Queen ‘bloody furious’ over VE Day frolics film
WHAT was supposed to be the feel-good film of the spring, due out next month to coincide with the VE Day anniversary, is proving unexpectedly controversial.
A Royal Night Out is based on supposedly true events when the 19-year-old Princess Elizabeth and her 14-year- old sister Princess Margaret joined jubilant London crowds for a night to celebrate the end of the Second World War.
Early reviews appear positive — but what is the view from Buck House?
While Buckingham Palace sources indicate the Queen has greeted news of the film (which she has yet to see) with equanimity, another royal insider has let slip this week that privately she is far from pleased.
In fact, she is ‘bloody furious’ about the movie — which stars Canadian Sarah Gadon as the future Queen and Rupert Everett as her father George VI — and in particular its depiction of her notoriously hedonistic sister, played by Bel Powley.
‘She is very upset at the way her late sister Margaret is being portrayed in the film, and feels that fact has been overshadowed by fiction,’ I am told.
‘She was horrified to hear that the film shows Margaret as a giddy floozy who manages to break free from the palace security and make her way to a seedy Soho knocking shop, a clip joint frequented by the Krays in later years.
’There is one scene in which Margaret’s drink is spiked and she is about to be raped but for the appearance of Elizabeth and her beau for the night, a soldier who appears to have gone awol.’
The film comes at a sensitive time for the royals, particularly as Prince Andrew’s past connections to convicted paedophile American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein have attracted so much unhelpful attention this year.
‘Following the recent hoo-haa over Prince Andrew, the Queen feels it’s the kind of exposure that the royal family could probably do without,’ adds my source.
Margaret Rhodes, the Queen’s 89-year-old first cousin, who was with Elizabeth and Margaret on VE Day has already disputed the veracity of some scenes in the film.
She says Princess Margaret never went to a Soho brothel nor did she drink that night.
‘ There was no possibility,’ she recalled. ‘ We never encountered anyone offering one a drink.’
Buckingham Palace declines to comment on the matter. But a royal official tells me: ‘People can judge for themselves the likelihood that the Queen would critique in this way a film which hasn’t even been released.’