William and Harry told to do their duty

When General Sir Mike Jackson had an audience with the Queen, he would ask his staff to request a midday slot. “Because after half an hour or 40 minutes, the Queen would ring a small bell and say, ‘Time for a sherry, I think.’”

Just one tiny insight into royal life featured in The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor (ITVX). Of course, as you may have read, Sir Mike had something rather bigger to divulge: claiming that the late Queen wanted both Prince Harry and Prince William to serve in Afghanistan. “My grandsons have taken my shilling, therefore they must do their duty,” she is said to have told Sir Mike, who for some reason has decided to break protocol and share details of his private audience with the monarch.

This five-hour series is being released in time for the Coronation but the title suggests it was conceived as a companion piece to the most recent series of Netflix’s The Crown. It runs, decade by decade, through all the soap-opera storylines familiar from that show. Episode one, for instance, deals with a bomb threat at the Prince of Wales’s investiture, and Princess Margaret’s love life. By the time we get to episode five, it’s the Duke of York’s Newsnight interview followed by Megxit. If you’re an avid royal watcher, an avid Netflix viewer, or have simply found no escape from royal stories over the past couple of years, very little here will be new.