In less than a week, we will have a new season of The Crown. Somehow it feels like season 4 simultaneously premiered yesterday and ten years ago, but here we are at season 5. This season is a tad different from others. For any of us in our early thirties, we will actually have memories of these events in real-time. (Albeit skewed from childhood but still.) We are coming into that period where it is debatable whether or not it is history. So, I’m here to help! I’ve got the best books to read after watching The Crown Season 5, and some things to keep in mind!
Things to Consider When Watching The Crown
I will get into my recommended reading for The Crown very quickly, but I have a few things to keep in mind and consider when you are watching the Netflix drama.
1) The Crown is fictional
If you are reading this blog, I am assuming that you already know this. However, if you are unsure, The Crown is one hundred per cent fictional. Yes, it is based around people and events that we know exist/happened, but much of the series is made up of moments that we will never know about. We do not know the Royal Family privately, and we do not know what they are thinking- do not watch The Crown and make assumptions about the actual Royal Family based on it.
2) Peter Morgan has his own agenda
Peter Morgan, the creator of The Crown, very much has his own agenda with the series. He is setting out to tell a specific story, and it is not based in fact for the most part. His goal is to tell a highly dramatic story with the plot points that he wants to see. In some cases, it makes certain people look better, and in other cases, worse. He is not working with any of the royals to create this.
3) The last two seasons are very recent
In terms of history, the last two seasons of The Crown are a tad too new. This is a major debate within the field of history- how old does something need to be to be considered history?* A lot of historians will hold that the last 20-30 years are not yet history, as we are fairly close to the event still. Many people are still very emotionally attached to recent events, which does muddy the waters when studying the past. (That isn’t to say you cannot be emotionally attached to an historic event, but studying history doesn’t usually capitalise on it.) All of this is to say, much of the 1990s and 2000s are still gut reactions when it comes to the Royal Family, even outside of The Crown.
*Note: something that happened yesterday could be historic without being considered part of history yet.
The Best Books to Read After Watching The Crown Season 5
If you want to read up on 1990s or the early 2000s for the royals or catch up afterwards, these are my top books to read after watching season 5 of The Crown. You will notice, we are firmly into biography and memoir territory at this point. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, but go into it knowing that like Morgan, the author has a particular angle they are pushing.
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor- the Truth and the Turmoil, Tina Brown
The gripping inside story of the British royal family’s battle to overcome the dramas of the Diana years—only to confront new, twenty-first-century crises
“Never again” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Princess Diana’s tragic death. More specifically, there could never be “another Diana”—a member of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the British monarchy.
Picking up where Tina Brown’s masterful The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the traumatic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet.
Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last twenty-five years. We see the Queen’s stoic resolve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her. Brown explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla Parker Bowles his wife, the tension between William and Harry on “different paths,” the ascendance of Kate Middleton, the downfall of Prince Andrew, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to step back as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy’s best efforts, “never again” seems fast approaching.
Why You Should Read This…
This has been one of the biggest royal book releases of the year, and I think for good reason. The Palace Papers is about as neutral as you are going to get- Brown is equally critical of all members of the royal family. It is not a lovey-dovey protrayal of any of them, including the often “saint” Diana. (I find people’s depiction of her as the best, most amazing, wonderful person really pushes an untrue and unrealistic narrative- she was a person with her good and bad moments, too.) The Palace Papers covers the period covered in this season of The Crown from a number of royal perspectives, and I think will balance it out well.
You can find my full review of The Palace Papers here!
Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words, Andrew Morton
When Diana: Her True Story was first published in 1992, it forever changed the way the public viewed the British monarchy. Greeted initially with disbelief and ridicule, the #1 New York Times bestselling biography has become a unique literary classic, not just because of its explosive contents but also because of Diana’s intimate involvement in the publication. Never before had a senior royal spoken in such a raw, unfiltered way about her unhappy marriage, her relationship with the Queen, her extraordinary life inside the House of Windsor, her hopes, her fears, and her dreams. Now, twenty-five years on, biographer Andrew Morton has revisited the secret tapes he and the late princess made to reveal startling new insights into her life and mind. In this fully revised edition of his groundbreaking biography, Morton considers Diana’s legacy and her relevance to the modern royal family.
An icon in life and a legend in death, Diana continues to fascinate. Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words is the closest we will ever come to her autobiography.
Why You Should Read This…
I included this on my season 4 reading list for The Crown, but I think it bears repeating here. This was originally published in 1992, with Diana recording tapes that were snuck out of the palace to Morton. I suspect that this book is going to be featured in the fifth season, as it was a major moment for the Royal Family in the 1990s.
Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II, Robert Hardman
Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart.
Even with her recent passing at age ninety-six, she remains a twenty-first century global phenomenon commanding unrivalled respect and affection. Sealed off during the greatest peacetime emergency of modern times, she has stuck to her own maxim: “I have to be seen to be believed.”
Robert Hardman, one of Britain’s most acclaimed royal biographers, now wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy. Hardman distills Elizabeth’s complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal. It is a portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the Throne at age twenty-five.
Why You Should Read This…
This was released in March of 2022, so it does not quite include The Queen’s full life, but fairly close to it. Hardman is one of the more reliable royal biographers for me, as he has a journalistic background (and sticks to it). Queen of Our Times is less about gossip and he-said, she-said, and more about verifiable information. He also does address Prince Andrew’s scandals over the last number of years, and the Sussexes’ exit- not relevant to season 5 of The Crown, but still valid to their trajectory in reality. And although The Crown is spending more and more time on Charles and Diana, Elizabeth is still the heart of the series.
Innovation (The History of England # 6), Peter Ackroyd
Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd’s History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the twentieth century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne for almost five decades.
It was a century of enormous change, encompassing two world wars, four monarchs (Edward VII, George V, George VI and the Queen), the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the Labour Party, women’s suffrage, the birth of the NHS, the march of suburbia and the clearance of the slums. It was a period that saw the work of the Bloomsbury Group and T.S. Eliot, of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, from the end of the post-war slump to the technicolor explosion of the 1960s, to free love and punk rock, and from Thatcher to Blair.
Why You Should Read This…
I really enjoyed reading the entirety of this series, but it is the final volume that is relevant for fans of The Crown. Innovation obviously covers more than the partial-decade covered in the fifth season of the show, but it gives a fantastic idea of what was happening in the United Kingdom- politically, socially, and culturally. If you have ever sat and wondered, “did this political event really happen?” or “why don’t I know this person” while watching The Crown, this is the book for you!
Will you be watching The Crown season 5?
Cheers,
The Historian
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