When in 1969 the late queen was persuaded, reluctantly, by her husband, Philip, and her press secretary, William Heseltine, to allow a film to be made called Royal Family, it was a constitutional decision. Elizabeth was not to retreat like other postwar European monarchs at the time into an anonymous obscurity, to stick to their bicycles. She would refresh Britain’s semi-divine concept of monarchy as embodied in an “ordinary family”. It was portrayed as “the Firm”, a term that originated with Elizabeth’s father, George VI.