“No one can make history stop,” said Her Majesty the Queen in 1958. Well, in 75 minutes, Elizabeth: The Invisible Queen (BBC One) almost did. Using 400 drums from the Queen’s own home video archive – many of which have never been seen before – audiences Mark Hamill and director Simon Finch have created a stunning, truly exciting collage from the first three decades of Elizabeth II’s life. This is not a chronicle of a queen, but a story of a family.
If the shots are remarkable, they are combined with a voice-over, pronounced by the queen herself. It is also a patchwork taken from 60 of the Queen’s speeches (the story of the fixed line was told during a state visit by West German President Theodor Hoys), but supported by some of the Queen’s new thoughts recorded this month at Windsor Castle. In recent years, the Queen has done little to bring her so close to the people of the United Kingdom. It was as if she was guiding us – me, you – through her holiday photos and valuable old videos. Which, of course, was her.
The early years are the ones that amaze. Before adulthood, before her father became ill, before the weight of the crown on her head. of her DNA. perhaps. But in these rolls we see a carefree, naughty girl who enjoys the attention of the camera and her beloved father.
In the early 1930s, we saw Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret rocking in the garden, playing with their father (George VI, then Duke of York), spinning dizzyingly around the lawn on a wicker deck chair (admirably, almost two decades later, we see King George treat two-year-old Prince Charles with the same little thrill). In the late 1930s, we were in Balmoral, sketching in a header and rowing in a lake while Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mother, made regular humorous cameos (who knew the royal family was so crazy?). In a captivating short scene, Elizabeth and Margaret, giggling and dressed in matching blue dresses with white polka dots, perform a choreographed dance in front of the camera as the corgis move around their legs. You have to be a hardened Republican so you don’t feel too warm about them right now.
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