Peter Morgan accuses Tony Blair of plagiarising lines from his film The Queen

Peter Morgan is amused by the similarities between Tony Blair's memoirs and the lines he penned for Michael Sheen in his Oscar-winning film The Queen.
By Tim Walker , Published The Telegraph, 08 Sep 2010

Dame Helen Mirren's portrayal as the Queen may have had a big influence on Tony Blair. Photo: Starstock/Photoshot Tony Blair's account of what was said when he went to kiss hands with the Queen in 1997 is perhaps the most controversial part of his memoirs because it represents such a flagrant betrayal of the trust that had previously existed between the monarch and her prime minister.


Now, in an intriguing twist to the affair, Peter Morgan, the screenwriter, tells me that he suspects the former prime minister took the line not from his actual conversation with the Queen, but his Oscar- winning film about her which starred Helen Mirren.

In A Journey, Blair claims that the Queen said to him: "You are my 10th prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born."
In Morgan's script to the 2006 film The Queen, Mirren, in the title role, tells Michael Sheen's Blair: "You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair. My first was Winston Churchill."
Morgan tells me: "I wish I could pretend that I had inside knowledge, but I made up those lines. No minutes are taken of meetings between prime ministers and monarchs and the convention is that no one ever speaks about them, so I didn't even attempt to find out what had been said.

Full piece at The Telegraph.