Handmade: By Royal Appointment -2. John Lobb Shoes BBC Documentary 2016

Sunday Images / 10 Painted Interiors ( 2 )

Sundance 2018: Keira Knightley and the new wave of progressive costume drama / Colette review – Keira Knightley is on top form in exhilarating literary biopic

 Daisy Ridley in Ophelia, Rupert Everett in The Happy Prince and Keira Knightley in Colette.

Sundance 2018: Keira Knightley and the new wave of progressive costume drama

With Knightley starring as Colette – alongside Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde biopic and Daisy Ridley as Hamlet’s Ophelia – the period drama has never looked so interesting

Andrew Pulver

 @Andrew_Pulver

Sat 20 Jan 2018 06.00 GMT Last modified on Sat 20 Jan 2018 06.03 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/20/sundance-2018-keira-knightley-daisy-ridley-colette-ophelia-oscar-wilde

The Sundance film festival has sold itself for 40 years as the champion of cutting-edge, radical independent cinema; not a natural habitat for the stiffly costumed and perfectly spoken habits of the literary-inflected costume drama. But this year a choice selection of such films have found their way to Sundance, at a time when the period film has gained considerable currency as an illuminator of contemporary social issues. The Happy Prince, Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde biopic about the writer’s final years will be joined at the festival by Ophelia, a reworking of the Hamlet story starring Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley, and Colette, a biopic of the transgressive French literary icon that stars costume-pic veteran Keira Knightley.

All three can claim to be part of a new wave of socially conscious period films: The Happy Prince examines Wilde’s years in exile after his release from jail in 1897, as he struggled with impoverishment and social disgrace, before dying in 1900. Everett, who directs as well as stars as Wilde, said the writer was his “patron saint” and that Wilde “is a kind of Christ figure in a way for every LGBT person now on their journey”. An adaptation of the young-adult novel by American writer Lisa Klein, Ophelia puts the celebrated “mad” Shakespeare character centre stage, in a reimagining that will clearly strike a chord with the #MeToo generation. And Colette, which emerges from the same production stable as the groundbreaking lesbian romance Carol, focusses on the French author and sexual boundary-pusher, best known for the boarding school Claudine series as well as Gigi, the 1944 novel about a convention-defying young woman who is trained to be a “courtesan”.

Stephen Woolley, the British producer of such films as The Crying Game and Made in Dagenham, is part of the team behind Colette (as well as Carol), and says that “period films can often be more persuasive on contemporary issues – political, gender, sociological”. He adds: “Despite its turn of the last century setting, Colette feels as up to the minute as any movie made last year. Its themes, including female empowerment, could be snatched from today’s headlines.” Its star, Keira Knightley, has already made waves criticising contemporary cinema’s obsession with rape, saying she found historical characters “inspiring” and that she avoids films set in the modern day as “the female characters nearly always get raped”.

The rise of progressive-minded historical dramas – as opposed to the sunlit Laura Ashley-style period films of the 1980s and 90s (think Room with a View to Shakespeare in Love), and the likes of TV’s Downton Abbey – goes back to films such as Andrea Arnold’s radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which cast mixed-race actor James Howson as Heathcliff, and the Amma Asante-directed Belle, the 18th-century-set biopic of Dido Belle, who went from childhood among slaves on a West Indian plantation to frilled frocks in Kenwood House.

The best known recent example of the style is the low-budget Lady Macbeth, which again tackled race issues in a more apparently-conventional period: here, in an adaptation of the Russian story Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Florence Pugh’s genteel Katherine, trapped in a loveless marriage, embarks on a Lady Chatterley style love affair with an estate worker, played by another mixed-race actor, Cosmo Jarvis. Its director, William Oldroyd, told the Guardian “That area of England was far more diverse than we have been led to believe. A lot of people make assumptions, and those assumptions are usually based on films they’ve seen already.”

Verdicts have not yet come in for these films, which all receive their world premieres in Sundance. But they represent a laudable next step in breaking down the fustiness and irrelevance of the traditional costume drama, and that is surely something to be welcomed.

Colette screens on 20 January, The Happy Prince on 21 January, and Ophelia on 22 January at the Sundance film festival.

