Since 2016, we have cultivated a new national pastime: moaning about the latest series of The Crown. Every time Netflix’s royal soap opera appears on our screens, we become united in our determination to spot errors of fact and taste in Peter Morgan’s show, ranging from the trivial to the major. No wonder that Morgan, in a tetchily defensive interview with Variety last month, said ‘I just don’t like talking about it. I don’t think it’s possible to have a sensible conversation about The Crown in the United Kingdom.’
Morgan will have felt vindicated, perhaps, by the dismal response the first four episodes of the sixth series have received from television critics and royal historians alike. They were always going to be controversial, dealing as they do with the final days in the life of Princess Diana and the aftermath of her fateful car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997.
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