The Crown in Vogue: Vogue's 'special royal salute' to Queen Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor

Product Information

The Queen's cousin, Vogue's Lord Lichfield proved an insightful photographer of royal style along with many of Vogue's fashion photographers including Horst, Norman Parkinson and David Bailey. In 1936, the hand of Wallis Simpson, a twice-married woman, was photographed resting on the forearm of the king. There were little known but evocative black and white press prints, by unknown hands certainly, but no less impactful for showing royal life as it developed. Comparisons to the royal world seem almost impossible and yet she wonders if the reason the show attracts so many top actors is a shared sense of lost self. Claire Foy, who famously played the role in the first two instalments of the Netflix drama, will also make a cameo in a flashback – while Imelda Staunton will take on the role for the final two seasons.

Within The Firm, Prince Charles’s courtship of Lady Diana Spencer, their 1981 wedding, and the subsequent deterioration of their marriage is also central to the series – as is the future King’s ongoing devotion to Camilla Parker Bowles. Vogue's first star photographer, Cecil Beaton, was entranced by the House of Windsor and the admiration was mutual.

We hope that when we take you back in time over a century of the Crown in Vogue that you will delight in its history and recognise that the magic revealed by our royal family is the magic of our own lives, our own shared history. But we also look to the monarchy to represent us as a nation, to reflect who we are and what we stand for on the international stage, to fly the flag for our Britishness – however nebulous a concept that is. The role he rejected was one of influence but also impotence, an ability to push at the boundaries while knowing the boundaries would always remain in place. The interview destroyed any remnants of her relationship with the Windsors and put an end to her trusting royal security. Other treasures spilled out, unpublished portraits of Diana, Princess of Wales, when she was still Lady Diana Spencer, outtakes from her very first Vogue sitting, with Snowdon in 1981.

Styled by Vogue fashion editor Verity Parker for the issue, the cast gather in exquisite creations evoking the era. She arrives at our sunny table outside a hyper-healthy local café selling delicious bowls that she likes, with her hair blonded, head to toe in linen with Dior sandals and a sprinkle of late summer jewellery. The public got to watch her evolve into an incredibly strong woman, trying to control a narrative that was the slipperiest thing ever. Vogue, like the royal family, has been through many evolutions of its own, and to view Her Majesty's life through the record of our pages is truly a document of history.The lengthy marriage break-up scenes are a tough watch and were exhausting to shoot, she says, “because you’re in the subterranean part of the psyche, the most painful bits”. The clip appears to show Diana getting ready for her controversial Panorama interview with the now-disgraced Martin Bashir in 1995, which is believed to take up a full episode in the series.

Whether in The Night Manager, the hit John Le Carré television adaptation, in which she whizzed around Majorca playing girlfriend to Hugh Laurie’s arms dealer, or on a superyacht with cruel billionaire Kenneth Branagh in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, “I’ve cornered the market,” she says. In 1992, she made a speech on the 40th anniversary of her accession in which she described that year as her “ annus horribilis”. Summoned to Buckingham Palace in 1939 to take pictures of Queen Elizabeth, consort to the king, a rich and far-reaching career as a photographer royal began—and British Vogue reaped the benefits.His most recent exhibitions are Vogue 100 A Century of Styleand Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things(both National Portrait Gallery, 2016 and 2020). After some back and forth, series creator Peter Morgan has confirmed that there will be another two seasons of The Crown. These were part of a set that marked the first time—it was 1948—that a member of the royal family had been photographed in color in Vogue.