Colette review – Keira Knightley is on top form in exhilarating literary biopic

4 / 5 stars    

The life of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette makes for fascinating drama in a nuanced and inspiring film with a luminous central performance

Jordan Hoffman

@jhoffman

Mon 22 Jan 2018 01.21 GMT Last modified on Mon 22 Jan 2018 01.35 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/22/colette-review-keira-knightley-is-on-top-form-in-exhilarating-literary-biopic

No, not another biopic about a writer! Ugh, Keira Knightley’s in a corset again! Get all of that out of your system now because I’m here to tell you that Wash Westmoreland’s Colette is exhilarating, funny, inspiring and (remember: corsets!) gorgeous, too.

The first third of this story is pretty traditional. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Knightley) is a country girl waiting to get whisked away into marriage by the worldly literary “entrepreneur” known simply as Willy (Dominic West). When the new bride is presented at the salons, Parisian gossips are stunned. The notorious libertine Willy is to settle down?

While his admiration of his new bride is sincere, his desires are not entirely stunted. But Colette (as she is not yet known) doesn’t exactly sit idly when she learns of his infidelity. She demands honesty in their marriage and, for a time, she gets it. She also saves the family’s finances when her book that Willy initially rejected for publication is reworked, branded “a Willy novel” and becomes the talk of all Paris.

Much of what makes this film so fascinating is the not-quite-villain-but-certainly-not-hero role Willy plays. It’s a very juicy role for Dominic West, and undoubtedly the best film performance he’s ever given. (I’ve never in my life seen a man look dashing even while flatulating.) The obvious read is that Willy exploited Colette in ways bordering on cruelty. (He even locks her in a room and shouts “write!” when her initial Claudine novel demands a follow-up.) Westmoreland’s film doesn’t exactly excuse him, but does offer context about his contributions to Colette’s initial success as well as a realistic portrayal of how women writers were perceived at the time.

That doesn’t make it any easier for Colette as her husband steals all her glory. Luckily, they each have activities that keep them busy – for a stretch, the activity is sleeping with the same woman. Willy encourages Colette to link up with a bored Louisiana millionaire, but he doesn’t tell her that he’s visiting her apartment on alternating days.

This leads to a kind of understanding, or at least a delay for the inevitable reckoning. Willy’s indulgences lead to a depletion of funds, but what ultimately bankrupts him is producing a play featuring Colette and her new lover (the transgender pioneer “Missy”, the Marquise de Belbeuf). This failure forces Willy to sell the rights to the extremely popular Claudine character, and kickstarts Colette’s career as a vaudevillian.

There’s no shortage of domestic drama (and Knightley and West do fine work with the sharp screenplay Westmoreland co-wrote with Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz) but the delay in building to a final knockout row is something of a revelation. We so often look to the lives of artists for meaning, but when dramatized they regularly end up being just another bit of soap opera. Colette’s life is deserving of nuance and care, and that’s what she gets in this film.

She also gets Keira Knightley is top form: luminous, clever, sexy and sympathetic. The scenes of physical intimacy are tasteful and few, but have quite an impact. Much of what drove Colette was a need to be recognized. Knightley will not suffer the same fate when this film is viewed by wider audiences.

Colette is showing at the Sundance film festival

The trilby by Lock & Co. Hatters / VIDEO: HATS AND HAT ETIQUETTE

 A trilby is a narrow-brimmed type of hat. The trilby was once viewed as the rich man's favored hat; it is sometimes called the "brown trilby" in Britain and was frequently seen at the horse races. The London hat company Lock and Co. describes the trilby as having a "shorter brim which is angled down at the front and slightly turned up at the back" versus the fedora's "wider brim which is more level". The trilby also has a slightly shorter crown than a typical fedora design.

The hat's name derives from the stage adaptation of George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. A hat of this style was worn in the first London production of the play, and promptly came to be called "a Trilby hat".

Traditionally it was made from rabbit hair felt, but now is usually made from other materials, such as tweed, straw, wool and wool/nylon blends. The hat reached its zenith of common popularity in the 1960s; the lower head clearance in American automobiles made it impractical to wear a hat with a tall crown while driving. It faded from popularity in the 1970s when any type of men's headwear went out of fashion, and men's fashion instead began focusing on highly maintained hairstyles.

The hat saw a resurgence in popularity in the early 1980s, when it was marketed to both men and women in an attempt to capitalise on a retro fashion trend.

