THE ROYAL WARDROBE

As Victoria creator, historian and author Daisy Goodwin explores the soft power of the late Queen's fashion sense in her new play, she reveals the influence of the monarch's bond with her personal dresser and close confidante Angela Kelly

- By Rebecca Russell DEPUTY ROYAL EDITOR

SCREENWRITER and novelist Daisy Goodwin has a theory as to why so many creatives are drawn to projects about Queen Elizabeth II. “She was extraordinary because she gave so little away,” smiles the creator of ITV’s phenomenally successful drama Victoria, starring Jenna Coleman. “That gives you so much to play with because you’re never going to get the same thing.”

Which is why she’d like theatregoers to know that her new stage show, By Royal Appointment, starring Anne Reid as Her Majesty and Caroline Quentin as The Dresser, is a distinctly different proposition to The Crown, Peter Morgan’s lavish Netflix saga which aired its sixth, and final, series in 2023.

Instead of dramatising the Queen’s reign through historical events, as Morgan did, Goodwin explores the discreet power the late monarch wielded through diplomatic dressing. The show has been inspired - in part - by the devoted and confidential relationship she had with her personal dresser, Angela Kelly.

“My version of the Queen is different from The Crown’s because I’m coming at it from the idea of her as a woman, whereas Peter Morgan is writing about her as a monarch,” explains Goodwin.

“The thing about the Queen is that everyone projected on her what they wanted her to be, but she was so poker-faced that you never really knew what she was thinking.

“One of the things I explore in the play is the idea that, actually, her clothes were her way of signalling her true thoughts.”

When the Queen arrived for the opening of Parliament in 2017 she wore a cornflower blue hat with yellow flowers that bore an astonishing resemblance to the colours of the European Union’s flag.

“I think her choice of millinery was an attempt to rebut the newspaper stories put about by prominent Brexiteers that the monarch had expressed pro-Brexit views at a Buckingham Palace lunch,” says Goodwin. “A hat is more than a piece of straw on the Queen’s head. It’s a skilful piece of PR.”