The Queen, 91, has served as monarch of the British Isles for the past 65 years, and is the longest running monarch of all time.
The 91-year-old Elizabeth is now an expert with the press, as she demonstrated tonight.
The Queen attended London Fashion Week, a first for the monarch in her long reign.
Tonight Channel 5’s documentary Elizabeth: Our Queen will look at some of the Queen’s rare missteps with the British press.
One such incident includes the Queen’s response to a disaster that due criticism.
In 1966 the worst civil disaster since the war, struck the mining village of Aberfan, when a slagheap collapsed on a school, suffocating all the students and teachers inside.
It took eight days before the Queen visited the scene of the disaster.
Sir William Heseltine, who became her press secretary, says it was an important lesson that her support and sympathy was needed in times of trouble.
Sir William Heseltine said: “Aberfan affected the Queen very deeply when she went there. It was one of the few occasions she shed tears in public.
“I think she felt in hindsight that she might have gone there a little earlier.
It was a sort of lesson for us that you need to show sympathy and to be there on the spot, which I think people craved from her.”
Sir William also explains how as press secretary he hoped to make the Queen more accessible to the Queen, leading to what might have been a misjudged behind-the-scenes television programme.
Buckingham Palace invited the BBC to make the one and only observation documentary behind the scenes with the Royal Family.
The show featured scenes of the Queen discussing matters with her staff, examining her racing horses and and walking her corgis, in candid scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern day reality TV show.
The programme was a success, but many thought letting the cameras in to observe the Queen’s family life was a step too far.
‘The Royal Family’ documentary was never shown in its entirety again.
The programme also revealed one time that the Queen broke royal rules for the funeral of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
