The Crown is as accurate as a drama can be about Thatcher and the Queen David Lister Before joining The Independent for its launch in the autumn of 1986, I was on the news desk of the Sunday Times. I have been reminded of that period by the current series of The Crown, detailing as it does the tension between The Queen and the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. In episode eight, the Sunday Times breaks the story about this tension in July of that year, with the front-page headline “Queen dismayed by ‘uncaring’ Thatcher”. And there is a scene when the palace’s press officer Michael Shea is told by one of his underlings that Simon Freeman from the