riving in england being given the option to pay for a private test in a class or in britain still with one of the worst because of a death rates from corona virus in the world coming up on the show as netflix arguably rebukes the british government over a fiction warning for the crown is the true cost of the award winning show british identity itself we speak to the crown's historical consultant and author of a new book about royal feuds amidst the heart of so-called british democracy from william to harry and from kate to meghan was more coming up in today's going underground of 1st as netflix rejects calls from u.k. culture secretary all of a dowden over claims to a disclaimer warning viewers it's a work of fiction has the british public's imagination been irrevocably harmed after a year of valuable coronavirus misinformation and political spin joining me now is netflix's the crown's historical consultant and whose new book battle of brothers william harry and the inside story of a family untold reveals how in the heart of the british establishment sometimes truth is stranger than fiction robert lacey joins me now from london thanks so much

for coming on i'm going to ask you given that you have such a name in journalism for the fact that everyone in this country knows used by sell by dates on supermarket food for your work at the sunday times inside team why even writing about william and harry out of interest you're going way back into my u.c. and i asked yes i was an investigative journalist on consumer matters and back in the sixty's there were these strange codes on the bottoms of our your guts and i said what does that mean and that's it that's when it's going to go moldy and i said would i like to know when it was moldy and so 'd ran a campaign and sell by dates you can thank me for i mean when i die they're going to talk about my expiring date anyway that's another matter i said that it was important that the british monarchy should be analyzed with the same degree of scrutiny that we apply to anything else in our lives i i admire the british want to keep but i don't think we have. to worship it should not be treated as

a religion we are not servants of the british monarchy they are our servants we pay them our taxes and so it seemed to me right that we should look at how they're behaving how well they're handing out trust and to come up to the present day there was incredible mystery year ago about the relationship between harry and william with a talking to each other was it really a route between the wives what was going on and i thought let's try and find out the truth ok i thought we were subjects of the queen and she's head of the anglican church have you asked any members of the royal family what they thought of your new book or being your crown the netflix series when it comes to my book i got in touch with buckingham palace as i always have in the past and sent them a few sample chapters of difficult subjects to hear their point of view not to agree necessarily but to see what they have to say i don't show you those chapters

now here they are. it's an envelope they sent it back to me and open and they said mr lacy we're not going to read your chapters this is not a book we choose to cooperate on and therefore for the avoidance of any down to a misunderstanding i am returning them to you and open it and i keep them on my desk as a reminder. in the old days buckingham palace and the other palaces what open i think in their defense the pressure of tabloid scrutiny. just makes it impossible for them to operate in the old ways well maybe maybe they think that just opening the possible means that they have done some kind of corporation with you i mean the over the crown the netflix series you know that the culture minister all of a dowden in the morris johnson government has said that to be some kind of warning before each. percent of the series you think do you think the government the

government or the royal family they don't understand art it's a matter of both it suits the you know we have a 2 tier system in britain we have a democratically elected government who we vote for and they're supposed to run our lives efficiently and then we have this totally ceremonial relic of the past which is intended to remind ourselves of past glories and inspire us to future glorious and. it's treated almost as a subject of religion i mean i think when it comes to health warnings there should be a health warning about the british attitude towards them on a case because as i said they are human beings and actually they present themselves to us as a family don't they they call themselves the royal family they're supposed to be an exemplary family we pay them to be an exemplary family so when they are not i think we're entitled to to look at that and of course the trouble with the latest episode

of the crown series season of the crown it's the 4th season they were all everybody the establishment in britain was quite happy with the 1st 3 seasons which are back coronations are happy marriages and jubilee is now in the fall season the marriage isn't going wrong sorry of them breaking down in particular the marriage of di to charles brought about there's no secret by charles it's obsession and infatuation with camilla that's the ustream and that i'm afraid is what is now the subject of season 4 and we all have to live through it and the royal family have got to take the rough with the smooth if you remember the queen made this rather wonderful speech in 1902 about her anderson who rebuild this which was her latin for saying i've had a terrible bloody year. she treated it with a bit of humor and i think everybody else should as well when the book you say that camilla parker bowles. was used to brief the murdoch sun newspaper so do you detect

