The 1963 edition of Burke's Peerage listed Nerissa and Katherine as having died in 1940 and 1961 respectively;[1][3] but in 1987 it was revealed by The Sun that the sisters were alive, and had been placed in Earlswood Hospital for mentally disabled people in 1941.

[9][10] The three grandchildren of Fenella and John (Lady Elizabeth Shakerley, the 5th Earl of Lichfield, and Katherine Somervell) organised the headstone for Nerissa Bowes-Lyon.

Harriet Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (1887–1958), sister of Nerissa and Katherine's mother Fenella, married Major Henry Nevile Fane, and three of their seven children lived in Earlswood Hospital.

The documentary was directed by Kelly Close and made by Minnow Films, an independent production company, whose synopsis states that "Whilst their sisters Elizabeth and Anne enjoyed lives of privilege and inclusion in the upper echelons of the aristocracy, Katherine and Nerissa were all but forgotten, written out of family history."

By telling the story of the individuals, and using the testimony of those who had lived alongside them in the asylum, the film hoped to contextualise "the changing attitudes to learning disability in British society over the twentieth century.

Lady Elizabeth Shakerley, party planner to the Queen and the sisters' niece, responded at length, disputing both the assertions by the programme-makers of familial abandonment and the methods of "this supposedly factual documentary".

She called it "cruel" and "intrusive" and said that "far from being a taboo subject, Katherine and Nerissa were very much a part of the family as sisters of Shakerley's mother, the late Princess Anne of Denmark.