Lock & Co. Hatters (formally James Lock and Company Limited) is the world's oldest hat shop, the world's 34th oldest family-owned business and is a Royal warrant holder. Its shop is located at 6 St James's Street, London and is a Grade II* listed building.

The company was founded in 1676 by Robert Davis. His son Charles continued the business and took James Lock (1731–1806) on as an apprentice in 1747. James later married Charles Davis's only child, Mary. When Davis died in 1759, James Lock inherited the company from his former master, and the Lock family, James's descendants, still own and run the company today. The shop has been in its current location since 1765.

The company is responsible for the origination of the bowler hat. In 1849, Edward Coke, nephew of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester and the younger brother of Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester, requested a hat to solve the problem of gamekeepers' headgear. Traditional top hats were too fragile and too tall (often getting knocked off by low branches) for the job. The company commissioned London hat-makers William and Thomas Bowler to solve the problem. Anecdotally, when Coke returned for his new hat, he dropped it on the floor and stamped on it twice to test its strength before paying 12 shillings and leaving satisfied.

Admiral Lord Nelson wore a bicorne of the brand’s into the Battle of Trafalgar complete with eye-shade. The eternally rakish Beau Brummell procured its hats as part of his sartorial arsenal. Winston Churchill adopted their Cambridge and Homburg hats as sartorial signatures and Anthony Eden was never without his trusty Lock Homburg.

Located in the eaves of the building is a workroom from which seasonal women's couture collections are conjured up. The resident milliners also oversee the customisation of men's hats including band and bow changes and brim trimming.

At the back of the shop is a hard-hat fitting room which is adorned with framed and signed head shapes, taken from Lock's unique conformateur, of famous customers past and present, from Admiral Lord Nelson, Oscar Wilde and Douglas Fairbanks Jr (who lived in a flat above the shop)[3] to Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Chan, Cecil Beaton, Michael Palin, Alec Guinness, Jeremy Irons, Donald Sinden, Marc Sinden, Jackie Onassis, Eric Clapton, Duke of Windsor, Gary Oldman, Pierce Brosnan, Jon Voight, Victor Borge, Peter O'Toole and David Beckham who is often photographed wearing their 'Baker-Boy' style caps. Also in the room is a lit-cabinet displaying the original order (ledger) for Admiral Lord Nelson's hat, the very first bowler hat, the order for the velvet and ermine fur to re-line Elizabeth II's Coronation Crown and a photograph of Winston Churchill in a Lock silk top hat on his wedding day.

Lock & Co. is a Royal warrant holder as Hatter to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Charles, Prince of Wales

Sunday Images / 10 painted interiors (1)

Lady Ottoline Morrell and Garsington Manor

Why Garsington Manor was Britain's most scandalous wartime retreat

After Ottoline and Philip Morrell moved to the Oxfordshire manor house in 1915, it became a sensational refuge for conscientious objectors

Miranda Seymour

Fri 25 Jul 2014 19.00 BST First published on Fri 25 Jul 2014 19.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/25/why-garsington-manor-britains-scandalous-retreat

Ottoline Morrell

It has been described variously as "the house of the Ottoline's", a "cesspool of slime", "the setting for a Mozart opera", "Shandygaff Hall", "a Boccaccio court", "a refuge from the storm". One thing is sure: Garsington Manor never lacked either attention or comment during the 14 crowded years it was the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell and her husband, Philip. Rumours proliferated: that Ottoline had dispatched her live-in lover, Bertrand Russell, to a house called Conscience Cottage; that Philip had fathered two illegitimate children in a single summer; that DH Lawrence, one of Garsington's most faithful visitors, had used his latest novel (Women in Love) to mock his aristocratic hostess for treating her guests "like prisoners marshalled for exercise". And had Ottoline (in fact dressed in a perfectly respectable bathing costume) really invited a young man, Duncan Grant, to dive and see that she was quite naked in the dark waters of Garsington fishpond?

