With the arrival of the regally wonderful Olivia Colman, this run took us from 1964 to 1977, bringing some groovy fashions, industrial unrest and a new focus on Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and their various complicated love lives.
Wales
With the rising profile of Charles, we saw his 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales. This was, remarkably, filmed in the place itself, amid the Edwardian battlements of Caernarfon Castle in the north-west of the country. For the recreation of the Aberfan disaster of 1966, where a landslide covered a south Wales primary school, the production turned to Cwmaman. The unused Glynhafod Junior was turned into Pantglas Junior School, and further filming took place at Blaenavon’s Big Pit National Coal Museum.
London
For Winston Churchill’s funeral in Episode 1, St Paul’s Cathedral was played by Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, a medieval Gothic giant that’s one of the largest places of worship in Europe but still a great deal less busy than the real thing.
Meanwhile, for Marlborough House, home of Liz’s widowed grandmother Queen Mary, the production enlisted Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, its Jacobean glory still largely intact, from the gold-leaf roof of its Long Gallery to the drawing room lined with paintings over tapestries.
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Scotland
Princess Margaret’s travails took her this season to The Glen, the Scottish seat of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner. Footage for this was filmed at Rhinefield House Hotel in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, mostly around the pool, where she spies Roddy Llewellyn (Harry Treadaway).
Mustique
We also saw Margaret find her paradise on Tennant’s newly purchased Caribbean island of Mustique. This was southern Spain, with scenes shot around Málaga. While there, the production crew took full advantage of the landscape, employing it for scenes of Margaret and her new husband, Lord Snowdon, living it up in California on their US tour.
Washington
When Margaret and Snowdon flew to Washington DC to butter up President Johnson (Clancy Brown) in 1965, the White House they visited was in fact Hylands House, an 18th-century neoclassical stately home in Chelmsford.
France
For the Duke of Windsor (Derek Jacobi) in exile in the Bois de Boulogne outside Paris, we were really in a drawing room of West Wycombe House, the country pile of 18th-century rogue Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Hellfire Club. It’s a popular screen location, featured in Downton Abbey, Taboo and Patrick Melrose.
Season 2
Focusing on the years between 1956 and 1964, this season portrayed challenges at home and abroad, including the Suez Crisis and the Profumo Affair, and the Queen (played by her first incarnation, Claire Foy) as a very busy working mother.
South Africa
For this season, South Africa was the show’s go-to foreign location, covering most of the globe on Prince Philip’s world tour: Cape Town covered for Melbourne, the Keurbooms River was the Amazon, Kogel Bay on the Western Cape was Tonga and Hermanus was Bermuda.
