'My mother the Queen is so caring'

Princess Anne has mounted a robust defence of the Queen as a mother in a frank interview about the royal family. Dismissing oft-repeated suggestions that the Queen was a cold and distant parent, the Princess Royal insists that the royals are a happy family .

"I simply don't believe there is any evidence whatsoever to suggest that she wasn't caring - it just beggars belief " she tells William Shawcross in an interview for BBC television.

In the first of a series of programmes to be screened each Wednesday for the next four weeks ? Queen And Country - the princess gives a rare insight into the workings of the royal family and the sense of duty which was expected of them even when they were very young.

She said: "We as children may have not been too demanding, in the sense that we understand what the limitations were in time and the responsibilities placed on her as monarch in the things she had to do and the travels she had to make.

"But I don't believe any of us for a second thought she didn't care for us in exactly the same way as any other mother did. I just think it extraordinary that anybody could construe that that might not be true."

The princess, who has two children of her own - Zara, 21 next month, and Peter, 24 - also dismissed suggestions that the royal family were divided, with individual members at odds with each other.

She said: "Judging by some families I think we are all on pretty good speaking terms after all this time, and that's no mean achievement for quite a lot of families. I think we all enjoy each other's company."

In the interview she talks frankly about her childhood and says she disliked the idea of a TV film made about the royal family in the 1960s.

"I never liked the idea of the royal family film. I always thought it was a rotten idea," she says.

"The attention that had been brought on one ever since one was a child, you just didn't want any more. The last thing you needed was greater access."

The Princess also disliked the 1970s introduction of royal walkabouts. "A 19-year-old suddenly being dropped in the middle of the street and being told to go and pick on someone and talk to them. Fun? No, I don't think so."

Today the Queen posed for rare pictures with her priceless stamp collection as a Golden Jubilee philatelic exhibition is opened to the public. She is pictured studying a first-day cover, bearing 10 Penny Blacks, sent on the day of issue, 6 May 1840.

A second photograph shows the Queen using her grandfather George V's magnifying glass to look at stamps produced for her Jubilee by the Crown Agents Stamp Bureau. The travelling exhibition, marking the Queen's 50-year reign, opened in Edinburgh at the weekend, in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where it will be on display until 5 May. It opens at Sandringham House, Norfolk, on Saturday, 11 May until 19 May, and at Hampton Court Palace on 25 May until 4 June.

The Royal Philatelic Collection exhibition, staged in conjunction with the Crown Agents Stamp Bureau and supported by the British Forces Post Office, includes previously unseen gems from the Queen's personal stamp collection. Stamp expert Peter Jennings said: "It is a measure of the significance of the Golden Jubilee exhibition and the importance the Queen attaches to it that she agreed to be photographed face to face with some of her stamps."