Diarmuid Ferriter: Our appetite for tv series The Crown shows no sign of dimming

Almost 20 years ago, Irish Dominican monk Patrick Hederman told an amusing story about his mother. In 1936, she seemed very knowledgeable about the royal abdication crisis as a result of Edward VIIIs relationship with Wallis Simpson, despite attempts to keep such filthy foreign news out of Ireland: When my mother began to tell people at parties in Dublin, they thought she was off her head. Being a conscientious Catholic she asked a Jesuit priest whether it was libel, detraction, or scandal to be spreading news that was common knowledge in America but completely unknown over here. Im not quite sure which it is, he said but its very interesting, tell me more
The interest was sustained over the decades; Mary Kennys 2009 book Crown and Shamrock is an intriguing dissection of what she calls love and hate between Ireland and the British monarchy. In the summer of 1953 when she was aged 9 and living with her aunt and uncle in Sandymount, they, leaving Mary behind, headed off to a private soirée in the local Methodist Hall where, behind closed doors, they watched the film of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. When this was revealed to Mary, she was told not to tell anyone: this was a clandestine and guilty pleasure, it seemed, especially because Dublin cinemas had withdrawn plans to show it following bomb threats from the Anti-Partition League.