Camilla Parker Bowles

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The Crown season six: a regal return to form?

Say what you like about Netflix’s The Crown, now coming into its final series — the first four episodes launch on the service today, with the concluding half-dozen coming next month — but it is one of the few shows that has combined winning truckloads of awards with compelling its viewers to have an opinion on its often surprising manipulations of history. Its creator Peter Morgan has been both praised and vilified for the liberties with fact he has taken, all of which he has dismissed on the grounds that he is creating fact-based entertainment, rather than a documentary series. That invention can often illuminate, rather than obscure, the workings of the forever secretive British royal family.

the crown diana

Sunday

Harry Mount

What kind of king will Charles III be?

In 1988, Prince Charles asked the late Peregrine Worsthorne, then editor of the Sunday Telegraph, what he should do in public life. Perry told Charles he should restrict himself to public duties and never ever air his private thoughts. The prince buried his head in his hands, moaning, “But then I’m just a cipher.” And that, indeed, is what he has just become, as King Charles III. At the end of September, his cipher — the symbol of his reign — was unveiled. The elegant combination of a C, an R (for Rex) and the Roman numeral III come together to symbolize King Charles III. In time, the cipher will appear on government buildings, state documents and new postboxes. Perry Worsthorne was right all those years ago.

charles

Thursday

Harry Mount

A royal affair

The cover blurb, from “Lady Anne Glenconner” on this huge book proclaims: “Brilliant. Tina Brown has inside knowledge and writes so well.” The credit for the author of the 2019 bestseller, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown should in fact be “Lady Glenconner”. You might not think it matters much these days that, over and over again, Tina Brown gets the titles wrong in this book. But this is supposedly the ultimate insider’s look at the royal family over the last forty years or so. And titles are at the heart of the Firm — think of the agony of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew at no longer being able to use their HRH titles and having to give up their honorary military roles.

royal brown

Monday

Alexander Larman

Getting ready for Queen Camilla

"The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." This isn’t quite the announcement that will be made when Elizabeth II finally dies; the crown will be passed onto Prince Charles. But the Queen’s public statement over the weekend that the Duchess of Cornwall will become Queen Consort, and will therefore be referred to as Queen Camilla, is a remarkable vote of confidence. It suggests she believes in her daughter-in-law’s ability to offer a stable, successful public face to the monarchy that has been disrupted so dramatically by the antics of Prince Harry and Prince Andrew in recent years. The Duchess’s public standing has been carefully managed over the decades, thanks in part to the PR expert Mark Bolland, who served as Charles’ Deputy Private Secretary from 1997 to 2002.

camilla