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Palace Could Sue Over Queen 'Nazi Salute' Film

Buckingham Palace is considering legal action over the leak of a private film that shows the Queen doing a Nazi salute as a young child.

A Palace inquiry is under way into how the footage made it into the public eye.

The focus - according to a Royal source - is on exactly where the grainy 17-second film came from, who leaked it to the Sun newspaper, and why.

Sky News understands the Palace is likely to be looking at whether the process leading to its publication could have involved criminal activity.

It is also thought to be looking at whether copyright was breached.

Apparently shot in 1933, it shows the monarch aged six or seven with the Queen Mother, her uncle Prince Edward, and sister Princess Margaret.

Buckingham Palace said the family film - recorded six years before the start of the war - had been "exploited".

The film shows the Queen Mother first doing the salute, the young Queen then copies her.

A Palace spokesman said: "It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from Her Majesty's personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner."

Prince Edward - who faced accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser - also performs the gesture in the film.

The two children then carry on playing in the garden.

"Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time," said a Palace source.

"This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels.

"No one at that time had any sense how it would evolve.

"To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest.

"The Queen is around six years of age at the time and entirely innocent of attaching any meaning to these gestures.

"The Queen and her family's service and dedication to the welfare of this nation during the war, and the 63 years the Queen has spent building relations between nations and peoples speaks for itself."

The Sun - which ran the story under the headline "Their Royal Heilnesses" - acknowledged in its editorial column that the images "do not reflect badly on our Queen, her late sister or mother in any way".

However, it said the film gives "a fascinating insight in the warped prejudices of Edward VIII and his friends in that bleak, paranoid, tumultuous decade".

The paper's managing editor Stig Abell told Sky News: "A piece of historically interesting and valid footage has come our way and it's in the public and national interest in my view quite simply to publish it."

He defended the paper's choice of headline and said: "I think the nature of the coverage as a whole places this in the correct cultural context."

The Queen's former press secretary Dickie Arbiter told Sky News: "I would like to think it was released inadvertently as a bit of harmless 1933 footage without anybody really knowing what was on it.

"I think what they (Buckingham Palace) would probably like to know is where it came from and who gave it to The Sun."

Edward became King in January 1936 but gave up the throne after just 11 months to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.

The couple's meeting with Hitler in Germany in October 1937 - still two years before the start of the war - stoked accusations that he was sympathetic to the Nazi cause.