This weekend the BBC is broadcasting a journalistic rarity: A full, sit-down conversation with Queen Elizabeth II.

The project, a retrospective on her coronation ceremony in 1953, was 22 years in the making, and a media coup given the Queen’s historic reluctance to engage directly with the press in any way.

Her Majesty has granted behind-the-scenes access to royal life before. She also gives occasional televised speeches. But “The Coronation,” which airs on BBC1 at 8 p.m. on Sunday, will be one of her first televised exchanges with a journalist.

It also shows her interacting with various crowns involved in the ceremony, and giving a vivid description of the experience of being installed as ruler of huge swathes of the world (when she took the throne large parts of Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean were still British colonies).