The stories thickened, tangling the old Oxfordshire manor house and its hospitable owners within a web of scandal and mockery. One visitor reported that a diseased peacock (in truth, a less than fresh turkey) was imposed upon the guests at a Garsington dinner party. Another (Siegfried Sassoon) paid ungallant homage to Ottoline as an eccentric aristocrat – her height, beaky nose and titian hair would always draw attention – in a satiric account of his hostess wobbling her way down a ladder to greet him in a pair of billowing pink silk bloomers. Mark Gertler, her protege, acquainted Ottoline with the brutal truth about the chattering friends who filled her home. "I am known as a dangerous and designing woman, immoral and unclean," she wrote in January 1918. "Nobody likes me ... "

What was fantasy; what was truth? What were Garsington's inhabitants (some lingered for months, and even years, at Ottoline's expense) ever to make of a woman who talked in deep, drawling tones about the Soul, while enjoying love affairs with Augustus John, Russell, Henry Lamb – and even a handsome young stonemason who worked in her garden? How could Lawrence forgive a hostess whose poorly concealed opinion of his boisterous German wife was that Frieda should be put into a sack and drowned? How could Siegfried Sassoon not laugh when Ottoline presented a handwritten manifesto that solemnly urged him to join them and "to live the noble life: to live freely, recklessly, with clear reason released from convention?"

War, to which both of the Morrells were unanimously opposed from the start, provided Ottoline (pictured) with a cause. Garsington – the beautiful ruined manor house into which the couple moved during the summer of 1915 – provided her with a means of response to that moral issue. In January 1916, following the Military Service Act by which all males between 19 and 41 were required to defend their country, Ottoline and Philip took action. Philip, drawing on his legal training, successfully represented friends such as Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant and David Garnett at their tribunals. Ottoline offered Garsington as a farm that would provide employment for the conscientious objectors (farmwork was deemed to be of national importance), pleasantly combined with free hospitality and sympathetic companionship. In wartime England, there would be no refuge to compare with Garsington.

The Morrells worked hard to transform their home into a haven worthy of their friends. Ottoline created a formal garden as dense with colour as a Persian carpet; Philip excavated an oblong fishpond which the couple enclosed with high walls of clipped yew. Inside the house, the entrance hall was painted in grey streaked with pink, like a winter sunset, while the sitting-room's deep red walls were inspired by a recent visit to Bolsover, a ruined castle that was still owned by Ottoline's half-brother, the Duke of Portland. Bathrooms were in short supply. One visitor, David Cecil, wrote that – invited to choose between a bathroom and a statue – Ottoline would always opt for the statue. Beauty, invariably, came before practicality.

Much was expected of a hostess whose wealth – quite inaccurately – was assumed to be prodigious. Lawrence imagined Garsington as "being like the Boccaccio place where they told all the Decamerone", with Ottoline as its gracious president and provider. All he asked was for a converted cottage with a handsome workroom and adjoining bathroom, to be furnished and heated to the standard that his wife, a German baroness, would naturally require. Informed that the Morrells could not afford to gratify his request, an incredulous Lawrence was forced to settle for being a mere guest of the manor.

Lawrence, despite the cruelty of his portrait of Ottoline as Lady Hermione, fell hopelessly in love with Garsington. "My God it breaks my soul," he wrote to Cynthia Asquith from Garsington one soft November day: "this England, these shafted windows, the elm trees, the blue distance ... " Clive Bell, discontentedly settling into the cottage that the Lawrences had rejected (and bitterly resenting the demotion of a Bloomsbury intellectual to the status of a farm worker),, however, had no kind words to say. Ottoline's decor reminded him of a parrot house. Her love affairs, from the viewpoint of one of Bloomsbury's most promiscuous spouses, were pathetic and outrageous.

Strachey, one of the chief purveyors of malicious gossip about life at Garsington, had a more complex attitude. Ottoline's descriptions of the paradise that awaited him were intoxicating. "I imagine wonders," he told her on 8 June 1915: "ponds, statues, yew hedges, gold paint … you needn't be afraid of my critical eye." Arriving for the first of many lengthy stays, Strachey changed his tune. To Ottoline, he trilled that "only the tongues of angels" could convey his gratitude and joy; to friends – writing from the comfortable first-floor bedroom which was reserved solely for his personal use – he grumbled about detestable guests, abysmal food, hateful parlour games and brainless hosts. ("They're so stupid, so painfully stupid ... ")

Why, then, did he visit Garsington so frequently, and for so long, inquired a sincerely puzzled Virginia Woolf. Unable to answer, he redoubled his malice. The honest answer, as with so many of Ottoline's guests from the Bloomsbury circle, was that Strachey felt embarrassed by his indebtedness to a woman for whom he felt, deep down, a genuine affection. Alas, how his intellectual friends would laugh at him! How much easier to allow them to laugh at Morrell. Sassoon's case was different. Invalided home from the front in August 1916, and brought to Garsington by Robbie Ross, he was quick to recognise its charm. "Here I sat, in this perfect bedroom with its old mullioned windows looking across the green forecourt ... Garsington was just about the pleasantest house I had ever stayed in – so pleasant that it wouldn't be safe to think about it when I was back at the front."

