I’m the historical consultant to Peter Morgan, The Crown’s creator and writer, as I was on his 2006 movie The Queen starring Helen Mirren. Whatever reservations he may have felt about me or my book were not evident, but then royal people are dissemblers and it is their whole job to put on a face.ĭo you think that in The Crown, this TV Netflix saga, the royal characters are well represented? What was your impression of the Duke of Edinburgh?
I sent the Queen’s Communications Secretary, Donal McCabe, a selection of chapters and they sent them back unopened. For Battle of Brothers I approached the Palace hoping for the same sort of cooperation. For Majesty, with the help of Lord Mountbatten, I did interview the Duke of Edinburgh, and he gave the book and my project his blessing. For my two big royal books, Majesty and then Monarch which came out in 2002, her Golden Jubilee, I received a number of quite lengthy briefings at Buckingham Palace from people like the Private Secretary to the Sovereign, Sir Martin Charteris.
Robert Lacey, did you meet the Queen then?
I had written two books about the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and biographies of Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Earl of Essex, so I sold myself to Buckingham Palace as a historian who’d written serious books about the first Elizabeth and now wanted to write about the second Elizabeth.” “My book Majesty, which came out in 1977, was the first book to try and write about the present Queen.
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