A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II Read Free Page B

sleep’ at Windsor. She has numerous opportunities to discuss, or to hear about, issues from those most deeply involved in them. She has plenty of
opinions, though these are not made known to the public. In private she is lively, shrewd and surprisingly funny; as impatient with pomposity in others as she is with toadying, and skilled in
mimicry. She is largely unflappable, given to quiet annoyance but never explosive rage when something goes wrong, and amused by minor mishaps provided no one is hurt or humiliated by them. She has
a spontaneous wit that can cause her guests to burst out laughing (she once asked a friend of Prince Charles who had driven to Windsor Castle for lunch, ‘Did you find it all right?’) We
know these things, because we read about them, but we also know the public will never be allowed to see this side of her.
    Much is known about her hobbies and pursuits (the Turf, the Daily Telegraph crossword, detective novels, enormous jigsaws). Thanks to an insatiable appetite for royal trivia, many people
now know that she breakfasts on cereal kept in Tupperware containers. Some of these are half-truths, untruths or speculations anyway. She is said to hate shellfish,since they
are banned from menus when she is abroad on state visits. That may not be for reasons of personal preference, but rather because any ill effects from eating them could ruin her timetable and
involve letting down people who have waited to see her. Her aversion to avocados, however, is well documented. She thinks they taste ‘like soap’.
    Much is also known about the important experiences of her past life, simply because it has always been lived in public. Even such a personal matter as meeting and falling for her future husband
has been, if we are to believe the account of her former governess, told in detail. Nevertheless she has kept private an enormous amount about herself. Unlike her husband and her children, she does
not give interviews – though she has occasionally offered personal memories as part of a documentary. In this reticence she has followed the example of her mother who, despite a sociable and
outgoing nature, maintained strict silence with regard to journalists until the very end of her life (when she spoke on television at the time of her 100th birthday, many viewers had never
previously heard her voice). Given the media-savvy ways of the Royal Family’s younger generations, it is unlikely there will ever again be a monarch who retains such a sense of mystique as
Elizabeth II.
    She has never gone to school, never done housework or even her own packing, never carried or seriously handled money (the banknote she puts in a church collection is passed to her by an
Equerry). All of these things are, of course, a result of her position. Even the circumstances in which she must take her chances with fate, however, have gone without a hitch. Every one of her
children and grandchildren has been born healthy. She herself has never known a day’s serious illness. Although she fell in love with the first eligible man she encountered, at an age when it
might have been argued that she could not have known her own mind, she has been happily married to him for her entire adult life. She has never experienced frustrated love, nor the pain of divorce,
though her sister – sadly – knew both.
    However rarefied the world in which she moves, the Queen has, to a larger extent than people perhaps realise, participated in the events of the 20th century. Her exalted
position does not guard her against the slings and arrows of fortune. Given the long military tradition of her family, her male relatives have seen their share of danger. Her father was at the
Battle of Jutland. Her future husband – of whom at that time she was already fond – saw action in the Mediterranean and risked his life on the convoys. Her second son was in the
Falklands campaign, and more recently her grandson Prince Harry served for 10 weeks in