The Uncommon Reader

prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book.”
    Some of the councillors, long since out of government, were thinking that this was not the woman they remembered serving and were fascinated accordingly. But for the most part the gathering sat in uneasy silence, few of them having any idea what she was talking about. And the Queen knew it. “You’re puzzled,” she said, unperturbed, “but I promise you, you do know this in your own sphere.”
    Once again they were in school and she was their teacher. “To inquire into the evidence for something on which you have already decided is the unacknowledged premise of every public inquiry, surely?”
    The youngest minister laughed, then wished he hadn’t. The prime minister wasn’t laughing. If this was to be the tone of what the Queen was planning to write there was no telling what she was going to say. “I still think you would do better just to tell your story, ma’am,” he said weakly.
    “No,” said the Queen. “I am not interested in facile reminiscence. It will, I hope, be something more thoughtful. Though when I say thoughtful I don’t mean considerate. Joke.”
    Nobody laughed and the smile on the prime minister’s face had become a ghastly grin.
    “Who knows ,” said the Queen cheerfully, “it might stray into literature.”
    “I would have thought ,” , said the prime minister, “that Your Majesty was above literature.”
    “Above literature?” said the Queen. “Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity. But, as I say, my purpose is not primarily literary: analysis and reflection. What about those ten prime ministers?” She smiled brightly. “There is much to reflect on there. One has seen the country go to war more times than I like to recall. That, too, bears thinking about.”
    Still she smiled, though if anyone followed suit, it was the oldest ones who had the least to worry about.
    “One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and blackguards and their wives not much better.” This at least raised some rueful nods.
    “One has given one’s white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore; to be Queen, I have often thought the one essential item of equipment a pair of thigh-length boots.
    “One is often said to have a fund of common sense but that’s another way of saying that one doesn’t have much else and accordingly, perhaps, I have at the instance of my various governments been forced to participate if only passively in decisions I consider ill-advised and often shameful. Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume a regime, or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deodorant.
    “I am the Queen and head of the Commonwealth, but there have been many times in the last fifty years when that has made me feel not pride but shame. However” — and here she stood up — “we must not lose our sense of priorities and this is a party after all, so before I continue shall we now have some champagne?”
    The champagne was superb but, seeing that one of the pages doing the serving was Norman, the prime minister lost all taste for it and slipped along the corridor to the toilet, where he got on his mobile to the attorney general. The lawyer did much to reassure him, and fortified by his legal advice the prime minister was able to pass the message round the members of the cabinet, so that when in due course Her Majesty came back into the room it was a more resilient group that awaited her.
    “We’ve been talking about what you said, ma’am,” began the prime minister.
    “All in good time ,” said the Queen. “One hasn’t quite finished. I wouldn’t want you to think that what I am planning to write and indeed have already started writing is some cheap, tell-tale life-in-the-palace nonsense beloved of the tabloids. No. One has never written a book before but one hopes that it will” — she paused — “transcend its circumstances and stand on its own, a tangential history of its times and, you’ll perhaps be reassured to learn, far from exclusively to do with politics or the events of one’s life. I’d like to talk