Hoping to win Russell's support the following year for his own courageous stand against warfare, Sassoon appealed to Morrell. "It is tremendously fine of you," she encouraged him, before warning him what to expect: "People are sure to say all sorts of foolish things. They always do – nothing of that sort can really tarnish or dim the value and splendour of such a true act."

Morrell's own act of splendour was her heroic creation of Garsington as a haven from the war: Sassoon was there again, walking through the water meadows on 11 November 1918, when the church bells clamoured out the news of peace. She would tell Russell of her confused response: "I feel as if it came and found us all like ghosts looking out from a hill on those devastated fields ... "

The armistice brought an end to Garsington's use as a refuge for objectors. Inadequately supervised by Philip, the farm – it had always struggled to support the house – fell into debt. To live life on the grand scale without money proved, as Ottoline conceded, "damnably difficult". Garsington was sold in 1928. Ottoline seldom mentioned it again. Recalling the house in her memoirs, she described it as "a theatre, where week after week a travelling company would arrive and play their parts ... How much they felt and saw of the beauty of the setting I never knew."

Poor Ottoline. One wishes she could have read the memoirs in which her friends, long after her death in 1938, extolled the benevolent influence of Garsington: a house that combined the unearthly beauty of an opera set with an ease that seemed to belong neither to time nor space. "Soon the party drifted out to the lawn," wrote Juliette Huxley of a summer night that lived on in her memory: there was a full moon, stars in a great still sky and the dark ilex tree brooding like an ancient god. The music floated, powerful and alluring, through the open windows, its rhythm pulsating: one after the other, the guests obeyed the compulsion ... shawls became wings, smoking jackets and ties abandoned to a strange frenzy of leaps and dances by the light of the moon. The goddess of that moon was Ottoline.

• Miranda Seymour is the author of Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale and Noble Endeavours: The Shared Life of Two Countries, England and Germany.

Noble Endeavours: The life of two countries, England and Germany, in many stories

by Miranda Seymour

“In 1613 a beautiful Stuart princess married a handsome young German prince. This was a love match, but it was also an alliance that aimed to weld together Europe's two great Protestant powers.

Before Elizabeth and Frederick left London for the court in Heidelberg, they watched a performance of The Winter's Tale. In 1943, a group of British POWS gave a performance of that same play to a group of enthusiastic Nazi guards in Bavaria. When the amateur actors suggested doing a version of The Merchant of Venice that showed Shylock as the hero, the guards brought in the costumes and helped create the sets.

Nothing about the story of England and Germany, as this remarkable book demonstrates, is as simple as we might expect.

A shared faith, a shared hunger for power, a shared culture (Germany never doubted that Shakespeare belonged to them, as much as to England); a shared leadership. German monarchs ruled over England for three hundred years - and only ceased to do so through a change of name.

Miranda Seymour has written a rich and heart-breaking story that needs to be heard: the vibrant, extraordinary history - told through the lives of kings and painters, soldiers and sailors, sugar-bakers and bankers, charlatans and saints - of two countries so entwined that one man, asked for his allegiance in 1916, said he didn't know because it felt as though his parents had quarrelled.

Thirteen years of Nazi power can never be forgotten. But should thirteen years blot out four centuries of a profound, if rivalrous, friendship?

Speaking in 1984, a remarkable Jew who fought for Germany in one war and for England in the next called for an end to the years of mistrust.

Quarter of a century later, that mistrust remains as strong as ever and Hitler remains Germany's most familiar face. The stories that Miranda Seymour has recovered from a wealth of unpublished material and exceptional sources, remind us, poignantly, wittily and tragically, of all that we have chosen to forget.”

