- Once a week, throughout the Queen's long reign, the prime minister of the day leaves Number 10 for the short drive to Buckingham Palace. What is discussed at their private audience is almost never made public. - It means that the prime minister can really open his or her soul to the monarch. - Now we can examine the dynamics of this intriguing relationship. - Churchill has the opportunity to give her confidence, and she should go with her feelings. - Spanning eight decades and 14 premiers, Queen Elizabeth has seen Britain change beyond all recognition. By focusing in on just four of her most complex relationships ` Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher, and Blair ` we examine how Elizabeth's influence and experience has developed over her reign,... - Wilson creates real fear. They really think that he is going to be very difficult for the Queen. - ...reveal the divisions and tension,... - Proud to be British. - Disgusting. She would have thought the lesser of Margaret Thatcher. - ...and cast new light on how the balance of power shifts. - She's 94, but she still takes her duty very seriously. - While the history of the House of Windsor is well known, hidden in vaults and archives across the country, a story is waiting to be uncovered. With access to some of these previously classified documents, private letters, and secret communiques, this series reveals some of the secrets of the royals. Captions by Able. Captions were made with support from NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2021 (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) - What is required is a tolerant, non-doctrinaire government to allow our nation's qualities to shine forth. - On October the 25th 1951, the first of the Queen's 14 prime ministers, Winston Churchill, was unexpectedly returned to power. - Truly, the election had proved a turning point. Firm hands were at the helm again. Mr Churchill was back on the bridge. - In Parliament Square, Churchill's dominating statue keeps a watchful eye over the Houses of Parliament. While today he's a controversial figure, in 1951, the man who saved Britain from Hitler had an unimpeachable reputation. - Every trace of Hitler's footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers will be sponged and purged! - He was a figure of monumental prestige. He'd been the figurehead, actually, during the war. He had given the lion's roar. - Churchill's victory, followed by the sudden death of King George VI, set the stage for an unlikely relationship between two of the 20th century's most momentous figures. - It's an extraordinarily lucky stroke of timing because Churchill has the opportunity to give her confidence, and she should go with her feelings, and this has been a very important strain in her whole time as queen. - Queen Elizabeth was Churchill's sixth monarch. When he first became an MP, Queen Victoria was still on the throne. - Now the Princess Elizabeth we knew and loved returns amongst us as our queen. - Devastated by the death of the king, Churchill worried how the inexperienced young monarch would bear the weight of responsibility. - She was coming to reign in a state of mourning and in a state of loss for a father figure. - From Churchill's point of view, she had no experience, she was pretty scantily educated, and she was a woman. - He regarded the Queen as a child. He said, 'How can I deal with her?' And she must have regarded him with awe and reverence. - It now fell to Churchill to be both guide and mentor. On November 4th 1952, the young queen came of age. Tens of thousands cheered as she made her way to her first State Opening of Parliament. - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is on her way to the House of Lords to deliver her first speech from the throne. - Churchill's early scepticism quickly faded. In a broadcast, he waxed lyrically about the reigns of queens past. - I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged, and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in evoking once more the prayer and anthem 'God save the Queen'. - Churchill is old enough to be able to remember Queen Victoria's reign and to say that Britain only flourishes during these long reigns of women. - Churchill was a great sentimentalist. I think he saw himself as this sort of Elizabethan figure, a sort of aged courtier. And I think he saw her as this innocent, youthful princess catapulted into the limelight, and he saw his role as the kind of grandfatherly one, actually. - It was a kind of love affair. The Queen was young and lovely and beautiful and friendly. As a result of that, he almost sort of fell in love with her. - The real test for the relationship was in the weekly audience. Although little is said about them, the diaries of the Queen's private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, are revealing. - 'When Winston had his weekly audience in the Bow Room, 'I could not hear what they talked about. 