On Tour with the Queen Episode Rating Graph

Kwame Kwei-Armah visits Australia and New Zealand as he retraces the Queen's 1953 Commonwealth Tour. Australia was the biggest stage of all: the largest, richest, most demanding nation of the Queen's tour. By the end of her gruelling two-month transcontinental charm offensive, she'd have been seen by an estimated 75% of the population. Australia today is known for its growing republican sentiment, but Australians have yet to make the break: did the Queen have a longer-lasting effect back then than we realise? In New Zealand, Kwame discovers how Elizabeth negotiated a critical path between the Maori people and the Government, re-shaping the nation's destiny, and how she also began to discover her own diplomatic strength.

Kwame Kwei-Armah visits Fiji, Sri Lanka and Uganda as he continues to retrace the Queen's 1953 Commonwealth Tour. Fiji has now dispensed with the Queen as head of state and, after numerous military coups, was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2006. Kwame meets General Rabuka, the military coup leader who became the first man to oust a British monarch since Oliver Cromwell. Sri Lanka was granted independence six years before the Queen's tour, but kept her as Head of State. It was a link Britain was keen to maintain, but her visit was contentious. Kwame discovers that many arrests were made before the Queen's arrival to prevent protests. In 1953 a demand for independence was sweeping through East Africa. Of the 21 African countries under British rule at the time, Uganda was the only one included on the Queen's tour. Kwame discovers how anger about British rule in Uganda resulted in the cancellation of the Queen's visit to the capital, Kampala.