Why we dramatize history — and why we should stop
A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I had watched the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. That interview, yes — the one with all the sweating and the pizza in Woking, in which he definitely didn’t meet Virginia Roberts Giuffre but he did single-handedly crash his reputation, and Emily Maitlis, like the Medusa of journalism she has since become, just let him tie his own noose. Of course I’ve watched it. I’m a journalist. And a twenty-first-century citizen. Who hasn’t? My friend, for one, though she pointed out that she can just watch the three-part Amazon dramatization of the whole affair, A Very Royal Scandal, which is even juicier than the interview. (“I’m the son of the sovereign,” bellows the Duke of York, played by a soapy Michael Sheen.
