The Diamond Queen

All countries come with a history attached

and ours centres on one of the oldest and grandest monarchies of all.

And the opinion polls show with remarkable consistency

that the British like this idea.

And in our lifetimes, the reason for this liking

has been Queen Elizabeth II.

As a young girl, she didn't expect to become Queen.

Until the age of 10, she could have hoped for a quiet country life.

But a crisis in the British monarchy made her father King

and 60 years ago, on February the 6th when he suddenly died, she became Queen.

Now in her Diamond Jubilee year, she reigns over a different country

and indeed 135 million people around the world.

You know, she was 25. You think about how young that is for somebody

to take on this incredible responsibility.

But what does that mean? What does she actually do?

It has been a life of turning up

and reading official papers by our most familiar enigma.

The Queen has provided a huge stability

and a huge wealth of experience for those that want to tap into it.

Oh, did you?

You've had such a year, Ma'am.

This series follows the Queen's working life over a year and a half.

We'll hear from some of those closest to her.

As all mothers, she's put up with a lot, and we're still on speaking terms

so I think that's no mean achievement.

We explore her own history and look at just how much,

behind the pageantry, she has changed the British monarchy.

"...some of the Knights Companions elect."

She's a proper professional at her trade.

You've got some young upstart like me trying to do it his way,

it's always important every now and again

to look at how it's really done.

For 60 years she's been looking back at the rest of us,

understated, sometimes hard to read.

And over 60 years, many of us have become so used to her,

we've stopped asking quite what she does or why she does it.

We've taken her rather for granted.

And after 60 years, perhaps it's time we stopped.

Ripped By mstoll

It's spring 2010. Hullo, Queen!

She's making a regional visit to Wales.

This is what she does, a symbol of the country on legs.

She's been on parade for six decades, seen it all,

but watching as closely as ever, remembering names, comparing.

Her role includes jobs done in other countries by presidents,

but also native traditions presidents know nothing about.

She never stops, rarely pauses.

Every day, almost every hour, is carefully planned.

We talk about veteran politicians out on the campaign trail.

This is the real endless perpetual campaign, year in, year out.

And in terms of pressing the flesh, meeting people,

this is the real veteran.

She's here one week after her 84th birthday

but retirement, never mind abdication,

seem to be words never mentioned in her presence.

This is a typically busy schedule on a two-day visit to North Wales.

She's getting about. The Queen has a private motto.

"I have to be seen to be believed."

And this, of course, is a family trade.

She's professional in her ability to know how to move around,

to who to speak to and how to also engage with people,

you know, within a few split seconds of meeting them.

And the way that she carries herself forward, smiles constantly,

able to go into a room and bring the room to life,

these are the things that at her age, she shouldn't be doing.

Yet she's carrying on and doing them.

And not only in this country but all around the world.

To some extent, that's in the genes, I think.

There is an understanding

- of getting out and about. - Yes.

You actually have to go and meet people to find out what's really going on

and to give people a sense of your understanding of what is happening.

Whenever Granny walks into a room, everyone stands up, stops

and just kind of watches her,

because obviously it's huge when she walks into a room.

And I find that incredible. I kind of go...

Now of course, she's not ordinary.

She's very rich, privileged, protected and cherished.

Different in so many ways, big and small.

She doesn't need a passport or a driving licence,

though her husband does.

But more important, she's only the fourth

in what is effectively a new royal dynasty,

stamped with her personal style

but built by her grandfather in years of mayhem and war.

The First World War toppled

the monarchies of Russia, Germany and Austria.

George V faced criticism that his family,

Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, were somehow pro-German,

and he knew there were anti-royal murmurings at home.

When the writer HG Wells spoke of an uninspiring and alien court,

King George retorted, "I may be uninspiring

"but I'm damned if I'm an alien."

In 1917, he changed all the German-sounding family names

and, not knowing what his own surname might really be,

he chose Windsor for its thoroughly British ring.

He insisted the Royals criss-cross the country,

visiting hospitals, towns and barracks.

And a lot about today's monarchy comes from him.

