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Today in Focus

The life and death of Queen Elizabeth II

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.65.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Queen has died aged 96 at her Scottish home of Balmoral. Polly Toynbee looks back on her life. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:03.0

Today, we look back on the life of the Queen.

0:16.0

What would you say is a story of Queen Elizabeth II?

0:28.0

Elizabeth II is the story of nearly a century, a story of Britain's decline, losing an empire, not finding another role, uncertain world, in which she is the only figure of constability

0:45.0

through all of the changes, and for that reason hugely praised and admired.

0:55.0

Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-raining monarch in British history, has died.

1:01.0

Prince Charles is now King.

1:06.0

Coming to the throne at the age of 25, the Queen stared the monarchy through decades of turbulent change, appointing Prime Ministers from Winston Churchill to a few days ago, his truss, and the Guardian's Polly Toimby has witnessed it all.

1:26.0

As the nation mourns and leaders worldwide pay their respects, we consider an extraordinary life.

1:34.0

From the Guardian, I'm Notinekbar, to Dayne Focus, with the Queen's passing, what's next for the monarchy, and for Britain?

1:52.0

What's your earliest memory of Queen Elizabeth II? I was six.

2:06.0

I was taken to the mouth to stand a bunch of the crowds, transqueased to the front, to watch the coronation, and then somebody suddenly invited us inside to some offices upstairs, and there was a television there.

2:22.0

The two-foot north are follows, Pamir-Dusty, into the annex. She will wake there a while, but we will go on ahead of Pamir-Dusty, into the abbey.

2:39.0

I've never seen a television before, like a lot of people in Britain, so seeing the television was almost exciting, as seeing the procession go by in the flesh.

2:50.0

You were a little girl, and as you said, you're in the middle of this incredible occasion. Do you remember what you were thinking at the time or what you thought of the Queen?

2:58.0

Little girls think about Queen's and Princesses, rather too much, I'm afraid, and she seemed dazzling.

3:06.0

And so, as her mother and her sister and the other members of the royal family watched her pass, her majesty now moves in her possession down the length of this abbey.

3:22.0

Moves in her beautiful, shimmering gown, and she wears, as we see her now, the Imperial State Crown.

3:33.0

The spectre, kind of a crown, and a gold coach, are absolutely trying to fix for young children who are imbued with the idea of sovereigns, of monarchy, of royalty, of power.

3:48.0

But it was the gold coach I always wanted, a little miniature, one of those gold coaches.

3:54.0

So, to that stirring music, majesty, splendor, and beauty, passed from our sight, as the Queen goes in her lovely robe out of the nave of the abbey.

4:09.0

History has been written and sung here today.

...

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