Royal drama the crown shows queen's father reciting dirty limerick

The award-winning writer Peter Morgan "ducked" the opportunity to meet the Queen and others at Buckingham Palace in order to maintain his independence writing a highly anticipated

biopic of the royal family, The Crown. The Netflix drama, which offers an in-depth look at the Queen's ascension to the throne and early years as monarch, could cause some controversy

as King George VI is portrayed reciting a limerick on the morning of his daughter's wedding that includes the word "cunt". The opening episode of the first series, which

launches on 4 November, starts with the king coughing blood into the toilet and includes a gruesome operation in Buckingham Palace. Although the king's fondness for dirty limericks has

been documented, the limerick was chosen from a selection put forward in emails between the production team and the director, Stephen Daldry. Daldry told an invited audience at the British

Academy of Film and Television Arts that while dramatic licence was used to heighten some scenes, a team of seven or eight full-time researchers had worked on historical accuracy. Among the

details left out of the biopic was that the Queen "used to share a lot of baths" with her new husband. "I toyed with the idea of putting them in a bath together but I thought,

maybe not," he said. Morgan – whose earlier work The Audience focused on the Queen's relationships with British prime ministers – insisted he had not sought official approval.

"I want to keep my distance," he said. "Better to have complete independence. I want to be free to write how and what I want. I don't want to feel that I'm endorsed

or supported or that I owe anyone." He said he had "ducked the opportunity to meet her a couple of times" because he would be "in shock", meeting someone he had

written so much about. Morgan, who started a rich vein of writing about British leaders with The Deal, which depicted the political pact between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, was given a CBE

in the 2016 New Year honours for services to drama. "I was lucky enough to be given an honour recently," he said. "A gentleman came up to me and put a card in my hand and

said: 'I think you and I should have lunch.' I just felt it was better for him and better for me not to." With the second series of The Crown – which finishes in the 1960s –

already being filmed in Elstree in north London, Daldry said he was "assuming that we will carry on". Morgan said it was even more important to keep his distance from the palace

"if we do carry on [as] more and more people are connected and reachable". A palace source confirmed there had been no contact between the two sides, saying: "It's a

fictional drama." Unless anything is libellous the palace is likely to ignore any fuss, as it has done with other royal biopics. The British writer and director were full of praise for

Netflix, the live streaming global group, which agreed the two-series deal. "They said yes and got out of the way," said Daldry. Such was the desire for authenticity that the

executive producer, Suzanne Mackie, creative director of the producers Left Bank Pictures, was persuaded by Daldry to pay for an expensive vintage train to show the royal family's trip

to Sandringham. The cost of the two series was more than £100m for 20 episodes.