The designer Nicky Haslam once had the opportunity to ask the Queen what she thought about the tricky question of taste. It is not difficult to imagine the air of withering detachment in the royal voice when the reply came: “I don’t think it helps.”
This week, we were told that the American internet company Netflix is planning to make a 20-part, £100 million TV series about Queen Elizabeth and her life. The promise is that it will be in the best possible taste. But it is impossible not to view the plan as a transgression, if not of taste, then at least of decorum.
The scriptwriter is Peter Morgan, who wrote Helen Mirren’s The Queen as well as Frost/Nixon and the Lauda/Hunt motor-racing movie Rush. So he has a fine record in dealing sensitively and intelligently with human icons and monumental egos. But is such a series more likely to diminish or enhance the Queen’s imperious stature?