IT WAS one of the worst years of her reign – her famous annus horribilis, the year a raging fire laid waste to a vast section of her beloved Windsor Castle and the marriages of three of her four children collapsed. “This has not been a year I will look back on with undiluted pleasure,” Queen Elizabeth said in a speech at the end of 1992. But the events of that year – and many others in the tumultuous ’90s – will be revisited in all their gore and glory in the latest season of The Crown.
And what a to-do it has caused. It’s too soon after the queen’s death for the show to be aired, critics say. It’s disrespectful of Diana’s memory and insensitive to her sons. It’s dredging up the painful past at a time when King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort, are finding their feet in a post-queen world. Reminding people about their affair and Diana’s trauma could dent Charles and Camilla’s popularity. Sensationalist nonsense. Scurrilous rubbish. And so it goes on.
Creators of the show have always maintained it is a fictionalised version of events and liberal lashings of creative licence have been applied. But the problem, royal
