HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2024-01-04T10:41:42.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Netflix's The Crown: history and storytelling
items: The Crown S6: the real history in the royal drama
items: Netflix’s The Crown: the real history behind the royal drama
items: Netflix’s The Crown: history and storytelling
items: How to marry a monarch
items: The Crown S6: the challenges of telling the story of living royals
items: “Haunted, in more ways than one”: A historian’s review of The Crown S6, part 1
items: What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
items: The Crown season 6 cast vs their real-life counterparts
items: Charles and Diana: a history of their marriage

Netflix's The Crown: history and storytelling
type: item
date: 2023-12-15T07:22:21.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
description: Annie Sulzberger, head of research for Netflix's flagship historical drama 'The Crown', explains how the show's real history elements are stitched into the storylines, and offers her take on dramatising the Windsors
encoded: Netflix's hit drama The Crown has come to a close after six seasons and 60 episodes, having dramatised the Windsor dynasty from the mid-20th century to the early years of the new millennium. While it has faced some controversy for its portrayals of living royals and storytelling choices, its mass appeal has seen it become one of the flagship historical dramas of the decade. Elinor Evans spoke to the show's head of research, Annie Sulzberger, to hear more about The Crown's approach to the real history it portrays on screen.

Pod-Annie-Sulzberger-WL-1-7e5c458.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

The Crown S6: the real history in the royal drama
type: item
date: 2023-12-14T12:40:31.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: The sixth and final season of The Crown covers history that is well within living memory for many viewers, but still has much to say on the sweeping story of the Windsor dynasty…
encoded: Season 6 of The Crown, the final season of show creator Peter Morgan’s drama, was released in two parts. The first four episodes arrived on Netflix on 16 November 2023, with the final episodes released on 14 December. Season 5 was the first season of the royal drama to be broadcast following the deaths of the Duke of Edinburgh on 9 April 2021, and Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022. The final season brings viewers into the 21st-century story of the Windsor dynasty, with the plotlines ending in 2005. What historical events does The Crown S6 cover? The final moments dramatised in season 5 saw Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, both suffering the after-effects of the so-called War of the Waleses, which played out in the British tabloids during the 1990s between the couple’s formal separation (announced by Prime Minister John Major in 1992) and eventual divorce in August 1996. “The marriage collapsed like a house of cards. Every detail was subject to insatiable scrutiny by the press,” writes historian Tracy Borman. During their PR battles, both royals had given primetime interviews that divulged personal struggles and intimate details about their marriage, and by 1997 tabloid interest in the divorced couple – and particularly Diana – was at fever pitch. The paparazzi interest in Diana – particularly in the summer months of 1997, before her death, aged 36, in a car crash in Paris – is the central subject of The Crown’s opening episodes. Previous seasons of the drama have traced and foreshadowed this escalating paparazzi interest, from the press ‘discovering’ Princess Margaret’s relationship with Group Captain Peter Townsend in season one, to Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia and the start of ‘Dianamania’ in season four. Diana’s final months can be characterised by the fraught balancing act of managing very public demands of royalty with the need for privacy and intimacy, in an age when royal life was being redefined by the clamour of mass media. View…

Diana-Crown-and-real-0d82cd2.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Netflix’s The Crown: the real history behind the royal drama
type: item
date: 2023-12-14T12:30:46.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Netflix’s sumptuous royal drama The Crown has explored many hidden intricacies of the British royal family, providing an engrossing portrait of the mid/late-20th century monarchy. Here's our ultimate guide to the real history behind the drama. Recap the historical stories behind seasons one to five of the drama, plus the real history behind season six…
encoded: How much of Netflix drama The Crown is drawn from real history? The show, which takes viewers behind the closed doors of royal life, undoubtedly strays into the realms of supposition on occasion. But much of the action is drawn the very real personal and political challenges that beset many members of the British royal family in the 20th and into the 21st century. From season one, which dramatised Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension and the early days of her reign with Claire Foy as the young monarch, to the middle seasons with Olivia Colman playing the Queen as the matriarch of a growing royal brood, and into the final stage of the story with Imelda Staunton as the late monarch, The Crown has provided an intimate and dramatic portrayal of many figures at the heart of the modern monarchy. Season 5 of Peter Morgan’s drama welcomed a new cast, with Imelda Staunton portraying the late Queen Elizabeth II from the early 1990s onwards. Season 5 was the first season to be broadcast following the deaths of the Duke of Edinburgh on 9 April 2021, and Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September 2022. Read on for our breakdown of the real history that has inspired each season, and where the drama chooses to diverge from real events – plus don’t miss our episode-by-episode guides… (Note: this article contains spoilers for seasons 1–6 of The Crown) Follow the links below to jump to each section: What's the real history behind The Crown season 6? What's the real history behind The Crown season 5? What’s the real history behind The Crown season 4? What’s the real history behind The Crown season 3? What’s the real history behind The Crown season 2? What’s the real history behind The Crown season 1? What's the real history behind The Crown season 6? The latest season of The Crown continues to walk the tightrope that faced the drama in season 5. As historian Sarah Gristwood previously told us: “As The Crown moves into the 1990s, it was always going to have a hard row to hoe." The events of those yea…

