Remember that scene in The Queen when Helen Mirren says to the dude who plays Tony Blair, “You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair. My first was Winston Churchill”? We haven’t seen the movie yet, but we hear there was some kind of mind-meld between Princess Diana and a deer? Well, it appears Tony Blair might be more familiar with it than we are. So familiar, in fact, that Peter Morgan, the movie’s screenwriter, says that Blair plagiarized those fictionalized lines in his memoir, A Journey when he wrote, “You are my 10th prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.” Says Morgan, “I wish I could pretend that I had inside knowledge, but I made up those lines.” Not only it is considered gauche for mere mortals prime ministers to reveal anything about their conversations with royals. But Blair has always been adamant that he’s never seen the film. When your autobiography says George W. Bush had “genuine integrity and political courage,” no one’s gonna cut you any slack.
Peter Morgan accuses Tony Blair of plagiarising [Telegraph via Daily Beast]
