The Uncommon Reader

old-fashioned it was, saying it was the sort of library he had only read about in books and had thought confined to the past. He had wandered through its labyrinthine stacks marvelling that these were all books that he (or rather She) could borrow at will. So infectious was his enthusiasm that next time, the Queen thought, she might accompany him.
    She read Ackerley’s account of himself, unsurprised to find that, being a homosexual, he had worked for the BBC, though feeling also that he had had a sad life. His dog intrigued her, though she was disconcerted by the almost veterinary intimacies with which he indulged the creature. She was also surprised that the Guards seemed to be as readily available as the book made out and at such a reasonable tariff. She would have liked to have known more about this; but though she had equerries who were in the Guards she hardly felt able to ask.
    E. M. Forster figured in the book, with whom she remembered spending an awkward half-hour when she invested him with the CH. Mouse-like and shy, he had said little and in such a small voice she had found him almost impossible to communicate with. Still, he was a bit of a dark horse. Sitting there with his hands pressed together like something out of Alice in Wonderland , he gave no hint of what he was thinking, and so she was pleasantly surprised to find on reading his biography that he had said afterwards that had she been a boy he would have fallen in love with her.
    Of course he couldn’t actually have said this to her face, she realised that, but the more she read the more she regretted how she intimidated people and wished that writers in particular had the courage to say what they later wrote down. What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
    But there was regret, too, and mortification at the many opportunities she had missed. As a child she had met Masefield and Walter de la Mare; nothing much she could have said to them, but she had met T. S. Eliot, too, and there was Priestley and Philip Larkin and even Ted Hughes, to whom she’d taken a bit of a shine but who remained nonplussed in her presence. And it was because she had at that time read so little of what they had written that she could not find anything to say and they, of course, had not said much of interest to her. What a waste.
    She made the mistake of mentioning this to Sir Kevin.
    “But ma’am must have been briefed, surely?”
    “Of course ,” said the Queen, “but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.”
    “I wonder whether I can bring Your Majesty back to the visit to the shoe factory ,” said Sir Kevin.
    “Next time ,” said the Queen shortly. “Where did I put my book?”
    HAVING DISCOVERED the delights of reading herself, Her Majesty was keen to pass them on.
    “Do you read, Summers?” she said to the chauffeur en route for Northampton.
    “Read, ma’am?”
    “Books?”
    “When I get the chance, ma’am. I never seem to find the time.”
    “That’s what a lot of people say. One must make the time. Take this morning. You’re going to be sitting outside the town hall waiting for me. You could read then.”
    “I have to watch the motor, ma’am. This is the Midlands. Vandalism is universal.”
    With Her Majesty safely delivered into the hands of the lord lieutenant, Summers did a precautionary circuit of the motor, then settled down in his seat. Read? Of course he read. Everybody read. He opened the glove compartment and took out his copy of the Sun .
    Others, notably Norman, were more sympathetic, and from him she made no attempt to hide her shortcomings as a reader or her lack of cultural credentials altogether.
    “Do you know,” she said one afternoon as they were reading in her study, “do you know the area in which one would truly excel?”
    “No, ma’am?”
    “The pub quiz. One has been everywhere, seen everything and though one might have difficulty with pop music and some sport, when it comes to the capital of Zimbabwe, say, or the principal exports of New South Wales, I have all that at my fingertips.”
    “And I could do the pop ,” said Norman.
    “Yes,” said the Queen. “We would make a good team. Ah well. The road not