he opening scene of the opening episode of the first season of makes it clear that Netflix’s juggernaut is unafraid to go straight for the Windsor jugular: here is a man, prostrate and ashen, coughing up blood into a toilet. The man is King George VI (played by Jared Harris). It would be wrong, however, to see this abject scene as some kind of supine metaphor for a reluctant and redundant reign. Despite George’s unlooked-for elevation from spare to heir, on the abdication of his brother Edward in December 1936, and the myriad ways he seemed unsuited to the role of sovereign — the retiring temperament, the crippling speech impediment, the fact that he’d never clapped eyes on a state paper — Britain’s previous king is now regarded as one of its greatest: punctilious, courageous and dedicated, and with a profound sense of duty. His 15 years on the throne saw him embody the stalwart defiance of the nation during the second world war, and skilfully navigate the seismic changes and privations that followed in its wake. “We are not a family, we are a firm,” he liked to say (a coinage that continues to this day, albeit in a more pejorative sense, as readers of Prince
