<\/span><\/h2>\nIn making a TV series about real events decades after they occur, scriptwriters can tell a full story with details that may emerge far after contemporary accounts. This is the method The Crown writer Peter Morgan took to weave together the plot of one first season episode. In the wake of the Soviet Union testing nuclear weapons in 1953, and the subsequent scramble to meet with U. S. President Dwight Eisenhower, U. K. prime minister Winston Churchill suffers a stroke.<\/p>\n
His ally and head of Parliament’s House of Lords, Lord Salisbury works with the PM to keep this secret from both the Queen and the country, in an effort to keep Churchill’sstatus and power secure. Elizabeth learns of the stroke when Churchill’s private secretary Jock Colville comes clean, prompting the Queen to rip the PM to shreds over his conspiring. The thing is, this dressing down never happened because Churchill was long dead by the time the Queen found out about the stroke. She heard about Churchill’s ailment when the world did – in 1985 when Colville revealed the truth in his memoirs.<\/p>\n