Welcome to Coffee House shots for spectators, daily politics, podcast,

except today there is no politics.

Parliament's been suspended as it will be for the next week while the nation mourns the Queen.

So instead we're going to play a discussion we had earlier from Charles Moore,

our former editor, James Versailles, the political editor, and Freddie Gray about the Queen and her legacy.

Charles, it's been 70 years since British monarch died.

I appreciate it's before your time, 1952, but perhaps using your historical knowledge,

you could give us a sense of what a different country Britain was and the different position

the monarchy was in when Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the throne.

I think it's a bit misrepresented what happened then.

People now think of it as incredibly old-fashioned in which in a way it was.

But in another way it wasn't because what it was was the recovery of confidence and ceremony

after the horrors of the Second World War.

And it was of course a very young monarch.

So people were very excited in, it was also the first television of a big public event

on television in British history.

So it seemed very new though its ritual was very ancient and the fact that a very young woman

had become Queen and in fact become Queen while having a holiday in Kenya was also part of

this is a new thing, hard to think of that now.

It now seems almost prehistoric when you watch the film.

But it wasn't like that at the time.

Yes, the televisual aspect of her reign is very important, isn't it?

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