Royal progress
The Crown, Season Two DVD (Sony Pictures, £24.99, cert: 15)
If you ever thought the life of the Windsors in the late 1950s and early 1960s was probably a bit dull – a case of watching the world loosen up while attending to the demands of duty – that’s not how The Crown creator Peter Morgan sees things.
Instead, as the series zips through the Suez crisis, the Profumo affair and Antony Armstrong-Jones’s courtship of Princess Margaret, we’re shown a family that always seems in a state of ferment. In this reading, being a royal was exhausting, especially if you were Margaret, brilliantly portrayed by Vanessa Kirby as a haughty yet troubled snob constantly out on the town. That’s not to say it’s all glitzy parties. One of the most powerful episodes, ‘Paterfamilias’, contrasts the childhood lives of Philip and Charles, the former convinced that the spartan boarding school Gordonstoun will be the making of his sensitive son. Famously, the real-life Charles dubbed the institution “Colditz in kilts”. As for historical accuracy, that’s not really the point. By showing us recent history through the eyes of the royals, it reveals enough truths about the country to move the stoutest republican.