Elizabeth-f0f3381.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Netflix’s The Crown: history and storytelling
type: item
date: 2023-12-14T11:36:34.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
description: Annie Sulzberger, head of research for Netflix's flagship historical drama 'The Crown', explains how the show's real history elements are stitched into the storylines, and offers her take on dramatising the Windsors
encoded: Netflix's hit drama The Crown has come to a close after six seasons and 60 episodes, having dramatised the Windsor dynasty from the mid-20th century to the early years of the new millennium. While it has faced some controversy for its portrayals of living royals and storytelling choices, its mass appeal has seen it become one of the flagship historical dramas of the decade. Elinor Evans spoke to the show's head of research, Annie Sulzberger, to hear more about The Crown's approach to the real history it portrays on screen. View Green Video on the source website

Vod-Annie-Sulzberger-WL-a018f3d.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

How to marry a monarch
type: item
date: 2023-12-10T14:15:07.000Z
creator: Tracy Borman
subject: 20th Century
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
description: From marrying for love to securing a political alliance, historian Tracy Borman looks at how monarchs through history have chosen their partners
encoded: The last instalment of long-running Netflix series The Crown will chart the blossoming relationship between Prince William and Catherine (Kate) Middleton, now Prince and Princess of Wales. Theirs is often heralded as one of the most successful royal partnerships in history – as well as the most ordinary. Rather than the pre-determined, delicately-negotiated relationships typical of most other royal marriages – particularly one involving a future king – theirs began at St Andrews University. Neither was Kate from royal stock. Their relationship continued after they had graduated from St Andrew’s, and despite intense speculation that an engagement was imminent, it would be one of the longest courtships in royal history. They eventually married in April 2011, almost ten years after first meeting. Read more | The Crown S6: the challenges of telling the story of living royals William’s approach to choosing his future queen had been both thoroughly modern and, by royal standards, deeply unconventional. Looking back over the long history of the British crown, few other heirs to the throne have been able to exercise such a degree of personal choice. Calming troubled waters One of the most important motivations in choosing a queen has been to ease tensions between rival nations. This was certainly the case with Henry V, who took the throne in 1413. England and France had been battling it out in the Hundred Years’ War since 1337 and Henry was quick to take up arms. Having secured a triumphant victory at Agincourt in 1415, he concluded a treaty with the beleaguered Charles VI five years later. As well as recognising Henry as heir to the throne of France, it also provided for his marriage to Charles’s daughter, Catherine of Valois. The ink was barely dry on the treaty before the two kingdoms were at war again, but the marriage itself was a success because it gave Henry a son and heir, who took the throne as Henry VI at the age of just eight months upon his father’s untimely dea…

GettyImages-463224389202-2e1dfc6-644099e.jpg
width: 576
height: 383

The Crown S6: the challenges of telling the story of living royals
type: item
date: 2023-12-08T11:06:35.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
description: As the final season of the hit Netflix series The Crown reaches our screens, the show’s head of research, Annie Sulzberger, speaks to Elinor Evans about the importance and process of interrogating power
encoded: Elinor Evans: The final season of The Crown charts the story of the royal family from 1997 to 2005. Are there any unique challenges of telling the stories of living royals, and of the Windsor dynasty in particular? Annie Sulzberger: Sometimes the biggest issue is our collective memory, because we remember things in the moment. If, for example, you asked the public today how many people died in the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed, they would say two. In fact, there were three – but that third victim got little coverage in the newspapers. Read more | Charles and Diana: a history of their marriage Most of the information about the crash did not come out until 2008, when Operation Paget [the Metropolitan Police inquiry established in 2004 to investigate conspiracy theories surrounding Diana’s death] was published. All of a sudden, you could rebuild that entire summer through very credible testimony from close friends, bodyguards and the Ritz staff who went with Dodi to buy the ring that we feature in the series. We needed those 10 years of investigations to get to the fundamental material with which to build our story. If we had stopped in 1997, and used only resources from then, pretty much what you would have been stuck with is the emotional responses to a moment in history, because that’s all we had at the time. But nobody had quite figured out truly what had happened, and what Diana was feeling about Dodi. View Green Video on the source website I think sometimes collective memory can be a harder thing to deal with when it comes to the monarchy, because they don’t often do interviews themselves. We get most of our information from newspapers, vox pops, and the public at large – but that is not how you attempt to piece together history. This is one of the reasons why our show stops in 2005. You need to allow time for the true story of those moments to emerge. If we were still depicting the story up to 2023, we would only have today’s news…

