Interesting article by William Shawcross on 'The Crown'.
Here are some excerpts:
"The Crown takes constant liberties with history, as it does with people.....
The Crown’s real nastiness is deployed against Prince Philip, with whom Princess Elizabeth fell in love during the second world war and with whom she has now had 72 years of successful marriage. As Vickers writes, in the early series, ‘Prince Philip [is] portrayed as a fractious, bumptious “Jack the Lad”, very much the villain… little more than a self-centered philanderer’......
Prince Philip is blunt, but he is at core very kind. Remember his supportive letters to Diana. He is also a superb public servant. He was warning about the environment and wildlife decades before those became fashionable causes. He deserves thanks for his constant support for science, and above all for his creation of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme, which has helped millions of young people around the world.
None of that is of interest to the makers of The Crown.
All this matters not only because The Crown is hurtful but also because, beneath its enticing veneer, much of it is, in modern parlance, fake news. Those falsehoods will be accepted by many millions of people around the world as truths.
Second, because by dwelling on personal weaknesses in lavish settings, it tries to show that the heart of constitutional monarchy is debauched and frivolous and irrelevant to the people. In the new series, Colman portrays the Queen as a cold mother who told Harold Wilson that she was unable to weep at the Aberfan disaster, because ‘I have known for some time there is something wrong with me. Deficient’.
When considering why The Crown is thus, it is worth remembering that Peter Morgan has revealed what drives him. In an interview with the Sunday Times in October 2017, he said that the Queen herself is of ‘limited intelligence’. ‘She’s ninetysomething years old and barely knows what the internet is.’ She and her family are not really humans, they are ‘survival organisms, like a mutating virus’. Moreover, belief in God and the teachings of Jesus Christ, which Morgan knows inspire the Queen’s whole life, is to him ‘deranged’.
The monarchy itself is clearly ‘insane’: ‘[I’m] blessed because the system she is in is so ridiculous and illogical that even just to unpack it from a point of view of reason or logic is such a joy.’
Plus ça change. Back in the 1940s George Orwell famously pointed out that many English intellectuals are too snobbish to understand the value of monarchy to people ‘less gifted’ than themselves. Mr Morgan’s apparently republican contempt for the Queen and her family is just the latest example. That contempt, cleverly concealed in much of the pomp and finery of The Crown, does the people of this country a great disservice.
The Queen is among the greatest monarchs we have ever had. She has given her life to serving this rapidly changing country for almost all of her 93 years. In poll after poll, the vast majority of the British people consistently support the monarchy. They seem to understand their good fortune in not having had revolving-door presidents for the past 70 years but one real Queen, inspired by a lifelong sense of decency, common sense, love of country and Christian duty.
The Queen, and indeed the British public, deserve better than The Crown."