Garsington Manor, in the village of Garsington, near Oxford, England, is a Tudor building, best known as the former home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, the Bloomsbury Group socialite. The house is currently owned by the family of Leonard Ingrams and from 1989 to 2010 was the setting for an annual summer opera season, the Garsington Opera, which relocated to Wormsley Park, the home of Mark Getty near Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire, in 2011.

The manor house was built on land once owned by the son of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and at one time had the name "Chaucers". Lady Ottoline and her husband, Philip Morrell, bought the manor house in 1914, at which time it was in a state of disrepair, having been in use as a farmhouse.

They completely restored the house in the 1920s, working with the architect Philip Tilden, and creating landscaped Italian-style gardens. The parterre has 24 square beds with Irish yews at the corners; the Italian garden has a large ornamental pool enclosed by yew hedges and set about with statues; beyond, is a wild garden, with lime-tree avenues, shrubs, a stream and pond.

Garsington became a haven for the Morrells’ friends, including D. H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley, Mark Gertler, and Bertrand Russell. In 1916, they invited conscientious objectors, including Clive Bell and other "Bloomsberries", to come and work on the home farm for the duration of World War I, as civilian Work of National Importance recognised as an alternative to military service . Aldous Huxley spent some time here before he wrote Crome Yellow, a book which contains a ridiculous character obviously intended as a caricature of Lady Ottoline Morrell; she never forgave him. In Confidence a short story by Katherine Mansfield portrays the "wits of Garsington" some four years in advance of "Crome Yellow", and wittier than Huxley according to Mansfield's biographer Antony Alpers. Published in The New Age of 24 May 1917, it was not reprinted until 1984 in Alper's collection of her short stories. Five young gentlemen are having a drawing-room argument, observed by Isobel and Marigold: Aren't men extraordinary says Marigold.

The Morrells moved out in 1928. The house was then owned by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett until it was sold in 1981 to Leonard and Rosalind Ingrams and their family.

                                                         

Only Fools And Horses David Jason

BBC One Last Night / The Queen Opens Up On How Wearing The Crown Could Break Her Neck

BBC One to tell the story of the symbols of the Coronation in a special new film announced as part of the Royal Collection Season

In her own words The Queen will bring to life the enduring symbolic importance of the Coronation ceremonies for modern audiences to enjoy

Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content

Date: 03.01.2018     Last updated: 03.01.2018 at 12.47

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/the-coronation?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_press_office&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=corporate

As part of the Royal Collection Season across BBC television and radio, BBC One today announced The Coronation, an hour-long film revealing to new generations the compelling story of the Crown Jewels and the ancient ceremony for which they are used.

As part of the film, to mark the 65th anniversary of Her Majesty The Queen's Coronation, The Queen shares memories of the ceremony as well as that of her father, King George VI, in 1937. The Crown Jewels, which form part of the Royal Collection, consist of 140 items and contain 23,000 precious stones. These sacred objects form the most complete collection of royal regalia in the world.

The Royal Collection Season, a major partnership between the BBC and Royal Collection Trust, reveals the fascinating history of the Royal Collection - one of the largest and most important art collections in the world - bringing both the masterpieces and some of the lesser-known works of art, and the stories behind them, to audiences across Britain.

Exploring the role and symbolic meaning of the Crown Jewels in the centuries-old coronation ceremony, The Coronation shows these objects of astonishing beauty in new high-resolution footage. The film tells the extraordinary story of St Edward’s Crown, which was destroyed after the English Civil War and remade for the Coronation of Charles II in 1661. It has only been worn by Her Majesty once, at the moment she was crowned.

On 2 June 1953, on one of the coldest June days of the century and after 16 months of planning, The Queen set out from Buckingham Palace to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, watched by millions of people throughout the world. A ceremony dating back more than a thousand years was to mark the dawn of a new Elizabethan age.

Viewing both private and official film footage, The Queen recalls the day when the weight of both St Edward’s Crown and the hopes and expectations of a country recovering from war were on her shoulders, as the nation looked to their 27 year-old Queen to lead them into a new era.

In the film, The Queen says: “I've seen one Coronation, and been the recipient in the other, which is pretty remarkable.”

For audiences unfamiliar with the story of the Crown Jewels and the regalia, the film explains their contemporary relevance to the UK as a nation and to the enduring purpose and the work of monarchy. They are symbols of the relationship between the Sovereign and the people, and the duties and responsibilities of leadership.