ThCrownTrailerImages8-17ba606.png
width: 620
height: 413

“Haunted, in more ways than one”: A historian’s review of The Crown S6, part 1
type: item
date: 2023-11-16T12:14:36.000Z
creator: Sarah Gristwood
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews the first episodes of the royal drama’s final season. Centring on the final months of Diana, Princess of Wales, part one invokes an eerie blend of memory and invention, and plays with our knowledge of what lies ahead…
encoded: As actor Claire Foy said in the Netflix teaser for the sixth and final season of its flagship drama, the crown is a symbol of permanence. She, in her role as the young Elizabeth II, meant the crown she embodied, the one on her head – but you could say the same of The Crown too. A final sixth season, taking the narrative into the 21st century, was originally on – then off – then on again. It is now being shown in two separate chunks; and rightly so, because although the first four episodes are about the crown and its putative future, in personal terms they are all about Diana, Princess of Wales. Even the evocative poster image shows Elizabeth Debicki’s Diana – alone but always on view – perched on the end of the springboard aboard the Al Fayed yacht in the summer of 1997, seemingly contemplating a dive into an uncertain future. These first four episodes cover a little more than eight weeks, and with such a tight focus its central performance is all-important. Debicki does not disappoint. Her voice – that voice we all remember from the real Diana’s Panorama interview – is almost spookily right. Images we all recognise are recreated with astonishing accuracy (though the famous landmines walk has been transposed from her Angola visit to her Bosnia one in August 1997). But in those very memories lies the challenge – that we’re coming up to, as the New York Times put it, “one of the most analyzed periods in recent British history”. And as they watch this season, many viewers (in the UK at least) will have an alternative narrative running simultaneously in their head as they match up the drama with their own recollection. Read more | The Crown S6 part 1: the real history in the royal drama The Diana of Debicki and writer/creator Peter Morgan is a woman coping with the chaotic circumstances around her –though nods are made to reports which described, instead, a woman adrift, vibrating distractedly between her anti-landmine crusade and a life of luxury. Much in the first two…

TheCrownSeason6FirstLook4-a297b31.png
width: 620
height: 413

What was Queen Elizabeth II like as a mother?
type: item
date: 2023-11-16T09:51:58.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Royal children
subject: The Crown
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: TV interest
description: Throughout her long reign, Elizabeth II juggled being a mother and grandmother with royal duty. But with careful judgment, hard work and a mischievous sense of humour, she forged a dynasty and inspired a nation
encoded: They might not be the first monikers to spring to mind when thinking of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch who was renowned for her sense of duty and her dignified demeanour, but “Gary” and “Cabbage” are two of the nicknames bestowed upon her by her family. “Gary” was how Prince William knew his grandmother as a youngster, apparently confusing the word with “Granny”, while the Queen’s great-grandchildren Prince George and Princess Charlotte know the Queen affectionately as “Gan-Gan”. As for “Cabbage’, this was the fond nickname used by her husband Prince Philip – which might come from the French term of endearment, “mon petit chou”, translated to “my little cabbage”. Was Elizabeth II a mother when she came to the throne? As matriarch of “The Firm” (the insider name for the royal family), now in her 10th decade and the oldest monarch in British history, it’s perhaps easy to forget that Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1952 at the age of just 25, the mother of two young children. Thrust into royal duties, she faced the immediate challenge of balancing the work of monarchy with the demands of motherhood, a battle which has been present throughout her reign. Read more | A brief guide to the British royal family, by The Crown historian Robert Lacey Just 18 months after her accession in 1952, Elizabeth II was called upon to tour 13 countries, including Australia, over six months, without Charles, age five, and Anne, age three. The young children were famously greeted with handshakes upon the return of their parents, and though she dispensed with some of the more formal royal traditions – the children were not required to bow or curtsey to their mother – their childhoods were marked by absence. The prince and princess were largely raised in their younger years by governesses and other household staff, in the same way that Elizabeth and Margaret had been by “Crawfie”, in keeping with the manner of many upper-class families of the time. The children were required to understand tha…