'But it was more often than not punctuated by peals of laughter, 'and Winston generally came out wiping his eyes.' - Churchill was a great actor, and I think he was sort of playing Winston Churchill, you know, this sort of exaggerated displays of deference and sort of fealty to the monarch. And he's also quite funny, and I think she liked that. So I think those early audiences were... I imagine they were fun. Being with Churchill was fun. Everybody said so. - The portrait is a remarkable example of modern art. It certainly combines force and candour. (LAUGHTER) - Churchill was also old and ill. In June 1953, he suffered a serious stroke, which partially paralysed him. But with his condition hidden from both the public and parliament, Churchill's retirement soon became a vexed question. - When was he going to go? And I think that the Queen felt a certain impatience about this. - Churchill kept hinting that he would go and didn't and perhaps went on a bit beyond his useful shelf life. - Churchill eventually retired in 1955. For three years, he'd passed on his wealth of constitutional knowledge and experience. - As many commentators have remarked, while no intellectual, the Queen is not a slouch. She's a quick study. So I think Churchill very much felt that it was his job to educate this young sovereign, and I think he did a pretty good job. - Churchill left a legacy the Queen's next 13 prime ministers would have to try to live up to. - Someone once asked the Queen who was her favourite prime minister, and she said, 'Winston, of course, cos he was always such fun.' - As the 1950s wore on, the Queen would invite three more Conservative men to be her first minister. Eden, Macmillan, and Douglas-Home were all members of an aristocratic elite. - They've often been in the First World War. They've done distinguished public service. But they are the type of statesman that you would recognise from the 19th century. - This afternoon, the Queen did me the great honour to ask me to form a government. - Identifying the monarchy with all the men in grey suits, the sort of conventional political elite, is not very good for it. - But while the ruling elite were stuck in their ways, Britain was changing. (UPBEAT MUSIC) The monochrome '50s gave way to the colour of the Swinging Sixties and with it a new youth-driven cultural revolution of fashion, art, and music. - I think Britain was ready for a change. Britain was ready for the Swinging Sixties. It was ready for different economic answers. - The man who thought he had those answers would become the Queen's first Labour prime minister and introduce her to a whole new social class. - The main issues are going to be the ones we always expected ` housing and rents and pensions and cost of living and education. - On October the 15th 1964, Harold Wilson's Labour won office by the slimmest of majorities. - Wilson creates real fear amongst the royal household, and they really think that Wilson is going to be a republican, that he is going to be very difficult for the queen. - But with Elizabeth having been on the throne for 12 years and with all her previous prime ministers aristocratic Edwardians, Wilson's working-class roots were a much-needed breath of fresh air. - What Wilson brought was a certain charm and a certain novelty, and he introduced her to an entirely new social class. - Thank you very much for giving us this Silver Heart. But I still think you should have given one to good old Mr Wilson. - (LAUGHTER) - Of all Labour prime ministers she could have, she could hardly pick one who's more easy to get on with than Wilson. Wilson has no pretensions. - Very nice. - Very nice and relaxing. - You working in this area? - I'm a pensioner. - Oh, you're retired, are you? - I turned 70. - You're not, are you? - He turned 70. - Every prime minister brings his own life experience to the meetings with the Queen. The Queen's on a learning curve here because most of the time, the whole system of the monarchy keeps her apart from the real lives of people. (THUNDER RUMBLES, RAIN PATTERS) (OMINOUS MUSIC) - Just two years into Wilson's tenure, some of those real lives were torn apart by tragedy at Aberfan, a national disaster that revealed the importance of Elizabeth being among ordinary people. - It was consumed when colliery waste slid down a mountainside. - A collapsing slag heap had destroyed the village junior school. 