The one about Nazis

Spoiler alert for viewers of The Crown who have not made it to Episode 6!

We are devouring the second series of The Crown at a two-episodes-per-night pace.  It amazes me that, with the Queen and Prince Philip still very much alive, the producers are so willing to air the Royal Family's dirty laundry.  One episode in this series was entirely about Philip's long-rumoured philandering; Princess Margaret seems like a high-class tart; and the Queen Mother is portrayed as an insufferable and humourless snob.

Last night we watched episode 6, in which the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were depicted as not merely insufferable snobs, but also as Nazi fellow-travellers.  The producers have been very careful to keep everything about the show in its proper time period, from the cars to the twinsets that the Queen often favours.  So I was a bit surprised to find a major error in protocol as it applies at the Foreign Office.

Early in the episode, incriminating documents about the Windsors are translated by a Foreign Office linguist. He barges into his boss's office, to be greeted with a bark of "Don't you know how to knock?"  The two of them then go to a senior diplomat's office, carefully knocking on the door before entering.  Here's the thing: almost the first thing I was told when I started work at the Foreign Office many years ago was: never knock on a door. Even if you suspected that the Permanent Under Secretary was in flagrante with his secretary at that very moment, you just walked in unannounced.  I never encountered that practice anywhere else and I'm surprised that nobody mentioned it to the people making The Crown.

It's probably not a spoiler if I reveal to you that the Duke of Windsor seems to have been a conniving sack of sewage.