The film also features eyewitness accounts of those who participated in the 1953 Coronation, including a maid of honour who nearly fainted in the Abbey, and a 12 year-old choirboy who was left to sing solo when his overwhelmed colleagues lost their voices.

Other programmes in the Season include:

Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection on BBC Four, a four-part series in which Andrew Graham-Dixon reveals some of the most spectacular works of art in the Royal Collection.

Charles I's Treasures Reunited on BBC Two, in which Brenda Emmanus explores the Royal Academy’s landmark exhibition Charles I: King And Collector, organised in partnership with Royal Collection Trust.

A concert recorded in the Grand Reception Room at Windsor Castle, presented by Lucie Skeaping and including performances on historic instruments from the Royal Collection, broadcast on The Early Music Programme on BBC Radio 3.

Stories From The Royal Collection on BBC Radio 4, in which Dr Amanda Foreman discovers the captivating stories behind works of art in the Royal Collection through documentary material from the Royal Archives.

Charlotte Moore, BBC Director of Content, says: “It is a real honour to have Her Majesty The Queen revealing her intimate knowledge of the Crown Jewels, and fond childhood memories from when her father was crowned King George VI, in this very special film for BBC One. In her own words, The Queen will bring to life the enduring symbolic importance of the Coronation ceremonies for modern audiences to enjoy.”

Coronation expert and key contributor Alastair Bruce says: “The Crown Jewels include The Regalia, which are used at a coronation, when the monarch is invested with the best known, if least understood, symbols of this kingdom. Post boxes, Police helmets, Income Tax Returns and almost every visual expression of the United Kingdom displays a Crown and Orb.

"The meaning of each of the key objects has evolved from emblems of authority that date way back before the Saxons arrived. Yet there is an enduring relevance to modern leadership wrapped into each symbol that express values of humility, duty and service, while representing total power. Discovering their meaning helps to define what the Sovereign is to the Crown and how that Crown is the property of us all, in the constitutional function of Monarchy.”

The Coronation is made by Bafta and Emmy Award-winning Atlantic Productions. It is a co-production with Smithsonian Channel and ABC Television and distributed by FremantleMedia International. In a global event, it will be broadcast across the United States and Australia by its broadcast partners.

Anthony Geffen, CEO of Atlantic Productions, says: “The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was an international and momentous event, which took 16 months of preparation and was watched by millions across the globe for the first time in history. Our project marks another first - Her Majesty The Queen's own recollections of the time. We are honoured to be able to create this lasting historical document and hugely appreciative of the collaboration with The Royal Household and our broadcast partners.”

David Royle, Executive Vice President of Programming and Production for Smithsonian Channel, says: “Americans are fascinated by the Royal Family and have great admiration for The Queen. When the Coronation was broadcast in the U.S. in 1953, it was watched by an immense audience. At Smithsonian Channel, we take great pride in bringing definitive accounts of major events to our viewers, and this remarkably intimate portrait of the Coronation is sure to bring new levels of interest in America.”

Michael Carrington, Acting Head of Television, ABC, says: “The ABC are delighted to be the broadcast partner for this very special, historical event. The crowning of Queen Elizabeth II was a defining moment in the history of television, and the modern world, and we are excited to bring the rituals and pageantry of her Coronation to life for our ABC audiences in 2018.”

Angela Neillis, Director of Non-Scripted, UK, EMEA and Asia Pacific, FremantleMedia International, says: “Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation is a landmark television event and we are thrilled to be working with Atlantic Productions to bring their unique documentary film to international buyers. Her Majesty The Queen is a much loved and respected global figure and the Royal Family continues to fascinate audiences across the world.”

The Coronation (1x60) was commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Director of Content and Tom McDonald, Head of Commissioning, Natural History and Specialist Factual. The BBC Commissioning Editor is Simon Young. The Executive Producer for Atlantic Productions is Anthony Geffen and Producer/Director is Harvey Lilley. The programme consultant is Alastair Bruce.

It took 22 years for the BBC to do the near-impossible and persuade the Queen to sit for an interview

Alexandra Ma

13 Jan 2018

https://www.businessinsider.nl/how-the-bbc-persuaded-the-queen-to-do-an-interview-2018-1/?international=true&r=US

The BBC is airing a documentary about the Queen’s coronation 65 years ago.

