BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons is to write to Buckingham Palace to offer an apology for the recent incident in which a mis-edited excerpt from a documentary featuring the Queen was shown to journalists.

The high-profile incident occurred after BBC One controller Peter Fincham showed a clip from an upcoming RDF documentary that inferred the monarch stalked out of a photography session after becoming irritated. It turned out that the order of events had been edited together in a misleading fashion and that no such incident had taken place.

"The Chairman is today writing to Buckingham Palace to apologise on behalf of the BBC Trust for the events surrounding the promotion of the documentary about HM The Queen," the Trust said in a statement this afternoon.

An independent review has been commissioned to examine how the gaffe was allowed to happen.