When it comes to royal memoirs, Prince Harry's Spare and Andrew Morton's Diana: Her True Story are infamous for the unprecedented detail they revealed about what life was really like within the monarchy, an institution that had for generations been shrouded in mystery.
Years before Princess Diana revealed all to Morton, and the Duke of Sussex spilled family secrets, there was another expose that had far less damaging effects on the royal family.
But it had disastrous consequences for its author.
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The Little Princesses, published in 1950, was written by Marion Crawford, who was governess to then-Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and Princess Margaret for 17 years.
For the very first time, the 200-page book took readers into the notoriously private world of the Windsors, revealing what life was like for the young princesses inside Buckingham Palace with their parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, later known as the Queen Mother.
It differs greatly from Diana and Harry's books because of the reverence it shows to the royal family. It is a love story between the two princesses and their devoted governess.
But when the book was published, Crawford, who was known as 'Crawfie' to the young Elizabeth and Margaret, was banished from the royal family and all contact cut off.
The Queen Mother was furious the book had been published, even though it was she who had orchestrated for it to be written to generate some positive PR for her daughter, the future Queen, after the end of World War II.
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Crawford never saw the young princesses again and she died in 1988, after spending her later years inside a small house she purchased on the road to Balmoral in the hopes she would one day be visited by Queen Elizabeth II.
Her banishment from the royal family is one of the sadder chapters in the life of the late monarch, who was known for her extraordinary ability to forgive (she famously visited her exiled uncle who abdicated the throne while he was on his deathbed in 1972).
"Everything we know about the Queen's childhood comes from that book"
Crawford's betrayal by writing a book, however, was one that was unable to be forgiven, or forgotten.
"[Hers] was the first insider royal memoir so that makes it very, very important," playwright Melanie Tait tells 9Honey.
She compares its impact to Prince Harry and Diana's books, but for very different reasons.
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"Both of those books were cataclysmically damaging to the royal family and really changed the way we thought about them," Tait says.
"The Little Princesses did that in a way as well because it, for the very first time, took us behind the palace doors, took us into their breakfast room, took us into the nursery it's really important too that her story gets explored.
"[Crawford] is the most quoted royal historian of the 20th century. Everything we know about the Queen's childhood comes from that book."
Crawford was the nanny who took the young princesses on adventures outside of the palace, onto the Tube and into supermarkets for the first time.
She was by their side for the abdication of King Edward VIII (the event that would see Elizabeth eventually become Queen) and sheltered with Elizabeth and Margaret inside Windsor Castle during the war.
Tait points to Crawford's role "of nearly 20 years in raising the Queen".
"She's a really important person in history, the person who raised the most substantial, iconic figure of the 20th century."
Crawford's story captured Tait so much, she's written a play based on her life with the Windsors and subsequent ousting.
The Queen's Nanny will have its world premiere in Sydney next month.
It has a particular focus on the relationship between the Queen Mother and Crawford, who "thought she had permission" to write the book about her life as a royal governess.
The main issue was the use of Crawford's name attributed to the book when it was published.
"That is the big bone of contention," Tait says.
"[Crawford] was lead to believe that what she was writing in that book was so harmless that the Queen Mother would come around on that aspect of it. There's nothing all that offensive in it, she doesn't dish the dirt on anybody.
"I think it was a real surprise to her when she was completely ousted and I think there is a very real argument she didn't think she was doing the wrong thing, she thought she had permission to do it."
The Queen Mother's role in the book is crucial here, Tait believes.
A trove of private letters and papers kept by Crawford and given to her solicitor upon her death, revealed the Queen Mother was secretly involved in a plan with the Foreign Office to sell anecdotes about the young Princess Elizabeth to an American magazine.
It was thought the story would be a boost for Anglo-American relations after the second world war.
A letter from the Queen Mother to Crawford stated the governess "should not write and sign articles about the children, as people in positions of confidence with us must be utterly oyster".
But she goes on to suggest Crawford help a journalist assigned to write stories based on information supplied by the governess, saying she could "help him with his articles and get paid from America...This would be quite all right as long as your name did not come into it".
The stories were serialised in a magazine and then published into the book.
Crawford was paid $85,000 (the equivalent of around $AUD3 million today) but was torn to shreds by the press in the UK and completely cut off from the royal family.
But was it her fault for putting her name to the book?
"The truth is probably really complicated," Tait says.
"Certainly a lot of historians have thought her husband kind of tricked her into signing the contract. The contract is really clear, though, that she is to use her name and she signed that contract.
"But I don't know if she signed the contract before she had that missive from the Queen Mother because the Queen Mother set it all up. It wouldn't have happened without the Queen Mother.
"So for her to be so ousted, it is really rotten."
That brutal end to her life with the Windsors appealed to Tait, who says she's always been "obsessed" with the royal family.
"After being in the bosom of their family for such a long time – having breakfast, lunch and dinner with them – being very much part of their lives, I just find that so horrific that they could just completely shame her out of the family and shame her out of England in a way."
Tait says Crawford's stories were "harmless remembrances" and "hers to share".
Queen Elizabeth is not believed to have ever reached out to Crawford, even when the Queen Mother died.
"I think had Crawfie outlived the Queen Mother, it might have been a different story towards the end of her life," Tait says.
Crawford was publicly shamed for the rest of her life for her apparent treachery and could have sold her collection of letters from the royals and made a fortune.
But the box of letters, cards and notes were left by Crawfie to her beloved Lilibet and are now buried deep in the royal archives.
Tait says her play, The Queen's Nanny, offers a unique Australian perspective on the story of Crawford and the Queen Mother that can only be told by Australians.
"I think an Australian can tell this story because of the egalitarian nature of our culture," she says.
"And while King Charles is our head of state, it is our story too."
Interestingly, in 2019 the late Queen gave her endorsem*nt to her personal dresser Angela Kelly to write a book about their working relationship.
Kelly had been employed by Her late Majesty since 1994 and became the first member of the royal household to be given the green light to write about their experiences on the job.
Touching last photo of the Queen in Australia View Gallery
Elizabeth II had "personally given Angela her blessing", publishers said, ahead of the release of the book, The Other Side of the Coin.
Tait wonders whether this act had anything to do with how Crawford was treated.
"I wonder whether her endorsem*nt of Angela Kelly's book was somehow a psychic recompense for what happened with Crawfie's book because there's real similarities between those two relationships, the closeness of Angela to the Queen."
Following the death of the monarch in 2022, Kelly was forced to move out of her home on the Windsor estate into another grace and favour home by King Charles.
It followed news the King and and Buckingham Palace had requested she sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to prevent her from sharing further details about the monarch and the royal family.
Tait says the "romantic in her" hopes Queen Elizabeth II somehow forgave Crawford in her final years.
And there is a small clue that points to that being a real possibility.
In the BBC documentary Elizabeth at 90: A Family Tribute, a short clip of Crawford holding hands with the young princesses on board the royal yacht is shown.
While watching the home videos, the Queen and then-Prince Charles make reference to Crawford.
"It's thought that that exchange being made public is a thawing in the reputation," Tait says.
"Why include it? It's a definite acknowledgement of her existence."
The Queen's Nanny, Melanie Tait, is showing at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre from September 6 until October 12. Buy tickets here.
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