Prince Philip

Picture the scene, it's London in the late autumn of 1947. The city is black from the smoke of coal fires, many of the buildings still show the scars of war time bombing. Shabbily dressed citizens walk to work (clothes are still rationed and so is petrol). But in the very heart of this ancient city something astonishing is happening. Nearly a million people are lining the streets from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, waving and cheering with a very un-British exuberance as a horse drawn glass coach glides by. And in the coach, waving back at the joyous crowds, are Princess Elizabeth, heir to the throne, who's just become a bride, and her handsome sailor husband, Prince Philip, now Duke of Edinburgh. Their wedding day, would prove to be much more than just a spectacular and glorious royal pageant. It marked a turning point in Britain's social history. Winston Churchill called it a 'flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel'. After years of hardship and decline we had caught a glimpse of a sunlit future as symbolised by the beautiful Princess, now a bride whom we sensed, even then, would one day usher in a new Elizabethan Age. The 1947 Royal Wedding hearlded the beginning of a new era of hope and optimism in austerity Britain. It was the people's wedding.

King George V was a shy man who became monarch by accident. He lacked charisma, but with his generous heart and loyal wife, Queen Mary, he eventually won over his people. Prince Edward, his son and heir, was handsome, charming, and a natural communicator who loved modernity (he was everything his father wasn't). Prince Albert (Bertie), George and Mary's second son, was even more shy and modest than his father. He reluctantly became king when Edward neglected his royal duty for the love of a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. The abdication would nearly bring the House of Windsor to its knees.

The final episode opens with the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II and covers her reign (the longest since Victoria’s and still going strong). Her glamorous older sister, Margaret, finally decides to settle down and the Queen in her mid 30’s has a second family, adding two more Princes to Charles and Anne. All four of her children would bring trouble to the Queen’s door when they were adults. Failed royal marriages were a tabloid dream. Worse was to come. Diana’s death would leave two young princes without a mother and a country in shock. But the new century would see the incredible recovery of public goodwill, from The Queen's Golden Jubilee to her 80th birthday, to the happy marriage of Charles and Camilla and to the emergence of the new generation Princes William and Harry. Now as The Queen approaches her Diamond Jubilee she seems indestructible.