Gordonstoun ‘nothing like in The Crown’
Netflix has taken liberties in portrayal of ‘bullied’ young Prince and his old school, says former pupil
ITS nickname of “Colditz in kilts” was hardly flattering. Its portrayal in The Crown was even worse, but a loyal Gordonstoun school old boy is rallying to its defence.
Hugh Lamont has condemned the Netflix show for its “untrue and inaccurate” portrayal of the Prince of Wales’s school days, saying the on-screen version of Gordonstoun does not “remotely resemble” the reality.
The retired civil servant wrote to The Daily Telegraph to dispute the Netflix storyline, which sees an episode dedicated to a miserable young Prince being ostracised and tormented at a freezing school.
“It is so untrue and inaccurate that one wonders what other liberties with the truth have been taken throughout this much-lauded and hugely expensive television spectacular,” said Mr Lamont. “Plenty, I suspect.”
The former pupil, who was at Gordonstoun a year ahead of the Prince from 1960-65, said he had never seen or heard evidence that the young royal was “bullied or physically abused in any way”.
“The stories of unacceptable violence must have been damaging to a decent school down the years and the people who run Gordonstoun now are not in a position to dispel them because they cannot know what happened over 50 years ago,” he said. “Someone has to set the record straight.”
It is the latest of recent efforts to improve the popular reputation of the school, after The Crown propelled it to attention again with a dramatisation of the very different experiences of Prince Philip and Prince Charles.
An episode depicts the lonely young Charles enduring bullying, sleeping underneath a broken window that lets in rain and failing an annual orienteering challenge. The adult Prince of Wales has hinted at his unhappiness at the school, with the now-infamous description of “Colditz in kilts”.
Mr Lamont, 70, said each of the key points in the plot was incorrect, with no leaking window in the “pristine” accommodation, no “Gordonstoun Challenge”
‘It is so untrue and inaccurate, one wonders what other liberties with the truth have been taken’
for the Prince to fail, and “not even a hint of a rumour” that he had been physically bullied.
“Finally, I don’t know where the sequences were shot, but clearly not at Gordonstoun or anywhere remotely resembling it,” he continued. “Netflix is reputed to have spent $130 million (£96million) on this series, the most expensive in television history. They couldn’t have spent more than tuppence-ha’penny on recreating Gordonstoun and its environs.”
Mr Lamont confirmed he had not been asked to stand up for the school, but had felt moved to do so after seeing the drama. Gordonstoun itself has recently appeared keen to set the record straight, issuing a press notice last year highlighting praise for the school in the hopes of providing “a more balanced view of Prince Charles’s time at Gordonstoun”.
In one 1975 speech given by the Prince, he said he is “always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun”.
Last month, Lisa Kerr, the school’s first female principal, spoke to her pupils about the The Crown, saying: “I didn’t want them to have watched it with their friends and family and to have felt embarrassed. I told them it’s a piece of television, and we know the school that really exists. It is not like that at all.”