144 had died, mostly children killed in their classrooms. Wilson wasted no time in visiting the scene, but the Queen resolutely refused to go. - The Queen didn't like to be an ambulance chaser, and when this utter disaster occurred, she was resistant to doing something that would look like gimmickry. - If she goes immediately, she's at risk of being a lightning rod for hysteria and populism. And those who live by populism die by populism. - She's supposed to have said herself, 'If I go, everybody will be making me cups of tea and making sure that I'm happy 'when what they should be doing is digging up rubble and looking for children.' - But as public pressure mounted, the Queen changed her mind and visited eight days later. Had Wilson's common touch and natural empathy shown Elizabeth how to react to this national tragedy? - This was a great occasion of national grief and mourning in which her absence was very noticeable. - I think that Wilson might have said, 'Look, I've been, 'and I think maybe it's time that you should go,' but I think that would have been her decision. - The tragedy of Aberfan has resonated throughout Elizabeth's reign. She often returns to the village to commemorate the disaster. - It stands as a symbol of the determination that out of the disaster should come a richer and a fuller life. - Aberfan is always said to have been a turning point. She realised that this role of the monarch of going to a disaster area is something that is really important. - By the mid '60s, Britain was in the grip of a new industrial revolution. - Wilson comes into office, and his message is all about the technological revolution. - Britain is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution. - Britain will be reborn. Britain will be modernised. - But while Britain and the world were shooting for the stars, the monarchy was stuck in a bygone age. - The 1960s poses a real threat to the monarchy. The monarchy looked seriously out of date. The Swinging Sixties, the decline of deference, and all of this is against the type of monarchy which has been developed in the 1950s. And it's quite hard for the monarchy to adapt to this. - This clash of cultures was revealed when Wilson asked the Queen to send a message of congratulations to the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission. - On behalf of the British people, I salute the skill and courage which have brought man to the moon. - But a recently declassified document reveals the Queen reluctantly agreed, worried it looked like a gimmick. - That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. - Over Wilson's two terms in office, palace insiders watched his weekly audiences grow from the traditional 30 minutes to over two hours. But within his own party, there were few who Wilson could trust. - Wilson lived his entire political life at this kind of pitch of paranoia, where he's got this cabinet of very talented people who are all wanting to stab him in the back and seize the crown themselves. - The Queen had become one of Wilson's closest confidants. - Every week, he gets this moment in his diary when he can go and talk to the Queen and relax. No one's trying to stab him in the back. No one's got a hidden agenda. - Wilson repaid this friendship by suppressing rising anti-monarchism in his own cabinet. - He had some serious republicans. He had a blockade. They were very aggressive about the cost of maintaining the royal family, and Wilson had to be the middleman, and he was prepared to make compromises in order to keep them secure. - Anthony Wedgwood Benn was one such republican. As Postmaster General, he brought the post office into the 20th century with the iconic Post Office Tower, opened in 1965 by the Queen. But his next innovation forced Wilson to play a clever game to keep the monarch on side. - Tony Benn wanted to take the Queen's head off stamps, so he thought that he would charm her by having a personal audience. - And Wilson allows Benn to go and show the Queen the stamps, and she duly looks at them and says, 'Oh, very nice. Nice design.' She doesn't mention, 'Where's my head?' (PHONE RINGS) - Later, there was a phone call from 10 Downing Street, saying, 'You're not having stamps without the Queen's head.' So she'd been on to Harold Wilson to say, 'Look, the Queen's head ought to be on the stamps.' Bang went the stamps. - That, to me, is a classic story of the Queen, 'Oh, I don't really have a view.' But in fact, her view emerges. Her head is still on the stamps. Did anybody else give you that story? - Yes. Piers Brendon. - Oh, how annoying. (LAUGHS) - In 1976, after eight years in office, Wilson suddenly resigned, reportedly due to an Alzheimer's diagnosis. He departed in little doubt he'd been one of the Queen's favourite prime ministers, both seasoned players in this unique piece of political theatre. - What we famously know about Wilson was that the pipe was a prop and that the minute he got indoors, he took out a fat Havana cigar and lit it up, so he understood perfectly the nature of performance in relation to power. So I think that that mutual understanding of what they were both up to meant that they could drop it at the door. - If the Queen had enjoyed a friendly, relaxed relationship with Wilson, in 1979, everything changed as Britain's first female prime minister swept to power. - Her Majesty has asked me to form a new administration. - Now there were two queens in the hive. By 1979, the Queen had been on the throne for 27 years, making her a veteran in any job. - Here comes the prime ministerial Rover. - Yet her eighth prime minister would test Elizabeth like no other, forcing her to draw on all her political experience