A royal expert has warned that there is no going back for The Royal Family now the infamous banned 1969 documentary has been published on the internet.
Historian Marlene Koenig of Royal Musings says that the film is entirely inoffensive and innocuous, and she sees no reason for the National Archives not to remaster the footage and legitimately rerelease the programme.
Mrs Koenig said: “I don’t see anything wrong with this documentary. It’s very much like the more recent documentaries following The Queen for a year with one major difference.
“The other two documentaries broadcast for Her Majesty’s Ruby and Diamond Jubilees were focused on her role as the sovereign and her duties – with little focus on her family or family life.
“I think the purpose of the 1969 documentary was to show that The Queen and Prince Philip were parents with children, teenagers and young ones. I find the scene with Prince Edward learning how to read to be particularly charming.
“Perhaps the sweetest of all scenes was when The Queen was in a shop near Balmoral with Prince Edward and she lets him buy lollies. The most surprising of this is she opens her handbag and takes out money to pay for the lollipops. The Queen normally doesn’t carry money.”
BBC (Fair Use)
Mrs Koenig says that even if the 90 minute film is removed from YouTube, the footage is now out there, and there is no going back to the secretive BBC vault.
She said: “It will be interesting to see if the powers that be will force YouTube to take the documentary down. Legally they have the right because the crown owns the copyright.
“The barn door can’t be closed, however. It might behove the crown to digitise and clean up the documentary, blow off the dust, and show it on TV.
“More than 50 years has passed and I think it’s time that the program got another airing. It’s certainly better than The Crown on Netflix.
“There’s nothing scandalous about it. It’s sweet, historic and for many people on both sides of the Atlantic a pleasant glimpse, perhaps a more realistic look at the royal family in 1969.”
The documentary entitled ‘Royal Family’ was deemed to be so intrusive that The Queen banned it from public consumption shortly after it was broadcast.
However, this week, the footage miraculously reappeared half a century after the first broadcast.
The full 90 minute documentary was uploaded to a YouTube account, which at the time of publication is still in existence.
For over 50 years, the documentary has been locked away at Her Majesty’s command in the BBC vaults. It is now likely to have been downloaded many times over, meaning the footage is no longer one of television’s great secrets.
It is unknown how the footage made its way online, with Buckingham Palace and the BBC refusing to release the tapes despite numerous requests.
In the footage, which Royal Central has viewed in full, extraordinary access is granted to The Queen and her family as they undertake their duties.
At the time of broadcast, the film was considered to be a sensational documentary. At the time it was considered intrusive, but now it probably wouldn’t be regarded so, by today’s standards. For example, at the time of broadcast, people were horrified to find out that The Queen stored food in Tupperware containers (something that would be regarded now as a totally legitimate attempt to make the best use of food, horrified staunch conservatives at the time).
But this documentary, which was watched by a third of the UK’s population at the time of its broadcast, had many traditionalists and courtiers up in arms.
The premise of the documentary was for the public to get an idea of what life in the modern royal court of 1969 was like. Cameras followed the Royal Family around for a whole year. 1969 happened to be the year that Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales also, this wasn’t a coincidence; cameras were also following the Royal Family’s preparations for the investiture.
Camera crews (in a joint project between the BBC and ITV) accompanied The Queen on tours of Chile and Brazil, and Prince Charles to Malta and Cambridge. They also shot more than 40 hours of film in Sandringham, Balmoral, Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Holyrood, as well as on the Royal Yacht, the Royal Train and aircraft of the Queens Flight.
The Queen was filmed performing official duties such as receiving the new American ambassador and at her regular meeting with Prime Minister Harold Wilson. She was also shown holidaying at Sandringham and enjoying Christmas with her family. Producer Richard Cawston said “until we made this film, I really believe that none of them had ever spoken into a microphone anything which had not been carefully prepared.”
Princess Anne notoriously hated the documentary, later saying, “I never liked the idea of Royal Family, I thought it was a rotten idea. The attention which had been brought upon one ever since one was a child… you just didn’t need any more.”
