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THE SCRIPTWRITER OF The Queen has claimed former British Prime Minister Tony Blair used dialogue from the film in his own autobiography.
Blair’s book A Journey was published in 2011, and came five years after Oscar-winning move The Queen, starring Helen Mirren.
The film depicts the events around the death of Princess Diana in 1997, and the UK Royal Family’s reaction to it. Blair is played by Michael Sheen.
Screenwriter Peter Morgan, who has also worked on series The Crown, said in an interview last week that Blair had a “blurred” memory and has been “pretending” he hasn’t watched the film, the Telegraph reported.
“There came a moment after the film that I wrote, The Queen, had come out where Tony Blair was asked about his audience with the Queen,” Morgan said.
And in his book, his autobiography, which, of course, came many years after we made the film The Queen, Tony Blair, when referring back to that critical period in the aftermath of Diana’s death, used a number of expressions and quotations that seemed to me to be very familiar because they sounded like my dialogue… I thought that I can’t have got it that right.
Morgan said that he and others involved in the film felt fairly confident about how Blair and the Queen would have approached the situation but “surely he didn’t say the very things that I’ve written (in the script) that he’d said?”.
He said he phoned colleagues to check whether they’d read Blair’s autobiography because “it sounded very much like the scene [he] wrote”.
And it seems that even Blair’s memory had sort of become blurred with what we had done… He said, ‘I then said that’. I was like, well, you didn’t. At least, I don’t think you did. Well, if you did, what a stroke of luck on my behalf. But I’m pretty sure you’re actually just quoting what I wrote, which you have watched and which you’ve subsequently denied that you’ve watched but which you’ve clearly watched.
Some examples include a section from the film where Blair – played by Sheen – tells his staff that he must “save this family from themselves” and, in his book, Blair wrote “I thought my job was to protect the monarchy”.
In another scene, the Queen’s private secretary says that Blair’s “people’s princess” speech is “over the top”, and Blair wrote that the phrase is “corny and over the top”.
When he has his first audience with the Queen after being elected Prime Minister, in the film she tells Blair “You are my tenth Prime Minister, Mr Blair. The first of course was Winston Churchill.”
In the book, Blair wrote that the Queen told him: “You are my tenth Prime Minister. The first was Winston.”
A spokesperson for Blair, however, said that the former prime minister hasn’t seen the film.
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We had a citizens assembly not to long back on biodiversity.
One of the results of this was that lights are destroying the insect world with specifics to the nocturnal ones.
Within a couple of days of this finding, a well known advertisement company went and erected giant gawdy tv screens on the sides of Dublin roads, you can see these things for miles at night, all to advertise the latest trainer or motor vehicle with no concern what-so-ever about the impact these things and similar are causing.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I heard yesterday that our wonderful government just green lighted roundup for another 10 years, a known toxic carcinogen, and a known exterminator of microbes in the soil !!!
A government Actively CONSPIRING nature!!!
@David: “conspiring against nature”
@David: that was an EU decision on roundup. Only our Green MEPs objected but that wasn’t enough.
@eoin fitzpatrick: Our Greens in government are compliant with that EU decision.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: Blaming the Greens in particular, as some are doing, is completely irrational. They are a small minority.
@eoin fitzpatrick: Yes, correct, but I expect our government to protect our land.
And, yes in fairness, the greens did the right thing on this occasion.
@Brendan O’Brien: I wasn’t blaming the green’s, for clarity.
We are also at a point where animals should not be allowed to apply for parol after 12 years in prison for heinous crimes. This country is gone so far done the wrong road it’s scary.
Beautiful photos – the fox is a creature of beauty.
@Pat the Baker: how the lads on horses fox hunting with packs of dogs do what they do and get a kick out of it is beyond me.
“back to a state where we’re a part of nature again”
Nice platitude.
Anyone know what it means?
@Tommy Haze: living more harmoniously with nature instead of destroying everything around us maybe?
@Tommy Haze: I don’t think nature wants us back.
@Tommy Haze: Is it too much to ask that you use a little imagination?
@Tommy Haze: Hopefully we’re turning the corner on the lies of Christianity and realising that all we really understand is what is around us.
@Tommy Haze: Homeostasis.
Leo throwing a special party in Maynooth, grab the 6 packs, this one is gonna be off the hook…
What if Pagan beliefs had the time and space to evolve? Would we be as quick to write off ‘this world’ over the imagined better one.
@Thesaltyurchin: interesting. Christian thinking on nature is based on having domination over it. What a ruinous philosophy.
That was a quick read,felt a bit like a tikok video and waiting for part 2.
Put that shower we have in power out to pasture so they can be one with nature may aswel a much use as falling leaves from a tree
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