and patience as Margaret Roberts, a grocer's daughter from Grantham, set about revolutionising Britain. - She climbed up the greasy pole. She was tough, uncompromising, extremely able, incredibly hard working. - I know full well the responsibilities that await me. - She was a formidable prime minister. - Having served in both the Wilson and Callaghan governments before joining the SDP, David Owen remembers Thatcher as a political force of nature. - I mean, she had strongly-held views. I think she was wrong and she was right and usually 100% wrong and 100% right. (LAUGHS) - She is possessed of this incredible kinda moral certainty... - Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. - ...that she and she alone can save the country by leading it to the path of righteousness. - Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. - That is Margaret Thatcher. - Thatcher had swept to power with a landslide. And although a very different personality, she did have something in common with the Queen. - In most of the photographs, she's the only woman, surrounded by men ` world leaders, Commonwealth leaders, the cabinet. - Both Margaret and Elizabeth had risen to the very top in a world dominated by men. - She never had another woman in the cabinet. And she became queen bee. - She was able to flirt, and she was very good at that. She used her femininity very cleverly. But you can't flirt with the Queen. - Thatcher had been mandated to heal a sick Britain. Industrial strife, economic instability, and social unrest had defined the 1970s. Now the Iron Lady had the cure. - She sees herself as a surgeon. And there's been a succession of tweedy family doctors of the 1950s who have come in and said, 'Oh, just take this tablet. Oh, it's fine.' She is gonna do the very painful but necessary operation that will make the patient better, no matter what the side effects will be. (CHEERING, INDISTINCT CHANTING) - She wanted to reform and improve and privatised and deregulate and kill all the complacent monopolies. But she was also a monarchist, and if there was ever a complacent monopoly, it was housed in Buckingham Palace. - Thatcher deepened this contradiction with cringing displays of deference. - When she appeared in Buckingham Palace, they laughed at her because she did such a deep curtsy. It was incredibly elaborate, and I think it bespoke a kind of unease about her relationship. - She fainted on a number of occasions at the palace. I think the Queen was said to have remarked once, 'Oh God, she's gone and fainted again.' And you can imagine the Queen wasn't gonna (LAUGHS) faint because Mrs Thatcher was coming! - Once a week for the next 11 years, Margaret and Elizabeth would have their weekly face-to-face audience. Two strong women of similar age in the top jobs. The question was who held the balance of power? - I suspect that Her Majesty would start off by saying, 'It's been a very interesting week, Prime Minister, hasn't it?' as an opening gambit, and Margaret would use that as a cue to just talk and talk and talk. - She would address the Queen in a way that no prime minister had previously done ` 'I've arrived at this decision. 'I have to take this decision because of X, Y, and Z, 'so you can like it or lump it.' - She has a prime minister who basically says, 'All those decades of your reign so far have been a complete disaster.' I mean, naturally, you're gonna bridle a bit, aren't you? I mean, the Queen quite liked all those previous prime ministers. Those are the audiences you'd want to be at. I mean, it would have been so awkward, excruciating, but it would have been fascinating at the same time. - In July 1979, Thatcher had her first run-in with the palace. With the Commonwealth heads of government meeting due to be held in Lusaka the following month, Thatcher, while in Australia, had publicly stated she had the right to advise the Queen whether it was safe to visit Zambia, a move which declassified documents now reveal showed Thatcher's ignorance of the Queen's friendship with Zambia's President Kaunda. - I don't think she had any understanding that the Queen had known Kenneth Kaunda for years. She'd known them even before they became head of government. - As soon as the Queen got wind of that, she announced independently that she was gonna go to the Commonwealth conference, and Mrs Thatcher, who was flying back from Tokyo at the time, got off the plane and found out the Queen had sort of trumped her in the press. - A week or so later, another declassified briefing document reveals Thatcher's embarrassing U-turn. Now she would no longer be advising the Queen not to go to Zambia. - If the Prime Minister thought it was not a good idea, it was her job to say so, and the Queen should have taken more notice because the Queen ignoring the advice of her prime minister makes the prime minister's job harder. Right? It's a game of chess. (TENSE MUSIC) - While Lusaka had highlighted the power dynamic between Margaret and Elizabeth, it had also revealed a deep, dark