And that is why Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden is right when he calls for Netflix to make it clear that its Royal drama is just that, brilliantly produced fiction but about real people. If it did not use the Monarchy in this way, it would not have one tenth of the huge lucrative audience it achieves. As the historian Hugo Vickers points out in our pages today, much of that fiction is severely, dangerously wrong. The invented scene in which he appears to threaten Princess Diana is especially scurrilous and nasty, and will encourage the worst sort of dangerous rumour. But it should no longer be free to pretend that fiction is fact, let alone that lies are truth.

Source: Daily Mail November 29, 2020 01:36 UTC