Does it matter if “The Crown” fictionalises reality?

“IM STRUGGLING TO’ find any redeeming features in these people at all,” says Margaret Thatcher to her husband Denis in the course of a visit to Balmoral Castle, where the Thatchers are snubbed, humiliated and forced to play an after-dinner game called Ibble Dibble in which players smear their faces with burnt cork while getting drunk. Oliver Dowden, Britain’s culture secretary, takes a similar view of the portrayal of the Royal Family in “The Crown”. He believes that the real royals have been traduced by Netflix, which makes the drama, and has demanded that the company issue a health warning before future episodes, pointing out that the programme is fiction.It seems odd that a government led by a man who is writing a book on Shakespeare should insist on historical accuracy in drama. Boris Johnson has not been heard complaining that “Richard III” libels a supposedly non-nepoticidal monarch. All drama that involves real people is, to some extent, fiction: when Charles and Diana stared into each other’s eyes and realised it was over, no one else was in the room where it happened. If those being portrayed are dead, decently behaved and unimportant, nobody cares what lines script writers make up for them. But if they are alive, adulterous and the heir to the throne, things are bound to get sticky.