Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Some tricky royal subjects
THE first episode shows the beginnings of the Suez Crisis in 1956 as British forces invade Egypt in a dispute over the Canal.
The conflict saw the resignation of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, inset, a year later – on the grounds of ill-health but also because he was believed to have misled the
House of Commons over the degree of collusion with
France and Israel.
The new series also implies the royal family were drawn into the orbit of the
Profumo scandal that brought down Harold Macmillan’s government in the 1960s.
Macmillan was known for his unflappability but it was an open secret that his wife Dorothy was having an affair with Baron Bob Boothby. She would even discuss with him meetings she’d had with her lover. AS the series heads into the Swinging Sixties fiesty Princess Margaret is portrayed as a party girl, free from the constraints that her sister has as Queen.
She is seen speeding through London on the back of a motorbike, saying: “I know who I am, a woman for the modern age. Free to live, free to love and free to break away.”
Before his wedding to the Princess, Tony Armstrong-jones (played by Matthew Goode) is shown in compromising positions with a dancer and having a threesome.
In the show the Queen orders surveillance and discovers his secrets but decides not to tell her sister. She had promised Margaret she could wed whoever she wanted after her hopes of marrying divorced RAF hero Group Captain Peter Townsend were vetoed in the first series. THE Crown is one of the most hotly anticipated TV shows of the year
– and from today fans can finally watch the second series.
The first series of the Netflix hit, which stars Claire Foy and Matt Smith as the Queen and Prince Philip and had a production budget said to be £100million, was full of political intrigue, tragedy and romance.
The second series of 10, hour-long episodes is packed with sex, scandal, treachery and betrayal. It covers the eight-year period from the Suez Crisis in 1956 until Prince Edward’s birth in 1964. Here are a few of the subjects you’ve got in store... JOHN and Jackie Kennedy had dinner at Buckingham Palace in 1961. However the show claims tensions ran high between the Queen and the US First Lady.
Not least because Jackie (played by Jodi Balfour) is shown flirting outrageously with smitten Prince Philip under the Queen’s nose.
When the Prince says Jackie has asked him for a tour of the Palace, the Queen replies curtly: “It’s my house, so I’ll do it.”
The Queen is seen further enraged when Jackie is overheard making disparaging remarks about both her and her home.
Jackie is heard saying that the Queen is “unintelligent and middleaged” and describing the Palace as “old and dilapidated”. In reality, famed royal photographer Cecil Beaton wrote in his diary that Jackie had been underwhelmed by the style of both Buckingham Palace and the Queen.