The Queen as diplomat: William Hague reflects
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the course of her life the Queen visited every inhabited continent and met hundreds of world leaders, helping the UK forge relations across the globe. We hear from former Foreign Secretary Lord William Hague who joined her on a number of state visits and saw first hand the effect she had as a royal diplomat, on everyone from Prime Ministers and Presidents to the bowing goats of Oman.
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Guest: Lord William Hague, former Foreign Secretary.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Olivia Case and Edward Drummond.
Clips: CTV, BBC, DW News, ABC Australia, Sky News, Sultanate of Oman TV, On Demand News, RTE, CBS, Euronews, Wild Film India, NBC, ABC News, AP, The Sun.
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Transcript
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| 0:30.4 | The Queen, during her 70-year reign, traveled to almost every corner of the inhabited world, |
| 0:45.8 | making nearly 100 state visits to countries from Nepal to Ethiopia, |
| 0:51.7 | and charming world leaders across history. |
| 0:55.2 | The Queen's most important meeting came in the joint happiness garden, |
| 1:00.5 | with China's top leader, Deng Xiaoping. |
| 1:03.2 | Deng said that as a young man in Paris, he twice climbed the Eiffel Tower in hopes of seeing London, |
| 1:08.4 | but it was too cloudy. The Queen thought the distance too far for weather to matter. |
| 1:13.6 | I think there would be a rather difficult, it's quite a long way. |
| 1:20.6 | At her coronation in 1953, she was crowned Queen of not just the United Kingdom, |
| 1:27.2 | but six other countries. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, |
| 1:34.3 | Bugistan and Salon, modern-day Sri Lanka. |
| 1:38.8 | Over the next seven decades, the UK joined and left the European Union, |
| 1:45.4 | went to wars in places like Malaya, the Falklands, the Gulf, the Balkans, Afghanistan, |
| 1:52.0 | and Iraq. The Cold War, loomed large, receded, and then returned. |
... |
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