a change now and we've got coronavirus may be a new type of austerity though denied by boris johnson coming is there a greater fear of republicanism than there has been in recent years i think there is because at a time of national disunity people look to the crowd of the royal family for a display of unity in the queen did that marvelously at the beginning of the crisis with her great speech we'll meet again in so long since then the truth has been more divisive and of course the problem with camilla is that until season 4 of the crown came out she was headed serenely to becoming queen camilla with king charles the 3rd everybody forgotten about what happened in the 1980 is what got her there now suddenly being reminded of it and 'd it's not untrue. suddenly people are saying do we want to wave at the golden coach carrying the woman who displaced

diana all the friends of charles are protesting about this they are of course in fact also friends of camilla and they don't want to be reminded of this pleasant history that's got us in our current state where we invite the aunt of the throne and his wife we've had one of his advisors on the show recently i mean in this book you say that william at the age of 13 viewed the entire program in the study was eaten house master and referring of course to this famous interview with princess diana and at the b.b.c. and you said that according to a classmate he was overcome with a feeling of dread what have you made of the recent purported revelations that martin bashir set a chain of events now alleged that ended in diana's death well i'm afraid that a good half of these events have been very solidly proven that martin bashir in the b.b.c. . he faked bank statements in order to win the confidence of lord spencer having

got north spence's confidence they then moved on to his sister diana and that enabled bashir to get the interview the question is whether diana would have done this anyway and it's my belief that she would she was getting approached by oprah and she was getting approached by barbara walters i don't know maybe artie were getting in touch with that certainly david frost was what we know bashir did was to cheat in order to secure the interview. the question is whether the cheating involved diana saying things there were 'd 3 of us in the marriage i don't think charles would be suitable for what i told the top job whether she would have said these things anyway and i think she would because it was after all the previous year that charles himself started the trouble by giving his own interview in which

he started talking about his love for camilla so diana wanted to get her own back and as i say martin bashir used to be as methods allegedly to jump the queue but i think if he hadn't jumped the queue someone else would have got diana to say these things before she died for the religious matter of the ribisi martin bashir denies all wrongdoing as you know no one can seem to get a hold of him at the moment there is an official inquiry do you think tony hall who i should say was my boss at the b.b.c. a while back you think he should resign over the methods alleged to have been used to entrap that's the allegation princess diana well i think i hear agree with what prince william has said and prince harry is actually backed him up let's see what the truth shows and we'll act on that after that. to go back to the point you originally made it had a terrible emotional impact on william he felt betrayed by his mother

it broke about that break that happens to adolescence he just started school at eton college and gone through these ghastly initiation ceremonies he was on his own for the 1st time in his life and his house master later said that he found the boy weeping tears his eyes red with emotion and diana's faith healer simone simmons to whom i've spoken several times said that the following 'd weekend william came home absolutely furious with his mother and she thought that something had been severed irretrievably it had been in a way because suddenly william then at the age of what was he 1314 'd came to see perhaps of the 1st time that he'd been let down by his parents so when did he turn for comfort those of your 'd viewers who know eton college one of it's right by windsor castle out on the playing fields of eton william used to look up

and see who wins and who lived in windsor his grandmother the queen and philip his grandfather and that was the crucial stage in his life when he switched his emotional loyalties from his warring mother and father to the queen and prince philip and they became his mentors he'd go there for lunch every few weeks the queen would sit him down and talk about his responsibilities as a future monarch it became a source of immense consolation and strength for william to look at his future destiny but when we look at william today we're not looking at of success of prince charles because he's not really like his father he rather disagrees with his father we're looking at the next successor to queen elizabeth the 2nd ruling in very much the same steely determined and dignified side. and it's clear from all the opinion polls in britain today that people look to william and kate to the future

of the monarchy but he well ari i should say arguably environmentalist will want william to share prince charles or views and obviously you know prince william has been here to defend himself against him for the package on your desk has went and opened the i want to get on to the militarism aspect of the royal family because you write in this new book of yours that prince charles wanted to marry camilla parker bowles back in 92 and then there's kind of interruption he sent off on some cold war voyage to the caribbean on a gym as minerva because prince harry famously aligned the militarism in afghanistan with the royal family by his duties there what is this connection that we see on our t.v. screens of the military services in the royal family it's absolutely fascinating af in all my interviews about this book no one's ever asked me this very central question and you absolutely you're absolutely correct there's a sort of magic circle in britain between the armed forces and and the royal family

they each give each other credibility and when it comes to prince charles you're quite right the fact that prince charles had to do his military duty and was sent off a way across the world meant that 68 months camilla was left on her own and she decided since prince charles had not given her a full commitment that she would marry the man she'd been going out with anyway andrew parker bowles so when charles got back no camilla anymore and we know the history that followed jumping to the present day or recent times harry and his life in the military has been very very very interesting my book talks a lot about the cruelty of the british system everything is fine for the heir to the throne the so-called spare. is dispensable and. they saw his costars the little princesses margaret and there was

a but it didn't leave you know harry is not the 1st royals to come to grief margaret andrew harry they are all the spares who have tried in the different ways to find identity and have come to grief because what matters in the put your system is the firstborn thankfully addie didn't didn't come to grief in afghanistan stunned robert lacey i'll stop you that more from the author of battle of brothers after this short break.

