Have you seen (or binge-watched) the Netflix series The Crown? And wondered whether this conversation or that reenactment is “true” to the historical record? For example, did British prime minister Anthony Eden really hope to keep Queen Elizabeth II in the dark about Suez? (He almost does just that in The Crown.) And why, when he comes clean to her about the secret “collusion” with Israel and France, are we shown a lighter setting fire to a document? I tell the secret-within-the-secret, of the cover-up, and how David Ben-Gurion kept it—and used it.

“How True is The Crown on the Suez Cover-Up?” appears at Mosaic Magazine. Read here.