If like me, the fourth season of The Crown provided you with a welcome diversion during the second lockdown, you may have been surprised at some of the media outrage it’s provoked. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian claimed it was “as corrosive as fake news,” while Penny Junor in the Daily Mail has slammed its “wild, cruel distortions”. I can’t help feeling that some of the critics are being a bit po-faced. Haven’t the lives of royalty always been on some level a glorified soap opera for public consumption? To quote Christopher Hitchens, “This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII.”

Although I personally enjoyed the mix of potted political history and high-end costume drama, I’m still tempted to add my voice to the chorus of disapproval. This is because of season four’s unforgivable omission of Prince Charles’ mid-80s foray into architecture. From an architect’s perspective I can’t help but feel that this is where the season really dropped the ball.

Did we really need all those episodes devoted to Princess Margaret feeling sorry for herself on Mustique, and Mark Thatcher getting lost in the Sahel, when there was a far richer seam of symbolism to be mined from events much closer to home? This was a moment when, in a strange way, Charles’ views on architecture briefly put him in the vanguard of a cultural movement.

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