welcome back i'm still here with the crown's historical consultant and author about the brothers robert lacey while andrew has come do a certain amount of grief because of his associations with. with paedophiles whilst being one of the few royal family members to arguably

a very risk his life for red britain in the in the mel venus falklands i want to get on to your arey in this book says he's dying to join tony blair's war in iraq and you mock the contrast of the fact that meghan markle. was an opponent of that war as a child. yes. i think it's fascinating the way in which these 2 people from very different backgrounds of come together to form what is clearly up a passionate union maybe i should just i should just say you you say in the book it's make them all go against the 991 gulf war not the one that harry was trying to him a joint open yes i mean the war that harry joined was the afghanistan war and. it was actually coming back from his 1st tour of duty on a plane with a coffin containing a danish soldier and sri of his fellow but you soldiers in comas that actually gave

him the idea for 'd the invictus games and the wonderful service that he has carried out among except this man so this link the militarism as you call it can have been official results and i think in the case of prince harry it has and it's clear that meghan whatever she thought about the gulf war as a child has come to back area because didn't we see them a couple of weeks ago going to a cemetery in los angeles and together laying tributes to dead. and fallen veterans and you know you say in the book that gordon brown the successor to tony blair is for the bank bailouts over here and he you allege that he saw that harry could be a good propaganda tool for the afghanistan war whilst the secret service is here said they couldn't protect him if he was to go into tony blair's iraq war. well absolutely i mean it depends on your point of view if you're a patriotic brit you think it's wonderful that

a member of the royal family goes and receive your life if you are the other side you will say look there's propaganda here at work and. harry is plenty i'm so happy to know that it was of course interesting that the recent senate off service in whitehall the true members of the british royal family who were actually fought in wars that's to say andrew and harry were both absent for different but controversial reasons and it going this does remain a troubled area did did the queen despise diana in the new book you say charles was questioned about even going to paris to collect the body of his dead wife and that the queen arranged for diana to be taken off to a mortuary in full and wrote in the studio the exact nature of the queen's feelings when diana died remain. a secret but there's no

doubt that. when it came to giving honor and homage to diana her 1st idea was we'll stay up in scotland until the morning of the funeral we'll fly down for the funeral and then we'll go back to scotland again will have done at u.t. and thankfully at that time britain had a dry minister since controversial but then in the 1st flush of his powers tony blair who said simply to the queen i'm afraid that is not possible there apart flowers piling up outside your palace you can't just drive past them you've got to come you've got to stay the night you've got to make a speech you've got to say words as a grandmother and there was enormous hostility and anger towards the queen after the death of diana but when the queen did these things it turned the tide right around one of the revelations in my book is that when lord spencer was on the

phone to prince giles in these tricky days between the death of diana and the funeral. something happened that caused a lot spencer to slam the ferndown and i asked him why this was he said because prince charles that as an insult to wards his sister only a few days dead the lord spencer found unacceptable and so he slammed the phone down and that may be some indication of how the royal family felt about diana of course and all these royal stories hard to corroborate anything that quiet for the time one thing is for certain perhaps maybe the crown will look at this in future series as what they think of the saudi royal family the queen obviously has been pictured with the defacto leader of saudi arabia implicated in yemen the world's worst humanitarian crisis you knew jamal khashoggi i understand and co-wrote articles with him. tell me about what you what you think has been done to.

