It\u2019s true. No-one is going to imagine, for example, that over dinner at Sandringham Diana (Kristen Stewart) really did rip from her neck the pearls Prince Charles<\/a> (Jack Farthing) had just given her \u2013 and then crunch them up with spoonfuls of soup. Or that she really rescued her sons from the stifling bosom of the royal family by breaking into a Boxing Day pheasant shoot, dressed as a scarecrow, and dramatically snatching them away. There is not the danger \u2013 as there was with The Crown<\/em><\/a>\u2019s far more plausible inventions, its presentation of rumour as fact \u2013 that viewers will believe that these are the real, recorded events, and judge the royals accordingly.<\/p>\n And yet, in a different sense, Spencer<\/em> does have its eye firmly fixed on history.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The action takes place over the three days of Christmas 1991 (though the dates are not specified). The following year (in 1992, the Queen\u2019s annus horribilis<\/em>), Charles and Diana would famously separate and there would no longer be any pretence of a united family. In the film, Diana arrives at Sandringham symbolically lost and (in defiance of etiquette) late: sneaking presents to her boys that they can open on Christmas Day \u2013 like every other child in the country \u2013 rather than on Christmas Eve, as the royals do, in the traditional German way.<\/p>\n Another tradition visualised in the film is that the royals did indeed spend Christmas at Sandringham (though between 1964 and 1989 the festivities were moved to Windsor Castle, to accommodate the ever-growing extended royal family). So, what about the Sandringham portrayed in the film? Spencer<\/em> was shot in several German castles: notably a schloss [roughly akin to a country house] originally built for Queen Victoria<\/a>\u2019s eldest daughter \u2013 Victoria, Princess Royal, who became German empress and queen of Prussia \u2013 and is now a hotel. This is correct, in that the royal family still honour their German antecedents, and it dates from the correct era.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s doubtful whether the combination of immense, barrack-like grandeur and five-star luxury portrayed on screen entirely reflects Sandringham reality. The tastes of the senior royals suggest a dated kind of cosiness running alongside historic splendour in their homes (famously, the Queen favours Tupperware containers for her breakfast cereal!) Equally depressing, to Diana\u2019s taste, maybe.<\/p>\n But the gargantuan meals are a reality (as is the name of the head chef \u2018Darren\u2019 \u2013 perhaps drawn from real-life Darren McGrady, personal chef to Elizabeth II<\/a> \u2013 who is featured as a Diana supporter in the film). As for the telling scene where a reluctant Diana (secretly suffering with bulimia nervosa<\/a>, as in realilty) is weighed upon her arrival: this is part of an arcane tradition that sees guests clocked in and out, to see whether they\u2019ve eaten enough to prove they\u2019ve had a good time at table. Official information describes only weighing scales \u2013 the same sort that jockeys use; dated c1872 but still at Sandringham \u2013 that \u2018were\u2019 used to weigh guests on arrival and departure. There are plenty who claim the bizarre, supposedly jokey, practice still goes on today.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps the point is this: there were a couple of \u2018royal protocol advisors\u2019 on hand to mean that anything Spencer<\/em>got \u2018wrong\u2019, it did so knowingly. The dramatic choices all suggest the weight of tradition \u2013 and service and luxury \u2013 by which Diana is oppressed. The writer James Pope-Hennessy, visiting Sandringham in the 1950s, described it as \u201ca hideous house with a horrible atmosphere in parts and in others no atmosphere at all\u201d, adding, \u201cIt was like a visit to a morgue.\u201d<\/p>\n Where the royals are concerned, of course, it\u2019s hard for fiction to be any stranger than reality. In Sandringham, Diana tells her sons that there is no future; past and present are the same thing. The film\u2019s point about time is pursued insistently. What will they say about her in a thousand years, she asks her devoted dresser (played by Sally Hawkins).<\/p>\n Royals, Kristen Stewart\u2019s Diana notes, tend to be described by an ever-briefer tagline as time wears on \u2013 William \u2018the Conqueror\u2019, Elizabeth \u2018the Virgin<\/a>\u2019. What will it be for her, she asks \u2013 Diana \u2018the Insane\u2019? Actually, finds Diana, a better answer lies in the title of a biography of Anne Boleyn which has been left beside her bed \u2013 a book about Anne \u2018a Martyr\u2019.<\/p>\n But if the film is on Diana\u2019s side, it does not fall into the trap of making her a saint. Nor \u2013 unlike earlier screen versions in the immediate aftermath of Diana\u2019s 1997 death \u2013 does it make Charles a monster. In this, perhaps, it has gained from the perspective given by almost 25 years of history. Charles is not all bad, her dresser tells Diana \u2013 \u201cnone of them are\u201d. Even the sinister, ever-watchful equerry Major Gregory (Timothy Spall), determined to corral the errant princess into the pen of royal protocol, is given a moment of humanity in which he explains his allegiance \u2013 to the Crown itself, rather than to any individual. It\u2019s not an attitude that this Diana shares, but it is allowed its own validity.<\/p>\n If the disapproval of real-life courtiers was probably more silent, or less openly expressed, that\u2019s probably a compromise allowable to anyone trying to make a movie. Characters in the film suggest repeatedly that at Sandringham everyone hears everything; that there are no secrets. This perhaps alludes to the fact that it was from Sandringham that Diana made the bugged \u2018Squidgygate\u2019 calls to James Gilbey \u2013 leaked in such suspicious circumstances \u2013 that saw her, as well as her husband, condemned in the press for adultery.<\/p>\n Yet the moral of this \u2018fable\u2019 is that Diana not only would, but should<\/em> break free of her particular prince, and the constraints imposed by his position. She does so with the support of an unlikely ally \u00ad\u2013 the ghost of Anne Boleyn<\/a> (Amy Manson). The film chooses to draw a parallel with the idea that Henry VIII<\/a>\u2019s beheaded queen was another woman who married into England\u2019s royal family, and wound up with every reason to regret it. In one dramatic choice, the film shows that Diana is distressed because the aforementioned pearls that Charles had given her are identical to those he gave to Camilla Parker Bowles<\/a>, his long-time mistress. When Anne (she says) saw Jane Seymour wearing a miniature of Henry, identical to the one she herself wore, she simply ripped it off her own neck.<\/p>\nWhen and where does Spencer<\/em> take place?<\/h3>\n
![\""British\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2021\/11\/GettyImages-1216628949-40f1907.jpg?quality=90&resize=616%2C413"\" "\\"\"British\\"\/")
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The weight of tradition<\/h3>\n
Unlike earlier screen versions, it does not make Charles a monster. In this, perhaps, it has gained from the perspective given by almost 25 years of history <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
![\""Kristen\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2021\/11\/2H4B49K-b828235.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C340"\" "\\"\"SPENCER,\\"")
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