AN INSTANCE WHERE FICTION HAS REPLACED HISTORY.

AN INSTANCE WHERE FICTION HAS REPLACED HISTORY. Richard Power Sayeed had a review in the TLS (January 19) of Series Two of “The Crown”, which is about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Sayeed begins with an important argument on the telephone between the Queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair shortly after Princess Diana was killed. At the time, no details of the argument were made public. The scriptwriter was forced to make up the details of the conversation.

Apparently in the years after the first series was released, when Blair recounted his conversation with the Queen, “he has repeated, unattributed, the artificial lines that his fictional counterpart and Her Majesty’s spoke in the the film.”

Sayeed concludes that “[The screenwriter] appears to have altered Blair’s memory,” and visualizes future historians using Blair’s recollections (as “refreshed” by the screenwriter).

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