The Prince Of Wales’ interest in the technical side of film-making assuaged, Chadwick was free to talk about the challenge of bringing a little known slice of history to life.

"Amazingly, making this was very similar to making Bleak House (the acclaimed BBC drama helmed by Chadwick). A lot of my work is about character and about performance and creating a real world. We know some of these icons from history but we don’t know all of them. We don’t know Mary’s story, we don’t really know about the young Henry and I just wanted to scratch away under the surface of the period and get what was going on behind closed palace doors.

“We did our research but at some point you have to put the research to one side,” he continued. “You know, we’re doing a really cracking fast-paced story with real characters, so we said, ‘Let’s give these characters real depth and meaning’. That’s what I hope we’ve achieved with the film, telling a story that people don’t know and hopefully having not done it in that kind of boring history movie way where there’s a big landscape and a horse and carriage coming up the road really slowly - this is a fast-paced story with real people and real emotion.”

Having done the big-name ensemble cast thing with Bleak House, was Chadwick ever intimidated with an even more impressive roster of big names on this project?

“You know, it’s only really now when you hear people crying out for Scarlett and Natalie that you realise they’re really famous,” he said. “When we were making it, it was very normal. It was all about getting to the truth of each scene and the truth of the story. They were incredibly open and professional, very warm-hearted actors who were a joy to work with.”

So what’s next for the Brit director?

“Birdsong (the World War One-based novel by Sebastian Faulks), I’ve been developing that with Working Title and I’ve got a great script from Abi Morgan and it’s a fantastic, moving and important story to tell. I’m shooting that this summer. I’ve met people and I’ve got some screen tests in a couple of weeks, so I’ll let you know.”