Mark Lawson.

FUTURE historians may be bemused that the last words Queen Elizabeth II’s subjects heard her speak on TV were ‘‘Thank you very much’’ to platinum jubilee greetings from Paddington Bear.

Her valedictory TV speaking role, though, feels fitting for the first UK head of state of the mass television age, who learned to turn the medium to purposes both solemn and jocular.

When Elizabeth II acceded to the throne in 1952, it was illegal for a living monarch to be depicted on the stage or dramatised by the BBC. A monarch’s only media presence, outside news reels, was the annual Christmas Day radio address, a convention started by Elizabeth’s grandfather, King George V, in 1932.

In contrast, his granddaughter gave about 70 solo TV addresses, most annual Christmas TV broadcasts, but others at significant moments of British history. When, on April 5 2020, the 93-year-old Elizabeth II spoke on television at the start of the first coronavirus lockdown, 24 million viewers tuned in. The speech — calm and wise — confirmed her mastery of the medium and ability to use it to provide leadership and reassurance.

It was one of a very small number of nonChristmas addresses by the Queen, others marking big-number jubilees, the start of the first Gulf War in 1991, and the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 and the Queen Mother in 2002.

While many aspects of royalty remained largely untouched during her reign, her visibility was transformative.

Her 1953 coronation, the first to be televised, led to a rush purchase of TV sets in the UK. Other broadcasting landmarks soon accumulated. In 1957, the Queen gave the first televised Christmas address. Twelve years later, she was the star of a TV documentary,

In 1975,

Jeannette Charles, a near-lookalike of the Queen, played her in Eric Idle’s comedy sketch show

From 1984, a rubber puppet caricature of her was among targets on .In 1991, Prunella Scales gave the first dramatic TV portrayal of a living monarch in

Alan Bennett’s adaptation of his 1988 stage play.

The Queen was later played by Helen Mirren, depicting her being forced by public and political pressure to speak to the country live on the eve of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in (2006), and by Freya Wilson as a young princess, wishing her stammering father, George VI, luck with his wartime address in the Oscarwinning (2010). From 2016, she has been portrayed by Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton in the hit Netflix series

This rise to screen prominence began in 1953 when, against the strong advice of Winston Churchill, Elizabeth agreed to admit the cameras to her coronation. The-then prime minister supported the view that the monarchy would be destroyed if ‘‘we let in daylight upon magic’’.

But, although always aware of the mystique of monarchy, the Queen has been credited with the view that ‘‘I have to be seen to be believed’’. It is striking that the ceremony in Westminster Abbey was not only televised but also cinematically filmed in colour and even recorded in 3-D.

Another step, four years later, was broadcasting the Christmas address in both available media. Her Majesty’s accent in 1957 was much more clipped than it later became. Yet the 31-year-old seemed to have the knack of looking through the camera lens and making what seemed a personal connection as she told viewers: ‘‘It is inevitable that I should seem a remote figure to most of you — a successor to the kings and queens of history, someone whose face may be familiar from newspapers and films,

Abut who never really touches your personal lives.’’

She progressively reduced this remoteness and her 10-minute Christmas addresses, pre-recorded at one of the royal residences, became a fixed part of the British TV Christmas.

As technology developed, the Christmas broadcasts became more elaborate, with behind-the-scenes sequences filmed during the year. Between 1986 and 1991 they were directed, at royal request, by Sir David Attenborough. The call to the most respected figure in the history of British television reflected a sense that the annual words needed to be open to a fresh approach.

In 1969 there was no televised address, but the reason for its absence was another landmark in royal broadcasting. The BBC director Richard Cawston had, throughout the previous year, been granted ‘‘unprecedented access’’. Cawston’s 100-minute film, featured scenes of domesticity, including the Queen buying the young Prince Edward an icecream in a shop and the Duke of Edinburgh cooking sausages on a barbecue.

Although was popular with the Queen’s subjects, the subjects of the film seem to have been dissatisfied. The Duke of Edinburgh came to think the level of exposure was used by the media to justify later, less controlled intrusions.

It was 23 years before the experiment was repeated. The BBC’s

(1992), produced by Edward Mirzoeff, was broadcast at the start of the year. Mirzoeff, a distinguished filmmaker, soon found that making royal documentaries was antithetical to journalism: access is so limited that the documentarian’s usual tools — the surprising angle, the followup question — are disallowed.

After those two outings, it seems a reasonable bet that the Queen would have stayed off television — apart from her annual December slot — if not for what happened in Paris on August 31, 1997. The collapse of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales exposed the explosive possibilities of TV as a weapon. The Queen, almost unique among famous faces in never having given a formal interview, had watched her son admitting adultery to Jonathan Dimbleby on ITV in 1994. The next year, her daughter-in-law retaliated in a BBC interview that demonstrated Diana’s instinctive understanding of how to use the medium by laying down a few landmine lines such as ‘‘There were three of us in that marriage’’ and ‘‘the queen of people’s hearts’’.

The relationship between Charles and Diana had been played out on television, and it would end there in 1997: all schedules were suspended when the news came through of her death in a car crash.

Goaded by headlines demanding ‘‘Show us that you care, Ma’am’’, the Queen made a live broadcast, under pressures that would have disturbed any veteran TV presenter, on the night before Diana’s funeral.

To all but the most fanatical Dianarites, her grace seemed impressive at the time, and was viewed as even more so after the address became the focus of a heroic scene in the movie

The perceived post-Diana damage to the institution was addressed by two more TV documentaries —

(2005) and

(2007) — which emphasised the diplomatic, financial and morale-raising value of the royal clan.

When the Queen submitted to the fifth TV documentary of her reign — marking the diamond jubilee in 2013 — the commission was given to ITV. In another skilled film-maker, Michael Waldman, struggled as much as his predecessors had done with a subject who can never be directed or questioned. Most notable was that the tone was as awed and supportive as in 44 years earlier.

By this time, TV again needed the Queen more than she needed it, and the 60th anniversary of her coronation was widely covered.. 2013 was also the start of the depiction most likely to shape the popular historical view of this monarch. At the Gielgud theatre in London, Helen Mirren played Elizabeth II, from 25 to 85, in

Written by Peter Morgan, the theatre piece turned out to be Morgan’s rehearsal for

the drama, produced for Netflix, which first screened in 2016. Each season was set in a different decade. Foy as the young heiress and then queen was generally felt to have captured her youthful beauty and occasional playfulness. Many judged Colman, in the middle-aged sequences, to have shown too much emotion, missing the Queen’s tight reserve. Historically, too,

has been problematic because of Morgan’s willingness to make things up or solidify gossip.

Although traditional in most respects, Elizabeth II understood, as her successors will also have to, that regal media visibility is

not just for Christmas. —