Reports say a drama about the late Queen’s closest aide may reach the screen despite confidentiality clauses, and the monarchy has been here before
Royal Confidences and the People Who Keep Them
There is a category of royal story that makes the Palace more anxious than any political row. It is the one that begins: a former member of staff has decided to talk.
Two items this week belong to it. A royal news site led with fears that the late Queen’s closest confidante could see royal secrets aired in a new film, and followed with a piece on how her story could reach the screen despite confidentiality clauses. A magazine’s running coverage for the first of October carried a similar item under the heading New royal drama could ruffle palace feathers.
The confidante is Angela Kelly, who was the Queen’s dresser and personal assistant for the last decades of the reign. I have seen only the headlines and cannot tell you what the film contains, who is making it or whether she has any part in it. I can tell you why the subject sets nerves jangling.
Who She Was
A dresser sounds like a minor post. It is not. The person who helps the sovereign dress is with her at the start and end of every day, in her private rooms, when nobody else is there.
By every account Miss Kelly, a docker’s daughter from Liverpool, became far more than that. She designed many of the Queen’s later outfits. She was a companion and, it is said, a friend. In the last years, including the long isolation of the pandemic, she was among the very small number of people who saw the Queen daily.
She has written about it before. Two books, both published with the Queen’s permission, which is almost unheard of. They were affectionate and discreet. They told you how the hats were made and who broke in the Queen’s shoes. They did not tell you anything the Queen would not have wished told.
That is the distinction on which everything turns. A servant who speaks with permission is one thing. A drama made without it is another.
The Rule
Everyone who works for the Royal Household signs an undertaking of confidentiality. It covers what they see and hear in the course of their duties, and it does not expire when they leave.
The reason is not vanity. A household cannot function if the family must watch every word in front of the staff. The Queen had to be able to be tired, or cross, or amused by something unsuitable, in front of the person doing up her dress. That is only possible if she can be sure it will not be in a newspaper.
The same is true of any household, as it happens. It simply matters more when the newspapers will pay six figures.
The Precedent
The case that still shapes Palace thinking is seventy-five years old.
Marion Crawford was governess to the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, from their early childhood until the elder married. They called her Crawfie. She was, by all accounts, devoted to them and they to her.
In 1950, after retiring, she published a book called The Little Princesses. It was sweet to the point of syrup. It described nursery teas and how neatly the future Queen arranged her shoes. There was not a harsh word in it.
The family never spoke to her again. She had been given a grace-and-favour house and left it. No wreath was sent when she died. In royal circles, “doing a Crawfie” became the term for the unforgivable.
The offence was not the content. It was the fact. She had sold what was not hers to sell.
Others followed over the decades: a valet, a butler, a housekeeper, a press secretary. Some were sued. Injunctions were obtained. Each time the lesson was the same. The undertaking is meant.
Why a Film Is Different
A film presents a harder problem than a memoir.
A confidentiality agreement binds the person who signed it. It does not bind a screenwriter who never worked at the Palace. If a drama is based on published books, press reports and imagination, there may be nobody to sue.
The past decade has shown how far that goes. A long-running television series dramatised the entire reign, inventing private conversations between people still living. The Palace disliked it intensely and could do nothing. The scenes were plainly made up. Millions took them for fact.
So the headline about a story reaching the screen “despite confidentiality clauses” may simply mean that the clauses do not apply to the people making it.
Whether Miss Kelly herself is involved is a separate matter, and I do not know. If she is not, she is as much a subject of the drama as the Queen is, and may like it no better.
The Argument for Telling
There is a case on the other side, and it has grown stronger with time.
The late Queen was the most significant public figure in Britain for seventy years. Historians have a legitimate interest in what she was like. So does the public. The official record tells you where she went. It tells you nothing about who she was.
The people who knew that are her staff. If none of them may ever speak, a great deal will be lost. What we know of Queen Victoria’s inner life comes in good part from the people around her.
There is also a class point that is hard to ignore. The family’s friends and relations publish diaries and give interviews. It is the servants who are bound to silence. A countess may reminisce. A dresser may not.
And death changes things. The duty of confidence was owed to a living woman’s privacy. She is gone. How long should the silence last? Twenty years? Fifty? For ever?
The Argument Against
The Palace would say that the duty is owed to the institution as well as the individual. The present King’s staff need to know that the rule holds, or it will not hold for him.
It would say that drama is not history. A film needs conflict. It will supply scenes that never happened and put words in the mouth of a woman who cannot answer. However sympathetic, it turns a private relationship into entertainment.
And it would say, I think rightly, that the Queen’s own wishes are known. She permitted two books and no more. A person’s control over her privacy should not end the day she dies.
Where I Stand
Torn, to be candid.
I should dearly like to know more about the late Queen. I have read both of the authorised books twice. I shall probably watch the film.
But I think the rule is right. Not because royalty deserves special protection, but because anyone does. If I employed someone in my home for thirty years, I should not expect to see our breakfast conversations acted out by strangers.
The test I would apply to any such drama is whether it tells the truth and whether it is kind. The Crawfie book passed both and was punished anyway. Most of what has followed has passed neither.
The London Prat, which has been leaking from below stairs since 1961, considers the genre in its English satirical news on royal servants’ memoirs and its UK satirical news about confidentiality clauses. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the staff sign the agreement and then the book contract.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
