Probe after leak of Queen ‘nazi’ film

The British Film Institute (BFI) has confirmed it has been digitising some of the Royal Family’s home movies as investigations continue into the leaking of the Queen’s Nazi salute footage.

Buckingham Palace, the Royal Collection Trust and the BFI are trying to establish how the 17-second black and white film, showing the Queen as a child performing a Nazi salute with her family, came into the hands of The Sun newspaper.

In October 2012, her Diamond Jubilee year, the Queen visited BFI Southbank in London on the day the organisation announced it would be working with the BBC to digitise a collection of royal footage, which the BFI National Archive has looked after since the late 1960s.

It includes a mixture of films presented to the royal household including newsreels and private family movies dating to the 1920s.

It is not known where the footage showing the Nazi salute originated, but a BFI spokeswoman said the organisation was continuing to “investigate”.

The controversial film showed the Queen, aged six or seven, joining her mother and the future Edward VIII in raising an arm in salute as she plays alongside her younger sisterMargaret.