Never before seen home movies of the Queen are to be broadcast to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee.
The rare clips - filmed by members of the Royal Family during her 70-year reign - will feature in a new BBC documentary.
Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen will feature private moments from Her Majesty’s life, including her engagement at Balmoral and behind-the-scenes footage of her first foreign Royal tour.
The 75-min programme, to be broadcast on BBC One on May 29, features footage usually held under lock and key in the vaults of the British Film Institute.
Commissioning editor Simon Youngs said: “We are honoured that The Queen has entrusted the BBC with such unprecedented access to her personal film collection.
“This documentary is an extraordinary glimpse into a deeply personal side of the Royal Family that is rarely seen, and it’s wonderful to be able to share it with the nation as we mark her Platinum Jubilee.”
Since the 1920s, the Royal Family have always filmed each other, but for decades hundreds of these reels of home-made recordings have been held privately.
The footage shows Her Majesty’s life as never before through home movies shot by her, her parents, Prince Philip, and others.
It reveals The Queen’s journey from earliest childhood, being pushed in a pram as a baby by her mother, to her Coronation at the age of just 27 in 1953.
The documentary captures the first extended visit of Prince Philip to Balmoral in 1946 while the couple’s engagement was still not public – a beaming Princess Elizabeth showing the camera her engagement ring.
It shows also shows Princess Elizabeth as a young mother, with The King and Queen as fond grandparents to Prince Charles and Princess Anne.
Other rare moments include her grandfather George V - known to The Queen as ‘Grandpa England’ - sailing with The Queen Mother off the Isle of Wight in 1931.
Three never-before-seen images of a young Princess Elizabeth taken from the documentary were released to accompany the announcement.
Claire Popplewell, creative director for BBC Studios Productions added: “Being able to draw upon the self-recorded history of a young Princess Elizabeth and her wider family - and allowing The Queen to tell us her own story - is the very heart of this film.”
