THE CROWN: FACT VERSUS FICTION
DID THESE MOMENTOUS EVENTS REALLY HAPPEN?
QDID MARGARET OVERDOSE AFTER HER LOVER RODDY LLEWELLYN DISAPPEARED? A
YES According to the Daily Mail, she was so distraught after Roddy disappeared for three weeks that Margaret did take an overdose. The paper quotes a friend of the princess: “This was confirmed to me by one of her closest confidants: ‘Yes, she did take an overdose, although how much it was done to create a drama, I shall never know. Remember, she was a great actress’,” adding it took the princess a long time to regain consciousness afterwards.
Q DID THE ROYAL FAMILY SEND CHARLES ON AN OVERSEAS NAVY POSTING IN A BID TO BREAK UP HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CAMILLA?
A YES “Mountbatten started to worry that his honorary grandson was getting too serious with his ‘mistress material’, and, according to author Sarah Bradford, he arranged a distant naval posting to help cool things down. Towards the end of 1972, it was announced that the prince would be joining HMS Minerva on a six to eight-month commission in the West Indies,” writes Robert Lacey, historical consultant for The Crown. It’s reported that he asked Camilla to wait eight months for his return, but his absence allowed her to reconnect with her former beau, Andrew Parker Bowles.
Q DID PRINCE PHILIP AVOID HIS MOTHER WHEN SHE WAS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE? A
YES Princess Alice moved into Buckingham Palace in her later years due to her declining health, but mother and son had quite a strained relationship due to the amount of time they had spent apart from each other. However, Princess Alice had been present at both his wedding to Elizabeth in 1947, and the Queen’s subsequent coronation in 1953, which would suggest they were on relatively good terms. Shortly before her death, Alice is said to have written to her son: “Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.”
Q WAS THE QUEEN HAVING A PARTY WHEN SHE LEARNT OF WINSTON CHURCHILL’S DEATH? A UNCLEAR The Queen is depicted hosting
a birthday party for ‘Henry’ upon receiving the call that Churchill has passed away. In the scene, Princess Margaret is giving the character a toilet brush, but it was in fact her lady-in-waiting Lady Jean Wills to whom she gave the cleaning tool (at Christmas), leaving us to think this was a creative mash-up of many other events.
Q DID THE QUEEN BURY THE 1969 ROYAL DOCUMENTARY AFTER IT AIRED?
A SORT OF Forty million people watched the documentary Royal Family, and the public’s perception of the monarchy was never the same again. At the time, David Attenborough, who then worked for the BBC, is alleged to have told the film’s director, Richard Cawston, that it was “killing the monarchy”. Robert Lacey explains in The Story of the Royals that, “[The royal family] realised that if they did something like that too often, they would cheapen themselves, letting the magic seep out.” The documentary was withdrawn from public view by Buckingham Palace at the end of 1969, and it, and all the raw footage captured, have remained in the Royal Archives at Windsor ever since.