The Queen is celebrating a big birthday, you may have noticed. To mark the occasion she’s sharing some old home cine films – shot by herself (not a bad camerama’am), her husband and her parents. We watch as various members of her family – including herself and Charles (who also narrates … well, burbles), Anne, William and Harry, plus the odd cousin, dukes and whatnot – watch the footage. Kind of like a Royal Gogglebox, actually called Elizabeth at 90 – A Family Tribute (BBC1). From which we learn …
Windsor children are just like any other children.
Well, in some ways. They have always enjoyed playing, with cars, balls, rolling and sliding down things. It’s just that they have better equipment. Their toy cars are beautiful replica sit-in ones, motorised, too, and they have long drives to drive them along. The slope down which they’ve rolled for generations (“What is it with this family and rolling?” asks Harry, who knows a thing or two about grass and rolling himself) is the perfectly manicured lawn of their very own Scottish holiday castle. The slide – my favourite, as well as all of theirs by the looks of things – takes them from one deck to a lower one on the royal yacht Britannia, whose afterdeck doubles up as a cricket pitch. Sorry, took and doubled up; those beastly politicians took her – Britannia – away.
None of them would cut it on actual Gogglebox.
William and Harry attempt some bro-ly banter, to show that they’re just like anyone else. “It’s hard to tell if you’re a boy or a girl,” jokes Wills, because baby Harry is wearing a dress. (Dudes, have you not heard, it doesn’t matter any more, you can choose what you want to be, later).
Charles snorts and says wonderful a lot; to be fair, he does do quite a good joke, about some First Nation Canadians paddling fast in a canoe because they want to get away from the some very un-wonderful mosquitoes. Anne, another nasal snorter, is mainly sour. The Queen herself offers little; she looks most interested in and moved by the dogs, of which there are hundreds, and the decommissioning of Britannia.
It’s a shame Philip wasn’t involved, I imagined he was kept well away, for safety. Anyway, I don’t think Steph and Dom, Sandy and Sandra, etc, need to worry about new competition, even if it would be quite a coup.
Lady Sarah Chatto is the nicest.
You know, nee Armstrong Jones, Princess Margaret’s daughter. She’s warmer, more gracious, more normal than the others, you could almost imagine her in the real world – a supermarket even, It would have to be Waitrose, obviously, but still. And she does seem genuinely moved by seeing old footage of her mother and aunt as little girls, playing (at being horses, naturally) and singing. Her mischievous mother also looks like good value too, relatively.
Other people’s home movies are both boring and fascinating.
As anyone who’s had a Christmas session at the in-laws’ knows. This one is no different, probably more so in fact, at times more boring, at others more fascinating. Boring because there’s a lot of official stuff here (to be fair to the royal camera operators, this is not home cine, but news footage interwoven, for context, with the family movies), such as George VI’s state funeral, tours of the colonies, and the taking of a formal family photograph. While the Duke of Kent points out himself and other dukes, William and Harry admire the dresses and the jewels, Charles says wonderful a lot, the Queen says very little and Anne scowls.
And fascinating because, whatever you think of them, this particular family does have a place in the history of this country. In some ways, as her eldest son says, the birthday girl’s life has defined our age.
Plus, it is a rare glimpse behind high walls, at the private life of a private family that really is nothing like anyone else’s. And yes, some of it is touching, such as the young Elizabeth, as yet unburdened by her destiny, singing happily with her younger sister. Well, I was touched, even if the elder of the singers appears unmoved.
Home movies are also brilliant.
It made me regret my own family didn’t film me and my siblings playing in the garden of our castle. And resolve to take more video (so much easier now) of my heirs – with which to bore, and maybe also move a bit, somewhere down the line. So thank you for that, your majesty. And happy birthday.