For the Queen, this was not something that she had to read about in books.

The Queen remembers very well the man she played with

when she was a small girl. She called him Grandpa England.

And George V really was the man who made the Windsors.

Her father was George V's second son, Prince Albert of York,

who'd married a cheerful young Scottish aristocrat,

Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

She turned him down twice

but it turned out to be a very happy marriage,

so that Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary

spent her early years in a private world of quiet security.

But when she was born, it was a time of turbulence.

April the 21 st, 1926,

and there is a really uneasy air in the country.

The General Strike is just about to start.

A lot of people predict a revolution.

And a princess is born, third in line to the throne,

here in Bruton Street, a fairly posh part of central London,

but in a relatively normal house owned by her aristocratic grandparents.

Later, the German bombs would remove it.

And it's now possibly one of the dullest buildings in central London.

At eight months, her parents left her

to take a six-month sea voyage to Australia and New Zealand.

Her mother was very upset to leave the baby,

but the Empire called.

Duty first, family feelings second.

Her parents were following the rule book set out by her grandfather George V,

"get out there, be seen, work hard".

His wife, Queen Mary, once retorted to an exhausted princess

who complained she was tired of traipsing round hospitals,

"We are the Royal Family and we love hospitals. "

If you're looking for a motto for this Queen's 60-year reign,

it's not a bad place to start.

She loathes being late,

still criss-crosses Britain and hardly ever cancels.

On the second stage of her North Wales visit,

she's about to do it all over again.

Well, here in Llandudno, she's not due for another hour.

There hasn't been much advance publicity

and already there is a pretty substantial crowd hoping to see her.

Now, I ask you,

how many politicians could draw a crowd in advance,

not only hoping to see them but hoping to be pleased to see them?

Celebrities court the camera. They open up.

The Queen is not a celebrity,

cameras court her and she doesn't.

Is this instinctive or something she's learned?

Well, it's shrewd. Celebrities flare and then they burn out.

It's pretty remarkable that in her eighties,

she still generates the same warmth and excitement as ever.

The Queen has developed this into an absolute art form,

how to get round the maximum number of people,

make as many people as possible

feel that they've made some kind of contact,

some small human connection with her.

The thing is when you're in the presence of the Queen,

you are keyed up and you know, you...

You want to be your best. You want the occasion to be

something you can talk to everybody about afterwards.

That, of course, is the magic of what she is wherever she goes.

The real human exchange that happens there

is not a facsimile and it's not drummed up by the press.

It's something about the best of us.

If we've come to take this for granted, it's worth remembering

that she would never have become Queen

if her uncle hadn't been a failed, unsuccessful monarch.

On a cold, sunny, January day,

the body of His late Majesty King George V,

starts on its last journey from Sandringham.

Behind the coffin walks His Majesty the King,

their Royal Highnesses the Duke of York,

the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent and Lord Harewood.

She was nine years old when her grandfather King George V died.

As he was lying in state, part of the Imperial State Crown

fell from the top of his coffin.

His heir, Uncle David, as she called him, the Prince of Wales,

saw this and wondered if it was a bad omen.

It was.

1936 would become the year of the three Kings.

Already loved and respected as Prince,

he set out to do his duty as King in the industrial areas of Britain.

But behind the scenes, the constitutional crisis grew,

a crisis which concerned not only

politicians at Westminster but the Church of England,

and which was to prevent his coronation.

Edward VIII reigned for just 325 days,

surrendering the throne to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson.

He was the bad King, the Windsor who got it wrong.

Vain and self-indulgent, he demonstrated that charisma,

while useful in politics or entertainment,

is a dangerous confection for a constitutional monarch.

These are the unreleased stamps, designed by him,

looking like an emperor, to mark the coronation that never was.

He was bored by duty,

left official papers lying around with whisky stains on them.

Could the Queen's moral seriousness have been an instinctive reaction

to her uncle's short and disastrous reign?

It must have been a terribly cruel betrayal for her

because he was such an enjoyable, relaxed member of the family

in this very stiff sort of environment.

And then suddenly she discovers,