The Uncommon Reader Read Free Page A

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 travelled. Who’s that?”
    “Who, ma’am?”
    “The road not travelled. Look it up.”
    Norman looked it up in the Dictionary of Quotations to find that it was Robert Frost.
    “I know the word for you,” said the Queen.
    “Ma’am?”
    “You run errands, you change my library books, you look up awkward words in the dictionary and find me quotations. Do you know what you are?”
    “I used to be a skivvy, ma’am.”
    “Well, you’re not a skivvy now. You’re my amanuensis.”
    Norman looked it up in the dictionary the Queen now kept always on her desk. “One who writes from dictation, copies manuscripts. A literary assistant.”
    The new amanuensis had a chair in the corridor, handy for the Queen’s office, on which, when he was not on call or running errands, he would spend his time reading. This did him no good at all with the other pages, who thought he was on a cushy number and not comely enough to deserve it. Occasionally a passing equerry would stop and ask him if he had nothing better to do than read, and to begin with he had been stuck for a reply. Nowadays, though, he said he was reading something for Her Majesty, which was often true but was also satisfactorily irritating and so sent the equerry away in a bad temper.

    READING MORE and more, the Queen now drew her books from various libraries, including some of her own, but for sentimental reasons and because she liked Mr Hutchings, she still occasionally made a trip down to the kitchen yard to