Death of King George VI | Being The Queen

[Music] And we had a day out there to adjust and rest and do things. Prince Philip went; I went to sleep in a little room that was off to one side. The Queen was at a desk writing letters.

The phone rang. My colleague said, "Mike, there’s a ghastly rumor going around that the King has died." They used it amongst all the press people there, and then they were saying that they'd heard. So I said, "Well, Martin, that's frightening, but I cannot do a thing on a rumor like that. I mean, I just won't do anything."

He said, "No, I'm not suggesting you should." Darn! Went the phone. I saw a radio on the shelf above me, and there was a door open to where the Queen was sitting. So I shut the door and switched on the radio and hunted about the BBC, and then I could hear the bell of, um, Big Ben.

"What's up? We need cars!" So my hair stood up a little bit more. "This is London. It tears with the greatest sorrow that we make the following announcement: at 10:45 today, February the 6th, 1952, that the King passed peacefully away in his sleep earlier this morning." And, uh, that was that.

So they were brought into where Prince Philip was sleeping and told him. His first reaction was one of almost a huge wave to get him, and he just stood there silently in thought, the implications of the fact that she's becoming the Queen.

[Music] And then he straightened himself up, and he went into the Queen, and she was, you know, weeping desperately for the loss of her father. They walked up and down together, very close, and then she straightened up.

[Music] Fully, uh, conscious of the fact that she was Queen and that she must tend to that affair immediately.