I like The Crown but I wish they’d stopped it before the death of Diana | Express Comment | Comment

The first two series of Netflix’s royal saga, starring Claire Foy as the wise, winning and very beautiful young Queen Elizabeth II, were brilliant advertisements for the monarchy. Royal courtiers hugged themselves with glee at such glamorous free publicity.

Later episodes, portraying difficult and scandalous storylines, were not so well received at Buckingham Palace and the critics came out in force.

And when two former prime ministers, Sir John Major and Sir Tony Blair, weighed in to give the show a kicking, Netflix was bullied into broadcasting a “health warning” at the start of each episode, making it clear The Crown is not a factual documentary. Of course, it’s not.

It’s a drama. Dramatic licence is taken. And errors are made, despite intensive research and advice throughout from the distinguished royal historian Robert Lacey.

Shakespeare’s history plays are also littered with historical errors. But does anyone dispute that they reveal great truths?

So, I am not down on The Crown. The narrative flair of the creator Peter Morgan has revealed modern history to an audience that might otherwise never have known it. It is a work of art that has won awards.

But I earnestly wish Morgan had stopped at the end of Series 5, which was his original plan. Series 6 will focus on the terrible deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed in the early hours of August 31, 1997.

Mercifully, the action will stop short of the Alma Tunnel. But it will see the late Princess, as played by Elizabeth Debicki, portrayed as a ghost.

The pain that the Princes William and Harry will feel on seeing their mother as an apparition can only be imagined.

And Harry has watched every minute of The Crown.

Total nonsense is the suggestion that the late Mohamed Al Fayed orchestrated the love affair of Diana and Dodi.

Dodi was deeply in love with the Princess and told me so. He had bought Julie Andrews’s house on the beach at Malibu, north of Los Angeles, and intended to make it their home.

Diana believed the American media would give her the break that she felt she was never given in Britain.

I hope this final season of The Crown will portray Diana and Dodi fairly and – above all – truthfully, as the kind, generous people they really were. That would be some small consolation.