to make up for the killing of your friend not enough i'm afraid i lived in saudi arabia after i wrote my 1st royal bestseller called majesty i went to live in jeddah in happier days i became a friend of jamal khashoggi as you say we wrote articles together it seemed in those days saudi arabia was moving in a more liberal direction they continually say that they are but as we know there was a hit squad sent with a bone saw to dismember his body it was preplanned whether or not the king and the crime prince well he denies it mamma didn't ahmed denies being directly involved in that assassination he denies it and i know i've no reason i've no evidence to disbelieve him however it does say something about the saudi system it does say something about the inherent cruelty of that particular dictatorship and you're

quite right the war in yemen is one of the great tragedies of the 21st century and in the crown we know that the queen has previously had private chats with prime ministers and tried to express feelings about. perhaps the preservation of the monarchy perhaps its preservation of britain's name in the world do you think the queen is talking about arms sales to saudi arabia as she watches the t.v. screens about you haven't. i think when it comes to the queen of politics one of the triumphs of the queen elizabeth the 2nd has been to stay above politics i mean that is not her job we don't want the queen whatever our feelings to to to make judgments one way or the other i think that's one of the reasons why prince charles has a certain question mark over him as a future monarch he's too opinionated and frankly the john you know think an

existential crisis like the environment demands that prince charles makes comments about the environment. i think i think it's absolutely proper that he does and of course william and harry do the same and the queen and the royal family also do but when you say existential crisis that's your definition at the end of the day this is a political issue i may feel just the same as you but still at the end of the day it's something that has to be implemented through politics and it is the job of the queen in the british royal family to stay out of politics and that's one of the basic reasons why hereon make another living on the other side of the atlantic in north america because they feel perhaps rather as you do that the royal family should be more involved as we say if you don't think the crown was wrong you think the crown is wrong and peter morgan was wrong to suggest that she did intervene over mrs hatch are saying mrs thatcher was tearing the fabric of society apart. i'm

sure the queen had feeling the the queen herself has personal feelings obviously which she often has difficulty in ensuring when it came to that episode of the crown it was the you know the judgment the what buckingham palace said in those crucial months which were a matter of controversy and resulted in the press secretary being. moving on to another job. that the queen felt mrs thatcher was too harsh we know the queen has definite feelings which she lets loose on occasions she said before the scottish referendum that she hoped everybody thinking about independence in scotland would think about it very hard and she said afterwards when david cameron told of the result the great grain spread across her features so all of

a she she is human but he disposed to be her job to rise above those feelings and to be neutral because after all if the royal family just become a branch of the government and the monarchy becomes subservient to the political party of the day. it doesn't have a function anymore it's supposed to stand above those things about the things that we all agree about and express the common values of britain and i just ask one follow the money question do you think they are going to be increasing pressures on the finances of a queen you're talking about combinations night club and high groom women young princes used to play i mean who is paying for all that the british taxpayer. yes and no i mean that the the the british taxpayer pays about $80000000.00 pounds a year for the royal family well that's actually what's it. were not much more than a pound the head of the taxpayer the british royal family is in fact the most expensive royal family in the whole of europe because let's not forget the royal

family is in sweden and norway in holland and so on they are much smaller much less expensive but when you do a cost benefit analysis of those families and this is independent agencies have done it the british royal family is in fact the best value because it is the most that most members who do the most jobs the royal in europe who is best family for money is princess anne because she goes at $500.00 times a year to do royal engagements prince charles is right up there the queen is right up there prince edward and sophie the someone called the joke and cluster who many of your listeners won't have heard of who does. 3 or $400.00 engagements a year so in terms of upholding british charities the british charitable sector is one of the most flourishing in the world but only because we have this on a system whereby if you give enough money to charity you'll get made a knight or a dame and that actually maybe stand it will but it causes

a lot of people to give money to charity and they say thank you and that's in the show we'll be back on wednesday for up announcement episode of the season 51 years after the british parliament voted to permit the end capital punishment though it would not be until 1908 until britain was fully evolutionist in practice and didn't know until then keep in touch via social media join the underground and you pretend that it's going face. problem drugs don't always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies too in every state in the united states we seem very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids invited to america

under the banner of medicine persisted with the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she did go separate dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer so who's to blame patients doctors manufacturers all the governments. look forward to talking to. you should work for people. must obey the orders given to a human being's except where such orders to conflict with the 1st law should your identification for should be very careful about official intelligence and the point is to trust the shia. areas with artificial intelligence will summon the demon.

must protect its own existences. it's not over yet folks the latest on breaks it would tell me what you need to know also what should we make of all this talk of secession in the united states is a divorce in the car.

the headlines across the largest country in the world. prepares to give 19 vaccinations in the hope of avoiding hard over the festive period. back to its borders as the rush to stockpile breaks in. films the effects of drug dealers taking over parts of. the rising use of narcotics in the german capital plus also this hour british art gallery mates a mural depicting a black child with a chain around his unequivocally offensive i guess opinion is the take gallery in london he considers removing it altogether. away.