division over the Commonwealth. - The highlight of the Queen's life is to go to a Commonwealth summit and shake hands with all of the African prime ministers. Margaret Thatcher views this as an utter waste of everybody's time. - She didn't understand it. She saw the Commonwealth as a weak, insipid organisation, no power. - Thatcher's first term in office could easily have been her last. With the economy tanking and unemployment soaring, the fabric of British society was beginning to unravel. What Thatcher needed was a cause to unite the people. - Margaret Thatcher was the most unpopular prime minister since polls began, and suddenly the Falklands are invaded. The Falklands war was a very, very close-won thing, and it would be very easy for Britain to have lost it, and the government would have collapsed. It would have been a complete disaster. (PEOPLE SHOUT, CHEER) - But Thatcher's gamble paid off, and her popularity rating soared to nearly 60%. Aping her hero Churchill, now Thatcher too was a war leader. - She hit the jackpot, and that buttered her political parsnips for life. - It was Margaret Thatcher's war, and Margaret Thatcher had directed it, so inevitably, she becomes the symbol of the war and actually the symbol of Britain. - Symbolism is the Queen's business. LAUGHS: It's not the premier's business! But it was irresistible. - So irresistible that, in a remarkable departure from tradition, it was Margaret Thatcher, not the Queen, who took the salute from the returning soldiers in the Falklands victory parade. - It's incredible. She stood in what looked like a royal box. It showed an almighty hubris. - Thatcher becomes Britannia and Gloriana. Thatcher becomes the defender of the faith. Thatcher becomes the things that the Queen is supposed to be. (CHUCKLES) Whoa, what's happening here? - Disgusting. Shabby is probably the right word, a better word than 'disgusting'. Shabby. And I think the Queen would have raised more than an eyebrow. I doubt she ever said anything about it, but she would have thought the lesser of Margaret Thatcher. It was outrageous. - Proud to be here today to salute the taskforce. Proud to be British. - Thatcher was on a roll, and in the 1983 election, the Falklands victory delivered another landslide. - She was filmed in her garden in Chelsea very early on, I think, in her career, snipping off the heads of the dead roses with great determination. Bit of a metaphor for the way she behaved with the cabinet later. - Edwina Currie was elected to the mining constituency of South Derbyshire. - We had a huge majority of 144. Amazing. That, effectively, is an elector dictatorship. That means you can do almost anything you like. - What Thatcher wanted to do was to go to war with the trade unions, particularly the miners. - ...every single working miner to stop work and join... - In the 1970s, they had had the country in a stranglehold, twice defeating the Tory government. - The Conservatives had been humiliated by power cuts and all the rest of it, and basically they'd lost office because of miner strikes, and she is determined that's not gonna happen again. - Margaret would have shared with the Queen that this issue had to be resolved. - The nation faces what is probably the most testing crisis of our time. (PEOPLE SHOUT) - The bitter strike would last over a year. With every week, the violence escalated. Six people would lose their lives. For the Queen, it must have seemed like Thatcher's Britain was tearing itself apart. - For her to see the scenes of confrontation between the police and pickets, to see families ` no Christmas present for the children, no hot food on the table ` scratching out a living in conditions of shocking poverty and deprivation, for her this is heart-breaking. These are her subjects. This is her nation that she has sworn to protect. Any consensus is just ripped apart. (PEOPLE SHOUT) - It wasn't just domestic issues that potentially divided the Queen and Thatcher. (GUNSHOT) Throughout the 1980s, the pressure increased to impose sanctions on South Africa because of its policy of apartheid. The Commonwealth leaders were united ` all except one, Margaret Thatcher. Acutely aware of the sensitivity of the subject, Thatcher wrote a telling note to her private secretary. - We should be very careful about commenting on South Africa in the presence of the queen. - South Africa becomes this huge running issue because the Queen is the one person in the world who really cares about the Commonwealth. - There was a deeply racist and a tolerance of apartheid attitudes in a section in the Conservative Party. I think she had absorbed quite a lot of that. - In July 1986, any private divisions between the Queen and Thatcher were thrown into the very public spotlight as the Sunday Times splashed an article which claimed the Queen was at odds with Number 10. It reported that the Queen was disturbed by the lack of compassion of Thatcherite policies and that the Thatcher government was jeopardising the consensus that