Nunn was principally a theatre director - even the small number of films he made tended to be adaptations of plays, so this is a rare foray into the world of 'straight' cinema. The screenplay is good - it's by David Edgar, from a story by Chris Bryant, who co-wrote Don't Look Now - the main events depicted are true, though the hate-love relationship with her husband Guildford are probably entirely fanciful. We're not really fans generally of this sort of thing but this really works.
This was Helena Bonham Carter's first film after Room with a View - she was around 19 and is excellent; Cary Elwes is her husband. The great John Wood plays his father (we last saw him in Foyle's War), Michael Hordern a sympathetic priest. As you'd expect from the director, it's a good cast - Jill Bennett, Jane Lapotaire (Queen Mary), Sara Kestelman and Patrick Stewart (her parents), Warren Saire (as young King Edward), Joss Ackland, Ian Hogg, Richard Vernon (a very familiar face from television and films), Pip Torrens and Guy Henry (didn't recognise either).
Well photographed by Douglas Slocombe (candlelit scenes still not as good as Barry Lyndon!) and expertly edited by Anne Coates. The camera operator is Chic Waterson; Allan Cameron is the production designer. Sue Blane and Davis Perry designed the costumes and Stephen Oliver wrote the score. It was a Paramount release.
Q and I both agreed that this would have made a much more interesting history lesson than the truly boring ones we used to get at school.
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