Patience required (22 years) to film the Crown jewels
It took 22 years to get the Queen to talk on camera for a documentary about to hit New Zealand screens.
In the rare sit-down, Queen Elizabeth II is reunited with the crown that made her queen — which she hasn’t touched since her coronation in 1953 — as she shares her memories of the ceremony with royal commentator Alastair Bruce.
The conversation and filming of the Crown jewels happened 22 years after Bruce and executive director Anthony Geffen first requested to film the regalia.
“Perhaps it just took me a great deal of clever words and cautious and patient time to get to the point where they were content for the [Crown jewels] to be brought out . . . and filmed . . . and then for Buckingham Palace to be comfortable enough to recommend to the Queen that she talk with me,” Bruce said.
The Royal Collection, which looks after the Crown jewels for the
I was a bit nervous waiting for her to arrive . . . And then she came around the corner all glittery. Alastair Bruce
Queen, turned down the first request to film the objects for reasons including that it had never been done before.
The Queen finally gave permission to film the objects last year — done over three nights in the Tower of London under enormous security.
She also consented to a “conversation” on film, which Bruce never expected.
The hour-long documentary, entitled The Coronation, explores the story behind the regalia used for the ceremony including St Edward’s Crown, which was destroyed after the English Civil War and remade for Charles II’s coronation in 1661.
It is the first time the Queen has shared her memories of the day the weight of both the 2.2kg crown — with 444 precious stones — and a nation recovering from war, were placed on her shoulders.
Bruce told the Weekend Herald it was “very special” being with the Queen when she touched the St Edward’s Crown for the first time since her coronation.
He recalled being excited but nervous to do the sit-down.
“I was a bit nervous waiting for her to arrive . . . and I could hear her chatting as the door opened quite a long way down a corridor I couldn’t see. And then she came around the corner all glittery,” he said. “She couldn’t have been nicer.” The sole rule was Bruce could not ask direct questions.
“So I just made statements and she responded to them. Once she made a response then I was at liberty to ask maybe a little bit more about it. The Queen does not give interviews and in order to meet that, this was the way that it was agreed we would do it.”
Bruce taught the Queen, 91, a thing or two, including how stones from the Crown jewels were hidden in a biscuit tin at Windsor Castle during World War II, to keep them safe from the Nazis.
The Queen responded, “Gosh, I do hope he told someone where he had hidden them because he could have died”, Bruce said.
“I think that that will be my abiding memory, is her sense of humour.”
The Queen makes some entertaining revelations including about the danger of a heavy crown.
The documentary includes accounts from those at the ceremony, including the maid of honour who nearly fainted in Westminster Abbey and the
12-year-old choirboy left to sing solo when his overwhelmed peers lost their voices.
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