underpinned British domestic politics. Never before had there been such a public rift between monarch and first minister. - It was undoubtedly profoundly shocking for Thatcher and for Number 10 to see that in print, to see the Queen apparently siding with her critics, something that had never happened to any previous prime minister. I think she was hurt by it. No question she was hurt by it. - It was damaging to the Prime Minister because the Prime Minister wants to seem as though there's unity behind her policy. It's also damaging to the Queen; she was no longer above politics. - But was it true? - Most of us Tory MPs, Thatcherites, we were very cross. Who was it?! Near the Queen, who was breaking confidences? - Editor Andrew Neil revealed he had an unimpeachable source, the Queen's own press secretary, Michael Shea. - There was one main source. It was Mr Shea. And there were several sources that helped us to corroborate the story, but the most important one by far was him. - I think it's pretty clear that Shea was not authorised to make these remarks, but I don't think there's any doubt at all that the account that was given in the Sunday Times was a correct appreciation of the Queen's attitude towards Thatcher and Thatcherism. - While Michael Shea was quietly retired, Thatcher never spoke publicly about the incident, and a recently released letter reveals she intended to maintain a dignified silence over the matter. - She never mentioned it in her own memoirs, and she would be above taking offence at something that was in a newspaper. - By the end of the 1980s, with forces in her own party plotting her downfall, was Thatcher and the Queen's relationship also broken beyond repair? By 1989, Margaret Thatcher was Britain's longest serving prime minister. Three election victories had given her over a decade in power. The world famous Iron Lady was enjoying the notoriety. - She was fated and dramatically so, and this fed her ego, and it was ready to be fed. You could see her actually growing. The hair grew. - We have become a grandmother. - Where on Earth 'we' came from... (GASPS) We are not a grandmother. We are not the Queen. It became a little embarrassing, and then it became alarming. - You see this with Churchill. You see it with Macmillan. You see it with Wilson. You see it with Thatcher. You later see it with Blair. Often a politician runs out of road. - Ladies and gentlemen, we're leaving Downing Street for the last time. - The Queen, of course, still had lots and lots of road ahead of her. - In the years that followed, the Queen awarded Thatcher the Order of the Garter, attended her 70th and 80th birthday parties and even her funeral in 2013, something she had only done once before ` for Winston Churchill. So had the old scores been finally settled? - Her view of Thatcher would always have been the view of many other people, namely that this woman was... something of a termagant. She was vociferous. She was intolerant. She was somebody who... divided the country instead of uniting it. - I don't think it softened her view of what Thatcher's prime ministership had done to the country. She certainly wouldn't have forgotten any of the extreme behaviour that she witnessed, so I think it was a very good and kind and compassionate thing, a way for her to say farewell without saying good riddance. - Everybody of a certain age remembers that day. A real sense of... 'This is a new era. 'Things can only get better.' - May the 2nd 1997 was a watershed in British politics. 18 years of Conservative rule was cast aside by the shiny face of New Labour. - Tony Blair is the boyish young prince who is going to lead Britain into a new golden age ` modern, more democratic, more diverse. - Blair is the first prime minister who's the age of her children and also quite inexperienced, had only been an MP for a decade or so, had never ever been a minister or held office in any government but obviously had a huge mandate. So I should think the Queen would have been quite interested and fascinated to meet him, but she's the adult in the room. - In their first audience, a world-weary queen left Blair in no doubt who was boss, saying, he wrote later, 'You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair. Winston was my first.' - I don't think you'd say that unless there was this hint of scepticism. You know, she has seen this before. She's seen the new broom come in. She saw Thatcher come in in '79, Wilson in '64. She's seen the high hopes and the hubris. Give it a couple of years, mate, and you won't be so shiny anymore. - Here he was, somebody who sweated insincerity from every pore. And this was an attempt, I think, to... Well, to pull rank on him. - Since I came to the throne in 1952, 10 prime ministers have come to see me each week at Buckingham Palace. The first, Winston Churchill, had charged with the cavalry at Omdurman. You, Prime Minister, were born in the year of my coronation. - Of all of her premiers, I would say he's the one that's most necessary to her