The Uncommon Reader

book,” would have said it all, but fifty years of composure and self-possession plus half a century of understatement stood in the way. Hard put for conversation, she found herself falling back on some of her stock stand-bys. It wasn’t quite “How far did you have to come?” but their literary equivalent. “How do you think of your characters? Do you work regular hours? Do you use a word-processor?” — questions which she knew were cliches and were embarrassing to inflict had the awkward silence not been worse.
    One Scottish author was particularly alarming. Asked where his inspiration came from, he said fiercely: “It doesn’t come, Your Majesty. You have to go out and fetch it.”
    When she did manage to express — and almost stammer — her admiration, hoping the author would tell her how he (the men, she decided, much worse than the women) had come to write the book in question, she found her enthusiasm brushed aside, as he insisted on talking not about the bestseller he had just written but about the one on which he was currently at work and how slowly it was going and how in consequence, as he sipped his champagne, he was the most miserable of creatures.
    Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met with in the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them.
    To begin with she had thought she might hold such gatherings on a regular basis, but this soiree was enough to disabuse her of that. Once was enough. This came as a relief to Sir Kevin, who had not been enthusiastic, pointing out that if ma’am held an evening for the writers she would then have to hold a similar evening for the artists, and having held evenings for writers and artists the scientists would then expect to be entertained, too.
    “Ma’am must not be seen to be partial.”
    Well, there was now no danger of that.
    With some justification, Sir Kevin blamed Norman for this evening of literary lacklustre, as he had encouraged the Queen when she had tentatively mentioned the idea. It wasn’t as if Norman had had much of a time either. Literature being what it is the gay quotient among the guests was quite high, some of them asked along at Norman’s specific suggestion. Not that that did him any good at all. Though like the other pages he was just taking round the drinks and the nibbles that went with them, Norman knew, as the others didn’t, the reputation and standing of those whom he was bobbing up to with his tray. He had even read their books. But it was not Norman around whom they clustered, but the dolly pages and the loftier equerries who, as Norman said bitterly (though not to the Queen), wouldn’t know a literary reputation if they stepped in it.
    Still, if the whole experience of entertaining the Living Word was unfortunate, it did not (as Sir Kevin had hoped) put Her Majesty off reading. It turned her off wanting to meet authors, and to some extent off living authors altogether. But this just meant that she had more time for the classics, for Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and the Bronte’s.

    EVERY TUESDAY evening the Queen saw her prime minister, who briefed her on what he felt she ought to know. The press were fond of picturing these meetings as those of a wise and experienced monarch guiding her first minister past possible pitfalls and drawing on her unique repository of political experience accumulated over the fifty-odd years she had been on the throne in order to give him advice. This was a myth, though one in which the palace itself collaborated, the truth being the longer they were in office the less the prime ministers listened and the more they talked, the Queen nodding assent though not always agreement.
    To begin with prime ministers wanted the Queen to hold their hand, and when they came to see her it was to be stroked and given an approving pat in the spirit of a child wanting to show its mother what it has done. And, as so often with her, it was really a show that was required, a show of interest, a show of concern. Men (and this included Mrs Thatcher) wanted show. At this stage, though, they still listened and even asked her advice, but as time passed all her prime ministers modulated with disturbing similarity into lecturing mode, when they ceased to require encouragement from the Queen but