GettyImages-3434292-72887a8.jpg
width: 1024
height: 821

The Crown season 6 cast vs their real-life counterparts
type: item
date: 2023-11-15T08:30:03.000Z
creator: Lauren Good
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Period
subject: The Crown
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Season 6 of The Crown continues to tell a fictionalised tale of the British royal family, beginning in the 1990s. But how does the cast compare to their real-life counterparts?
encoded: Netflix’s The Crown has taken the world by storm with its heavily dramatised retelling of the British royal family, beginning in 1947 with the wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The sixth and final season of the show – arriving in two parts, with the first four episodes streaming from 16 November and the remainder from 14 December – will take us deep into living memory. This season will cover 1997 until 2005, with part one expected to focus on the paparazzi interest in Diana – particularly in the summer months of 1997, before her death, aged 36, in a car crash in Paris. Read more | “Haunted, in more ways than one”: A historian’s review of The Crown S6, part 1 Read more | The Crown S6 part 1: the real history to expect from the royal drama The hit series garnered controversy for walking the fine line between fact and fiction. Among its detractors was actor Judi Dench, who wrote in an open letter to The Times that the closer The Crown comes to the present day, “the more freely it seems willing to blur the line between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism”. In part, The Crown’s attempts at realistic storytelling relies on how similar the cast looks to the royals they’re portraying. Let’s look at those appearing in the final series… The Crown Season 6 cast: how much do they look like the real royals? Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana Part one of the new season will focus on the death of Princess Diana, and how it shook both the nation and the royal family. Following Diana’s death in a car crash on 31 August 1997, well-wishers left more than a million bouquets outside Kensington Palace. More than one million people also crowded the streets of central London during her funeral on 6 September. Dominic West as Prince Charles In April 2011, at the age of 62, Prince Charles (now King Charles III) became the longest-serving heir apparent. The previous record, of 59 years, two months and 13 days, had been held by his great-great-grandfather, K…

Cover-383b72d.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Charles and Diana: a history of their marriage
type: item
date: 2023-11-14T12:10:09.000Z
creator: Emma Mason
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Royal weddings
subject: The Crown
subject: The royal family
subject: TV interest
description: Their 15-year marriage began with a fairy tale wedding and saw the birth of two princes, but ended in a public and acrimonious divorce involving infidelity that threatened to rock the monarchy. But what was the real nature of Prince Charles and Diana’s relationship: how did they meet, when did cracks first appear, were they in love, and was Diana really the wronged party? We asked royal biographer Penny Junor to tell us the real story of Charles and Diana…
encoded: Who was Diana, Princess of Wales? Maiden name: Diana Frances Spencer Born: 1 July 1961 at Park House, the home that her parents rented on Queen Elizabeth II’s estate at Sandringham Died: 31 August 1997, in a car accident in Paris (aged 36) Married to: Prince Charles (m. 1981–96) Height: 1.78 m Children: Prince William (born 1982) and Prince Harry (born 1984) Grandchildren: Prince George (born 2013); Princess Charlotte (born 2015); Prince Louis (born 2018); Archie Mountbatten-Windsor (born 2019) Parents: John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer & Frances Roche Siblings: Lady Sarah McCorquodale (1955–present); Jane Fellowes, Baroness Fellowes (1957–present); John Spencer, died within 10 hours of his birth on 12 January 1960; Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer (1964–present) Educated: Silfield Private School in Gayton, Norfolk; Riddlesworth Hall School near Thetford; West Heath Girls’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent; Institut Alpin Videmanette in Rougemont, Switzerland View Green Video on the source website When did Diana Spencer meet Prince Charles? It was in the summer of 1980, at a house party hosted by Diana’s friend Philip de Pass in New Grove, near Petworth, that Prince Charles first saw Diana Spencer as a potential girlfriend. Sitting next to each other on a bale of hay at a post-polo barbecue, an 19-year-old Diana expressed her sympathy for Charles over the loss of his beloved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who had been murdered by the IRA a year earlier. “My heart bled for you when I watched the funeral; I thought, ‘It’s wrong, you’re lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you’,” said Diana. This, says Penny Junor, was exactly what Charles needed to hear. “Mountbatten was a very important figure in Charles’s life and he was in a fragile state at that point,” says Junor. “Diana really touched a nerve in Charles, she said just the right thing to him, at the right moment, and he was moved by her.” This encounter was not, however, the first time Charles and Diana had m…

GettyImages-52118432-2-d14404c.jpg
width: 600
height: 413