that she has a good relationship with him while at the same time being one of the ones that she doesn't really like. - New Labour had swept to power on the promise of transformation and rebirth, an ideology that viewed the monarchy as antiquated and out of touch. - This institution was fusty. It was deeply old-fashioned. It didn't fit into the whole New Labour philosophy of life, which was to... invigorate and renew Britain. - Blair had plans for a monarchical makeover centred around the most famous woman on Earth. - Diana is the most bewitching, most glamorous person in the world, far outshining the Queen, and so you have Blair conspiring to present Diana as the modern face of the monarchy, as something 'cool Britannia' that she represents and they want to appropriate for themselves. - But just months into Blair's tenure, the unimaginable happened. - Diana, the Princess of Wales, has died. (SOLEMN MUSIC) - What followed has become one of the defining moments of the 20th century. - It was described as 'mob grief'. It was an extraordinary thing. Not seen really since Queen Victoria's death. It was as momentous as that. - As Britain descended into a week-long period of mass hysteria, the Queen and royal family were caught firmly on the backfoot while Tony Blair seized the zeitgeist. - She was the People's Princess. And that's how she will stay, how she will remain. - He understood the new sentimentalism, that this wasn't a sort of stiff upper lip 1950s country anymore and that the sort of ritual display of empathy, which he was very good at and the Queen wasn't very good at, he could see what an important part of our political culture that was becoming. - Diana's death is often seen as Blair's crowning glory, the moment where he saved the monarchy from themselves, finally persuading the Queen to return to London and pay a very public and powerful tribute to Diana. - What I say to you now, as your queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart. - Although forever bonded by a moment of history, it's difficult to know how grateful the Queen was of her prime minister's intervention. - I know how deeply you felt those events yourself, for Prince Charles and the boys. - Nobody likes to be in somebody else's debt, and I think the Queen probably did feel simultaneously he had saved her but at the same time, she didn't like the fact that he'd done it, and she didn't like him for it. - I know too, contrary to some of the hurtful things that were said at the time, how moved you were by the outpouring of grief. - She had the last laugh. She's not the person who can't show their face in the street because people will call her a war criminal. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) - (CHUCKLES) No good deed goes unpunished, of course, and whether she rather resented Blair's intrusion into her family affairs only history will relate. - Tony Blair resigned in 2007 after a decade in power. As the Queen's first prime minister of the 21st century, four more followed. But now, being the undisputed veteran in the relationship, for the Queen, the audiences must have had an ever-increasing sense of deja vu. - As each new prime minister arrives and they say, 'We're gonna sort the welfare state. 'We're gonna sort the NHS,' and then nothing really gets changed, she must have seen this happen time and time again. - But if the Queen thought 70 years in the job had earned her an easy life, then think again. Scottish independence and Brexit threaten the very existence of the United Kingdom. - She's got turbulence and change and a succession of prime ministers who've been involved in enormous constitutional, political crises. But, as always, she's played the straight bat, hasn't she? - Even when the current incumbent of Number 10 was accused of misleading her over the prorogation of parliament,... - The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament was unlawful. - ...publicly, at least, she stayed silent. - I'm sure she was deeply distressed and probably infuriated by the fact that she has to dance to the political tune. - Boris Johnson, have you embarrassed the Queen? - Are you going to resign? - She's 94, but she still takes her duty, I think, very seriously. And it would not please her. (TENSE MUSIC) - From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction. You must stay at home. - In 2020, as Britain was gripped by a global pandemic, it fell to the Queen to deliver a perfectly pitched speech evoking a wartime spirit of togetherness. - We should take comfort that, while we may have more still to endure, better days will return. - She gave this Vera Lynn-esque address to the nation, watched by tens of millions of people, in which, universally, she was thought to have caught the mood in a way that no politician ever could. - We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again. - That's what she does. That's the value of it. That's what no one else could really do. Captions by Able. Captions were made with support from NZ On Air.