A scene from “Unfinished Business”

Queen Elizabeth II: Churchill would have had the character to do it face to face. Come to think of it, so would Anthony Eden. And Harold Macmillan. Each of them would have had the courage to express their anger to me directly. None of them would ever have resorted to going behind my back like that. I have it on authority you tipped off journalists that I was letting the side down by not going to Aberfan.

Harold Wilson: Never.

Queen Elizabeth II: It wasn't you?

Harold Wilson: No, ma'am. But perhaps one or two of my colleagues, concerned at the anger being directed at the government...

Queen Elizabeth II: Broke ranks? Took matters into their own hands?

Harold Wilson: It's possible.

Queen Elizabeth II: Perhaps they're right. The people of Aberfan deserved a prompt response. They didn't get one. They deserved a display of compassion, of empathy from their Queen.

Harold Wilson: And they got it yesterday.

Queen Elizabeth II: They got nothing. I dabbed a bone-dry eye, and by some miracle, no one noticed. After the Blitz, when we visited hospitals, I saw what my parents, the King and Queen, saw. They wept. I couldn't.

Harold Wilson: Well, you, you were a child. What do you expect?

Queen Elizabeth II: Not just as a child. When my grandmother, Queen Mary, whom I loved very much, when she died, nothing.

Harold Wilson: Well, she had been ill a long time. It had been expected.

Queen Elizabeth II: When I had my first child, a moment of such significance for every mother ... I have known for some time there is something wrong with me.

Harold Wilson: Not wrong.

Queen Elizabeth II: Deficient, then. How else would you describe it when something is missing?

Harold Wilson: These meetings are confidential, yes? I have never done a day's manual work in my life. Not one. I am an academic, a privileged Oxford don, not a worker. I don't like beer. I prefer brandy. I prefer wild salmon to tinned salmon. Chateaubriand to steak and kidney pie. And I don't like pipe smoking. I far prefer cigars. But cigars are a symbol of capitalist privilege. So, I smoke a pipe, on the campaign trail and on television. Makes me more approachable. Likable. We can't be everything to everyone and still be true to ourselves. We do what we have to do as leaders. That's our job. Our job is to calm more crises than we create. That's our job, and you do it very well indeed. And in a way, your absence of emotion is a blessing. No one needs hysteria from a head of state. And the truth is, we barely need humanity.