As Season 2 of The Crown approaches, however, Elizabeth II and her country face challenges on many fronts, particularly in the Middle East. We have watched the tensions developing in this final episode as Anthony Eden seeks to confront and fails to pacify Egypt’s Colonel Nasser over the ownership of the Suez Canal. It seems a minor colonial annoyance in 1955.

But by the end of 1956, the folly and tragedy of Suez will come to stand for far more – a historic watershed after which Britain’s place in the world will never be the same again. The shock and disillusionment will strike harshly at many aspects of British life, and not least at the crown and the woman who wears it. The gloriously robed monarch who smiles into Cecil Beaton’s camera in the autumn of 1955 is, to all appearances, an eternal figurehead, as classic and serene as her portrait by Annigoni. But that was then. Have we – has she – seen the best of it?