[post_page_title]Fact check: The Queen’s press secretary taking a fall for an anti-Thatcher article[/post_page_title]
As part of the overarching storyline about the supposed conflict between Prime Minister Thatcher and the Queen, we’re shown an incendiary newspaper headline. In 1986, the show tells us, London’s Sunday Times paper ran with the headline, “Queen Dismayed by ‘Uncaring’ Thatcher.”
The quote apparently came from Elizabeth’s own press secretary, Michael Shea, and was an unprecedented break in the monarch’s apolitical stance. The headline is completely genuine, but while the show paints Shea as an unwitting scapegoat fired because someone needed to take the fall for the Queen’s actions, in real life Shea volunteered the Queen’s supposed views to the paper himself.
