That was a very bold example of personal leadership,

to go out amongst those crowds.

Actually, nobody knew

what the reaction was going to be.

Those of us who'd been in those crowds

for a week, knew that the crowds were quite hostile.

Then she goes up to somebody in the crowd

who hands out a flower to her and the Queen says,

"Would you like me to put that with the others?"

And the woman says, "No, it's for you".

And from that moment, the sort of crowd flips

and it's no longer the hostile crowd it had been.

The Queen had won over the crowds,

but now she had to win back the nation,

with one of the most significant speeches of her reign.

The speech was delivered live.

It wasn't pre-recorded as most of her TV appearances are.

I happened to hear her doing the one run through

and then straight into the speech live

at a moment of very, very high emotion.

The reason that the crowds were the shot behind,

they only had one camera

and they said, "Well, let's have the crowds behind".

Like anyone my age,

I have seen the Queen speak so many times

and she has a way of speaking

that is very, in a way, rather formulaic.

But when she spoke after Diana's death,

that for me was something completely different.

What I say to you now, as a Queen

and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.

First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself,

she was an exceptional and gifted human being

in good times and bad.

She never lost her capacity to smile and laugh

nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness.

She'd chosen absolutely the right words,

to say that she was speaking

not just as the Queen, but as a grandmother,

it automatically made you understand

why we hadn't seen her that week.

Because she had been looking after her grandchildren,

those two grieving boys.

She managed to convey

a sense, not just of the national tragedy,

but also of the private grief

that the Royal family was going through

and that's why the speech worked.

I thought it was a grandmother speaking and not a Queen.

I was quite moved by it.

She sounded very sincere

and she looked as though she was very moved

and I think that will satisfy everyone.

I thought she said everything she should've said,

I can't think of anything she left out at all.

What I thought was very striking,

being there that day,

was that she brought the country together.

So, I think with the Queen there is very, very powerful

personal leadership.

Diana's death marked a turning point,

and in recent years the royal family

has become more open about publicly expressing emotion.

In 2017,

Prince Harry gave a remarkable interview.

So, Hazza, how are you today really?

Today I am OK, I'm a little bit nervous,

a little bit tight in the chest but otherwise fine.

Speaking to a newspaper podcast,

he talked for the first time publicly

about the emotional impact of his mother's death.

Losing my mum at 12

and therefore shutting down all of my emotions

for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect,

and actually, all of sudden all of this grief

I had never processed started to come to the forefront.

I was like, "There is actually a lot of stuff here

I need to deal with".

In that interview, Prince Harry

was incredibly candid.

To hear him admit that it had taken him

the best part of two decades to cope

with the grief of losing his mother,

to hear him talk about coming close to the point

of a complete nervous breakdown,

this was absolutely extraordinary.

It was 20 years of not thinking about it,

and then two years of total chaos.

Quite hard to believe that

such a senior member of the royal family

would be speaking so openly.

For a century or more,

the royals have been stoic

about emotion,

but what we want from our royals is changing.

The youngest generation are very aware of that,

and that really shows how far the royal family's come.

In the future, it will be William and Harry

that the nation looks to in times of grief and tragedy.

The nation has always had a place in its heart

for both of those boys.

Having gone through such a personal tragedy,

I think that resonated with people.

Anyone who's suffering tragedy themselves

can feel that Princes William and Harry understand

because they have been there themselves,

and they felt the pain

just as anybody else would do.

I think William and Harry both inherit

different qualities from different family members.

So, William has got a bit of his grandmother's

and his father's stoicism.

Harry's hilarious.

Welcome to Canada!

Thank you very much.

Did you see the competitors come by?

He's his mother's son, very warm

and he wears his heart on his sleeve.

The Queen and members of the Royal family

are part of an institution

that was going long before they arrived

in the world and will still be going

long after they've left the world,

and I think that gives them a very unique perspective

on the things that go wrong in life.

I think you could do a lot worse than those four

youngsters leading the new generation.

Next time, we examine just what it takes

to hold the very top job.

She's got a great personality,

very much a character.

The Queen's discretion

is her secret weapon.

She very, very, very seldom puts a foot wrong.

The Queen puts up with many different people,

but Ceausescu was too much for her,

she made it quite plain.

She's always going to be the most important

person in a room,

but she doesn't have a sense of importance.

One of her favourite jokes is if a phone goes off,

she says, "That must be somebody very important".