It features a rare on-camera, sit-down conversation with the Queen.

It took the film’s producers 22 years to get her to do it.

They won over palace gatekeepers with a track-record of thorough, well-reported documentaries, they told Business Insider.

This weekend the BBC is broadcasting a journalistic rarity: A full, sit-down conversation with Queen Elizabeth II.

The project, a retrospective on her coronation ceremony in 1953, was 22 years in the making, and a media coup given the Queen’s historic reluctance to engage directly with the press in any way.

Her Majesty has granted behind-the-scenes access to royal life before. She also gives occasional televised speeches. But “The Coronation,” which airs on BBC1 at 8 p.m. on Sunday, will be one of her first televised exchanges with a journalist.

It also shows her interacting with various crowns involved in the ceremony, and giving a vivid description of the experience of being installed as ruler of huge swathes of the world (when she took the throne large parts of Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean were still British colonies).

Queen examines the Crown

For decades an interview has been a boundary she and Buckingham Palace officials were unwilling to cross and, indeed, the BBC and presenter Alastair Bruce prefer to characterise the encounter in “The Coronation” as a conversation. He was not allowed to ask her questions, but he did at least ask one, according to the Radio Times.

Nevertheless, it is a huge novelty and only came about after a respected team of experts, commissioned by the BBC, convinced Her Majesty.

In an interview with Business Insider, producer Anthony Geffen said securing access to the Queen for himself and Bruce was a 22-year enterprise.

It eventually came off because they impressed the palace with the impressive track record of Geffen’s company, Atlantic Productions, and the personal expertise of presenter and royal expert Alastair Bruce.

The occasion is the 65th anniversary of her coronation. The discussion sees the Queen’s reflecting on what it was like to wear her coronation crown, which weighs almost 5 pounds, and her uncomfortable journey to Westminster Abbey 65 years ago.

Teaser footage released ahead of the broadcast shows the Queen discussing the artefact, which she recalled being heavy enough to break her neck.

Geffen told Business Insider: “Alastair Bruce and I started trying to get permission to do this project 22 years ago, and it’s taken a long period of time for it to happen.

“In that time, things have changed. There’s my track record as a filmmaker and Atlantic’s track record.”

Geffen’s past works include documentaries with big names like David Attenborough, Judi Dench, and a major series on the British Parliament, “Inside the Commons,” which he said particularly impressed the palace.

He continued: “We’ve been inside the House of Commons, which the palace had seen, and they were impressed by how the series managed to balance out the political systems in place there.”

“Alastair Bruce also became a recognised royal correspondent and expert on the Coronation and the royal family.”

The Coronation

This meant that Buckingham Palace felt comfortable enough to agree to the filming, although it came with certain expectations and etiquette.

Discussing the exchange on BBC Radio 4 Friday morning, Bruce termed the exchange a “conversation,” and emphasised its difference from normal media interviews, often characterised by direct questioning.

He said: “You pose a point and then the Queen sometimes responds, and often conversation follows from there. But posing direct questions was not on the cards. This was a conversation with the Queen.”

Speaking to BI, Geffen contrasted their heavyweight work with other media coverage of the royals, which “on the whole has been about what they’ve been wearing. This is very different. This is about the meaning of monarchy.”

Of the film itself, Geffen said: “You can really see the Queen in a different light. You finally hear from the one person who can tell us about that [the coronation].”

Bruce, who speaks to the Queen in the documentary, added that the making of the documentary was the first time the Queen had touched her coronation crown in 65 years.

He said: “She may have seen it, but she hasn’t touched it since. It was very moving to see her lean forward to check the weight of it.”

Recalling what it was like to wear the crown at her coronation in the film, the Queen says: “You can’t look down to read the speech… Because if you did, your neck would break.”

And on her journey on the golden carriage that took her from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey? “Horrible.”

The documentary also features eyewitness accounts of people who were part of the coronation, such as a maid of honour who almost fainted in the abbey, and a choirboy who had to sing solo when his fellow choristers lost their voices, the BBC said.

How comfortable is the queen's carriage? - The Coronation - BBC One

INTERMEZZO TWEEDLAND: Does The Crown really sound like Queen Elizabeth? | Improve Your Accent

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