THE DAY HER NERVES GOT THE BETTER OF HER

The relationship between Elizabeth and Prince Philip is the central theme of The Crown. While the Duke of Edinburgh is best known today for being, as writer Peter Morgan says, ‘a grumpy old guy who’s really just a stick-in-the-mud’, he’s very much the rakish hero of the show.

The young princess Elizabeth first fell for her third cousin Prince Philip of Greece – they’re both descendants of Victoria and Albert – when she was just 13. As the first episode of the series makes clear, he wasn’t an ideal match for the future Queen of England. Some of his four sisters were married to Nazis and he was penniless after the Greek royal family was exiled in 1922; the infant Philip escaped Greece on a British naval vessel in a cot made from an orange crate.

Following their escape his father moved to Monte Carlo where he lived with his mistress, while his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and ended up becoming a nun. The closest he came to a real family was his Anglo-German uncle on his mother’s side, the ambitious Louis ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten, whose name he took from 1947 when he became a British citizen, renouncing his title of Prince of Greece and Denmark, to marry Elizabeth. ‘He’d had quite a difficult family life,’ says Matt Smith who plays him. ‘His father went off to Monaco with a mistress when he was small, his favourite sister died in a plane crash when she was pregnant, and because his family had been so disparate there was a great sense of him wanting to keep his young family with the princess together.’ He and Elizabeth married in 1947 at Westminster Abbey and it was a real love match. Like all brides of the time she had to purchase the material for her Norman Hartnelldesigned dress with ration coupons. Re-creating the wedding took weeks of planning. ‘We worked really hard to make sure even the tiniest of details were accurate,’ says director Stephen Daldry. ‘So many things that you think might be dramatic licence actually happened. The wedding wasn’t filmed but it was recorded for radio, and on the recording you can hear her falter over her vows very

clearly, she’s very emotional. Claire Foy studied that very carefully and replicated the exact tones and rhythm in the scene, the difference being that you get to see it.’ You’ll also see Philip giving his nervous wife a kindly wink – a little bit of dramatic licence. As Westminster Abbey was unavailable for the production it was filmed at Ely Cathedral. One of the hardest tasks was re-creating the Queen’s stunning gown. The train alone took six people, working ten-hour shifts, six weeks to do the intricate embroidery and beading. There was another team working on the bodice while the gorgeous full skirt, which is made out of duchess satin like the original, also took several weeks to Elizabeth and Philip having fun in the African bush embroider. The bridesmaids’ outfits and those of the Queen Mother and Queen Mary are also exact replicas.

Claire Foy and Jared Harris as Elizabeth and her father George VI at her wedding