Paul Englishby - Royal Night Out (2015)

About the composer

Award winning composer Paul Englishby is prolific and versatile, producing critically acclaimed scores for Film, Theatre, TV, Dance and the Concert Hall. He is best known for his Emmy Award winning jazz inflected music to David Hare's Page Eight, his beautiful orchestral score to the Oscar Nominated An Education, screenplay by Nick Hornby and directed by Lone Sherfig, and the thrillingly tense music for the BBC's Luther starring Idris Elba, as well as his many scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company with whom Paul is an Associate Artist.

About the film

On May 8th 1945, all of London celebrated that the war was finally over. It was VE Day (Victory in Europe Day), and at Buckingham Palace, two princesses were eager to be part of the national celebrations going on outside the palace walls. The two were then Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) and her little sister, Princess Margaret. After talking their parents, King George and Queen Elizabeth, into letting them go out incognito for the night, they went out into the streets of London and had a blast celebrating the end of the war. Elizabeth said about the event in her diary that it had been “great fun”, but that she and her sister were also terrified that someone would recognise them. Their cousin, Margaret Rhodes, described it as “Cinderella in reverse”, as this sort of freedom was unheard of in the lives of the royal princesses. This year on May 15th, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of VE Day, a new movie is released in cinemas in the UK. The film called ‘A Royal Night Out’ is based on the story of the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, who leave their royal lives at the palace behind for one night to join the nation in historic celebration.