The Uncommon Reader

always disliked waste. One not wholly mythical version of my character has me going round Buckingham Palace switching off the lights, the implication being that one is mean, though these days it could better be put down to an awareness of global warming. But disliking waste as I do puts me in mind of all the experiences I have had, many of them unique to me, the fruit of a lifetime in which one has been, if only as a spectator, very close to events. Most of that experience” — and Her Majesty lapped her immaculately coiffed head — “most of it is up here. And one wouldn’t want it to go to waste. So the question is, what happens to it?”
    The prime minister opened his mouth as if to speak and indeed half rose from his chair.
    “The question ,” said the Queen, “was rhetorical.”
    He sank back.
    “As some of you may know, over the last few years I have become an avid reader. Books have enriched my life in a way that one could never have expected. But books can only take one so far and now I think it is time that from being a reader I become, or try to become, a writer.”
    The prime minister was bobbing again and the Queen, reflecting that this was what generally happened to her with prime ministers, graciously yielded the floor.
    “A book, Your Majesty. Oh yes, yes. Reminiscences of your childhood, ma’am, and the war, the bombing of the palace, your time in the WAAF.”
    “The ATS,” corrected the Queen.
    “The armed forces, whatever ,” the prime minister galloped on. “Then your marriage, the dramatic circumstances in which you learned you were Queen. It will be sensational. And ,” he chortled, “there’s not much doubt that it will be a bestseller.”
    “ The bestseller ,” trumped the home secretary. “All over the world.”
    “Ye-es,” said the Queen, “only” — and she relished the moment — “that isn’t quite the kind of book one had in mind. That is a book, after all, that anyone can write and several people have — all of them, to my mind, tedious in the extreme. No, I was envisaging a book of a different sort.”
    The prime minister, unsquashed, raised his eyebrows in polite interest. Maybe the old girl meant a travel book. They always sold well .
    The Queen settled herself down. “I was thinking of something more radical. More…challenging.”
    ‘Radical’ and ‘challenging’ both being words that often tripped off the prime minister’s tongue, he still felt no alarm.
    “Have any of you read Proust?” asked the Queen of the room.
    Somebody deaf whispered “Who?” and a few hands went up, the prime minister’s not among them, and seeing this, one young member of the cabinet who had read Proust and was about to put his hand up didn’t, because he thought it would do him no good at all to say so.
    The Queen counted. “Eight, nine — ten” — most of them, she noted, relics of much older cabinets. “Well, that’s something, though I’m hardly surprised. Had I asked Mr Macmillan’s cabinet that question I’m sure a dozen hands would have gone up, including his. However that’s hardly fair, as I hadn’t read Proust at that time either.”
    “I’ve read Trollope ,” said a former foreign secretary.
    “One is glad to hear it ,” said the Queen, “but Trollope is not Proust.” The home secretary, who had read neither, nodded sagely.
    “Proust’s is a long book, though, water-skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess. At the end of the novel Marcel, who narrates it, looks back on a life that hasn’t really amounted to much and resolves to redeem it by writing the novel which we have just in fact read, in the process unlocking some of the secrets of memory and remembrance.
    “Now one’s life, though one says it oneself, has, unlike Marcel’s, amounted to a great deal, but like him I feel nevertheless that it needs redeeming by analysis and reflection.”
    “Analysis?” said the prime minister.
    “And reflection ,” said the Queen.
    Having thought of a joke that he knew would go down well in the House of Commons, the home secretary ventured on it here. “Are we to assume that Your Majesty has decided to write this account because of something you read in a book, and a French book at that? Haw haw.”
    There were one or two answering sniggers, but the Queen did not appear to notice that a joke had actually been made (as indeed it scarcely had). “No, Home Secretary. But then books, as I’m sure you know, seldom