'The Crown' returns this November. I have thoughts.
'The Crown' returns this November. I have thoughts.
The acclaimed and criticized Netflix series is delving into the most sensitive of royal topics: the death of Diana
Because this post contains a paywall, I’m starting with clocks … and a confession: I thought Daylight Savings Time ended last weekend in Canada.
I loath the semi-annual time change but the autumnal switch gives me an extra hour one morning a year, so I tolerate it. Not this year. I was crushed when a friend gently broke the news that the Canadian switch didn’t occur until Nov. 4. (I have both the UK and Canadian holiday schedules in my Google calendar app, which inconveniently doesn’t distinguish between the two holiday schedules.)
Sigh.
At least I’m not one of the three horological conservators working with the Royal Collection who have to change more than 1,600 historic timepieces in all the royal residences, including 450 in Windsor Castle alone. It takes the castle’s expert more than 18 hours to make the winter switch, largely because the hands on most clocks can’t be pushed back an hour but have to be carefully rotated forward … either 11 or 23 hours, depending on the clock.
So they climb ladders, bend over balustrades and scramble up into turrets to systematically change every timepiece, including those in the kitchens, which are always set five minutes early so the food arrives at the royal dining table on time.
All year round, they keep the clocks running on time — so ask which clocks chime the quarter hour if on a tour of a royal residence. The guides can often direct you to a particularly impressive clock.
Fun fact: Some of the only clocks that aren’t wound are the tiny ones in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. The Cartier timepieces from the 1920s do work but are so small and delicate that they would require daily winding, which would wear out the mechanisms.
THE SUMMER OF DIANA AND ‘THE CROWN’
The final season of Netflix’s “The Crown” starts on November 16. I’m dreading it.
The focus of the first half of the season will be Diana, Diana, and Diana. It makes sense as the Princess of Wales once dominated the headlines, especially in the months before her death on August 31, 1997.
During that Summer of Diana, I was working in the newsroom of CTV News and clearly remember how she was constantly in the news as she flitted from event to event, from country to country. CTV News didn’t cover the royals to anywhere near the intensity of the British press but that summer, it felt like she was rarely not part of the news lineup.
As Diana says in the trailer, “It has all been a bit mad recently.”
May 22: She travels to Pakistan to stay with her friends Jemima and Imran Khan (later, the country’s prime minister) and raises money for a cancer clinic.
June 3: She features a sleek haircut and dons a low-cut sparkling blue dress by Jacques Azagury with a spectacular diamond-and-pearl necklace from Garrard for a performance of Swan Lake by the English National Ballet.
June 18: She travels to New York, where she met with Mother Teresa (who would die three days after Diana).
June 22: Still in New York, she attends the gala party at Christie’s auction house, which was selling 79 of her most iconic gowns and outfits. It raises more than US$3.2 million for charity.
June 30: She appears on the cover of Vanity Fair, which includes a series of glamorous “new look” photos by Mario Testino.
July 1: For her 36th birthday, she dons another low-cut Azagury dress to attend a party for the 100th anniversary of the Tate Gallery.
July 17: She, Prince William and Prince Harry holiday at the celebrity town of St. Tropez, France, which is also home base of a huge pack of paparazzi, who never stopped taking pictures of the family, including while at the villa and yacht of their host, Harrod’s owner Mohamed Fayed. It is there that she and his son, Dodi Fayed, reportedly kindle their romance.
July 22: She sits beside Elton John at the funeral for Italian designer Gianni Versace, who was murdered in Florida while she was with Dodi on the Fayed yacht.
August 9: She visits Bosnia to raise awareness of the dangers of landmines. The papers are full of speculation about her relationship with Dodi.
August 10: The Sunday Mirror front page features a blurry photo of “The Kiss,” confirming their romance. In the following days, more and more photos of the couple appear around the world.
August 15: His ex-fiancée, Kelly Fisher, wears her engagement ring to a press conference in Beverly Hills, California, where she announces she’s suing Dodi. Her lawyer claims she only learned of Dodi’s betrayal when she saw “The Kiss” image and that Dodi “led her emotionally all the way up to the altar and abandoned her when they were almost there.” (In 2008, Vanity Fair reports that Dodi kept Kelly was on one yacht while Diana was on another).
Late August: Diana is back in the Mediterranean with Dodi Fayed. They cruise from France to Italy, their every move recorded by the paparazzi.
August 30: They fly to Paris and stay at the Ritz hotel before leaving late that night for their fateful drive through Paris that ended in a fatal car crash that killed Diana, Dodi, his driver Henri Paul (who was both drunk and speeding). The only survivor is Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones. None of them were wearing seatbelts. (Updated with information from the exhaustive Paget Inquiry that none of them were wearing seatbelts.)
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