ROYAL SECRETS

‘THE FIELD WILL BE LEFT TO DRAMATISTS AND THOSE WITH A VESTED INTEREST IN LEAKING INFORMATION’

Buckingham Palace is partly responsible for the hoo-ha, historian Philip Murphy says, as it obtained an absolute exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, effectively blocking historians from access to official records on the monarch and the second and third in line to the throne.

If researchers are denied this material, he adds, “the field will be left to dramatists and those with a vested interest in leaking information”.

Author Stephanie Merritt says the issue is complicated. “There is a case for saying it’s unethical to make what is essentially a glossy soap opera out of the lives of people, many still living, who were daily turned into a drama by the tabloids, with fatal consequences,” she writes in The Guardian.

“But we don’t turn to historical fiction or drama for literal reconstruction, but for understanding and – if the writer has done a good job – empathy. But as Hilary Mantel [the late writer of historical fiction] reminds us, we should be always asking: ‘Who is telling me this and why does he want me to believe it?’”