When did the royal family become a soap opera? Your answer probably depends on your age. The under-25s possibly think it all kicked off with Meghan. Those in their fifties might say that the life and death of Diana created an unprecedented media storm. If you are in your seventies, however, you will remember the furor over Margaret’s doomed relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend.
And there are still people around, just, who can recall the 1936 abdication crisis. Was that the real start of Britain’s longest running soap opera? Of course not. Before that we had the philandering Edward VII. And before that? One minor titillation of Gareth Russell’s new book is the revelation (to me, anyway), that the Queen Mother once told friends that she had burned documentary evidence of Queen Victoria not only having an affair with her Scottish servant John Brown, but also secretly marrying him. Enough lurid material there, surely, for several sensational prequels to The Crown.
