The New Murrey and Blue blog

This article lists a few errors in two current popular drama series but its criticisms are not as authoritative as they may seem. On “Victoria”, it quotes Professor Jane Ridley, who is a leading expert on that monarch and is a descendant of one of England’s first married bishops, and A.N. Wilson on several points. However, some of the suggestions are not actually attributed to either source.

Professor Ridley insists that Victoria did not have a German accent and a recording may well exist to demonstrate this. She, her father and paternal grandfather were all British-born and raised. As soon as George I succeeded to the British throne, he moved permanently to this country with his heir, so the Hanoverians became principally a British dynasty. Prince Frederick (1707-51) lived in Germany until just after his father’s accession but crossed the North Sea eight years before his marriage and nine before any of his legitimate children were born.

Dramatists do make mistakes with historical programmes but their critics have been known to err as well. Ray Winstone’s Henry VIII (2003) is a case in point – his birthplace is near Henry’s in Greenwich and his accent was probably mis-rendered but one reader thought that he should “sound Welsh”. The “Tudors” was of particular interest to pedants as well.