the times | Friday May 27 2022 5
News
After 35 years chauffeuring royals as
part of the Queen’s Flight, the BAe
plane was to be retired. Now, seven
months later, it has a new lease of life.
The aircraft, ZE701, is the central ex-
hibit in the Platinum Jubilee celebra-
tions at the Imperial War Museum in
Duxford, Cambridgeshire, telling the
story of aviation during the Queen’s
70-year reign.
The exhibition, Ready for Take-off,
opens today, and next month visitors
will be allowed to wander around the
luxurious jet, which used to carry 19
passengers and six crew.
Andrew will attend jubilee
thanksgiving at cathedral
Valentine LowFasten one’s seatbelt: royal jet is back
Both the Duke of Edinburgh and
Prince Charles learnt how to fly the
plane, which was introduced to the
royal fleet in 1986, although it didn’t al-
ways go well. In 1994, Charles caused
damage worth £1 million when he over-shot the runway at Islay in the He-
brides. He gave up flying after that.
The plane was donated to the Dux-
ford Aviation Society. Peter Archer, the
chairman, said: “We’re going to get it as
like the Queen had it as we can.
“The woodwork on the tables with
the royal crest is really wonderful.”
Senior royals on the plane had their
own cabin with bigger, blue-uphol-
stered seats. The Queen had a dressing
room, and a bottle of her favourite per-
fume was always on board.
Luxuries stripped out, all that was left
on the plane when it was donated were
loo rolls. “I don’t think they were the
Queen’s,” Archer said.Jack Blackburn History Correspondent
The Duke of York is expected to join the
Queen at the service of thanksgiving at
St Paul’s Cathedral to mark her Plati-
num Jubilee.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are
also expected to attend the service, the
first time they will have attended a royal
event together since March 2020.
The service next Friday, the second
day of the four-day jubilee bank holiday
weekend, will be the largest gathering
of the royal family since Harry andMeghan’s wedding at Windsor Castle in- Neither the Sussexes nor Prince
Andrew will appear on the Bucking-
ham Palace balcony after Trooping the
Colour next Thursday, as the Queen
has decided that only working mem-
bers of the royal family should attend.
The Queen hopes to attend the ser-
vice, although her presence will not be
confirmed until later. Along with the
Derby, it is said to be one of the jubilee
events she is most keen to attend. She
has cancelled several engagements
recently because of mobility problems.
A small girl plays with her father in the
garden of their London home. A few
years later, she is having a picnic in
Scotland with her family and the man
who will one day be her husband.
Another shot shows her smiling with
happiness as she looks at her engage-
ment ring. That smiling, fresh-faced
woman, barely out of her teens, is 96
years old now and about to celebrate 70
years on the throne. But as the Queen
says in a new documentary showing
rare and unseen footage of her and her
family, she too was young once.
The BBC documentary, which fea-
tures some of the most intimate
moments of the Queen’s life, was com-
piled from more than 400 reels of film
from the royal family’s home movies,
from her as a baby to behind-the-
scenes footage of her coronation.
In an introduction to the docu-
mentary, recorded on May 19, the
Queen says: “I expect just about every
family has a collection of photographs
or films that were once regularly looked
at... but which, over time, are replaced
by newer images and more recent
memories. You always hope that future
generations will find them interesting,
and perhaps be surprised that you too
were young once.”
The documentary, Elizabeth: The Un-
seen Queen, which uses the Queen’s
own words, spliced from 60 speeches
and some of her letters, shows a side of
the monarch that few outside her im-
mediate circle ever get to see: laughing
and horsing around for the camera.
One sequence shows a young Princess
Elizabeth performing a jokey dance
with her sister, Princess Margaret;
another shows her laughing as she
sashays through the flower garden of a
lodge in South Africa.
The earliest footage shows Elizabeth
at just a few months old being pushed in
her pram by the Queen Mother in 1926.
Another sequence, in the garden of the
family home at 145 Piccadilly, shows the
future King George VI earnestly pedal-
ling along on Elizabeth’s tricycle, his
pipe firmly clenched between his teeth.
As the Queen says: “I think there’s a
difference to watching a home movie
when you know who it is on the other
side of the lens, holding the camera. It
adds to the sense of intimacy.”
Claire Popplewell, creative director
of BBC Studios Productions, said: “I
think the film demonstrates the love
and fondness Her Majesty’s father,
King George VI, had for his daughters,
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mar-
garet. There’s a scene of him playing
football and doing rough-and-tumble
with the two princesses as very young
children that is particularly touching.”
The documentary will be broadcast
on BBC1 on Sunday.
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts film review,
Times2, page 8
Young Queen plays for the cameras
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/BBCThe rare footage featured in the BBC documentary shows
Elizabeth during a tour of South Africa with her parents
in 1947, left; with her father, King George VI, and sister,
Margaret, top; dancing with Margaret in Windsor; alongside
her grandmother, Queen Mary; and at a picnic in 1946
with Margaret and her future husband, Prince PhilipValentine Low
The BAe146 flies over London