The Royals and The Crown
What the series gets wrong Plus Can you pass the Balmoral test?
Happily we are – despite some current indications to the contrary – a free society. As such, if somebody chooses to make a popular entertainment series about our head of state and her family, so be it. Millions around the world have watched Netflix’s The Crown, the fourth series of which was launched on Sunday. To most of those millions, it hardly matters that it is just entertainment; but to those who count the Queen as their head of state, things are subtly different.
People who have carped at The Crown have been put back in their box by others, who say it is drama and doesn’t have to be accurate. A screenwriter I know told me the first two series were exemplary in the art of storytelling; and that may well be the case. But if you choose to base your drama on real events – and real events well within living memory, featuring people who are not only still alive but prominent – that entails an additional set of considerations.
When one reads surveys that show many young people believe Margaret Thatcher led this country during the Second World War, you understand why those who make The Crown feel they can create dialogue and scenarios as they wish.
Some will imagine that what they see is an accurate representation of history. It isn’t, though that will matter only to a minority who really mind when history becomes a travesty. Also, there is the question of what it has done for the image of our monarchy – something most people here purport to care about – and the reputation of our country.
The new series has been described as “compelling” because of two new characters: Lady Diana Spencer and Mrs Thatcher. From what one knows – and enough has been written about it and little denied – the kicking the Prince of Wales gets for his behaviour towards his young bride is richly deserved. The treatment of Mrs Thatcher is more disturbing. Gillian Anderson plays her as a caricature. Anyone who knew her – and I did for 25 years – will recognise the performance as an impersonation entirely lacking in insight, quite unlike that of Emma Corrin, who appears to be the Princess of Wales.
Inevitably, the drama includes the incident when Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace and entered the Queen’s bedroom. His story is, however, used to kick Mrs Thatcher, for he is portrayed as a victim of her economic policies. It was sensational enough without any of that. In the imagined lectures Mrs Thatcher gives the Queen, she appears motivated by class hatred – of the “privileged”. She was nothing of the sort.
“Creativity” is cited as a reason to take liberties; but some are just ridiculous. Much of the writing is a work of the imagination, and it is little surprise that “insiders” have been conveying the Royal family’s apparent fury. Peter Morgan, its writer, cannot know what went on in Mrs Thatcher’s audiences with the Queen, nor in any of the other private conversations depicted. Some are preposterous: such as that between the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales shortly before Lord Mountbatten’s funeral.
Other inventions are downright awful: the conversations between the Prince of Wales and his then-wife, and between him and his then-mistress, are depressing not least on account of the lengths to which the Prince, and his second wife, have gone to repair his public image. Still, we can’t allow the ringing of the cash register to be impeded by such minor considerations as the stability of the British constitution, and the accuracy of the public’s perception of it.
A New Yorker critic wrote that this series “describes how the empire has crumbled” and the “crumminess” of Britain. Americans should be careful when gloating about crumbling empires and crumminess; but it shows how there is something in this entertainment for everyone seeking a way to bash Britain. By mostly refusing to portray the Queen as anything other than saintly and dutiful, the writers not only avoid alienating people from their product, but give themselves licence to diminish anything else. The late Queen Mother appears to be based on her Spitting Image puppet; Princess Margaret was notoriously grand, but whether she was quite so insulting as Helena Bonham Carter’s representation is debatable: being dead, she cannot fight back. The Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales spend much of the time appearing to do impersonations of each other.
However, if Prince Philip could bring himself to watch The Crown, he would doubtless be most shocked by the spectacle of a man impersonating him shooting pheasants in August.
It epitomises what seems a wholesale disregard of detail. Mark Thatcher went missing in the Sahara 10 weeks before the attempted invasion of South Georgia, not during it; ministers at Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet meetings would not have addressed her or each other by their Christian names; and the impression is given that she and the Queen did not know one another before Mrs Thatcher assumed office, despite the pair having met at several engagements.
The Queen would never have referred to “bloodsports” – a term of Leftist opprobrium – but to “field sports”. Her prime minister would not spring a cabinet reshuffle on her; the writers have ignored the traffic that goes on between the Palace and Downing Street to ensure she is never wrong-footed. The Queen would not have asked a courtier whether it was “good news or bad” about an Australian election, because Her Majesty does not take sides in the politics of any land in which she is head of state. As a young journalist, I accompanied Mrs Thatcher on two tours of African Commonwealth countries where she did not, even in private, express the views she unleashes about them in this travesty.
But then The Crown is often a vehicle for Tory-bashing: when Fagan goes to see his MP about his hatred of Thatcherism, that is imaginary Tory Richard Hastings. In reality, his MP was Labour’s John Grant – but that would not have served the purposes of the agenda.
When the Queen asks her courtiers whether it would be a bad thing if word got out that she disapproved of aspects of Mrs Thatcher’s policies and personality, disbelief is stretched to breaking point. I recall the two women touring the room together at the former prime minister’s 80th birthday party in 2005: the fact that Her Majesty even attended it, let alone appeared so delighted to be there, said more about her true relationship with Mrs Thatcher than any of this fiction.
This brings us to the heart of the problem: thanks to the deficiencies in the teaching of history in Britain, and the scarcity of teaching British history anywhere else in the world, too many will watch this and confuse fiction with fact. That has consequences for how people think about the constitutional settlement in this country and how we are governed. Such things will be of no concern to the makers of this high-rent soap opera – but they ought to concern the rest of us.