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“... it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber. ‘Now that I have you to myself,’ said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, ‘I’ve ...”

“... his life. Mam was easy, a piece of Staffordshire would do it, cracked probably or chipped like all her antiques. Then when I was in Beyond the Fringe I reckoned I had enough money to get Dad something he really wanted, namely a decent violin. Leeds had a good violin shop, Balmforth’s, so I asked them to pick out three violins for him to try without telling ...”

“... With a few soft words Her Majesty Christened the liner built as ‘504’: ‘I name this ship – Myself. God bless . . .’ The towering masterpiece of the Depression, She rose from the not-so-bonny Bank of Clyde (Bombed to a pit for its pains in ’41). Meanwhile, John Masefield wrote a handsome poem (‘Shredding a trackway like a mile of snow ...”

“... harmless confection of elements Strapped to a duct like an art installation. The Premier sleeps in her fashion, Her Majesty, all the princesses, tucked up With the Bishops, the glueys, the DHSS, In the People’s Republic of Zeds. And you sleep at my shoulder, the cat at your feet, And deserve to be spared the irruption ...”

“... disloyalties, and it goes with the note to ‘The Dream of the Lion’, one of ‘Two Poems for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’, in which the Laureate mentions ‘my boyhood fanatic patriotism’. So everything is as it should be. What a happy coincidence, in its way, that a poet as good as Hughes should believe, and deeply and ...”

“... of public money was earmarked for a new yacht for the richest woman on earth – even though Her Majesty had made it plain she did not want one? Was it this deranged belief in the popular devotion to the monarchy which finally sealed the Tories’ fate? Or was it the announcement soon afterwards by the once rational Sir George Young, Secretary of ...”

“... reprimand. Before the report came out, Anne Maclean had bowed to the pressures to which she and her colleagues had been subjected. She accepted a year’s salary, and left – after promising never to discuss the issues which led to her departure: ‘a complete gag’, as Davies described it. Williamson and Cohen spurned ...”

“... topicality, they will be very widely and minutely studied by politicians, students of politics and Her Majesty the Queen – or at least by her advisers. All four authors would agree that British politics have entered a new phase which is not simply an ephemeral spasm of protest, and which makes the future uncertain and ...”

“... it was a prevaricating kind of appeasement, rather than the bold interventionism which many of her advisers favoured. ‘Her majesty deals so coldly in these causes,’ wrote Sir Francis Walsingham, who did not believe in the likelihood of peace in his time. In August 1578, frustrated in foreign policy, these ...”

“... the whole barrel is infected by sleaze. Next week, Parliament will once again be ‘opened’ by Her Majesty the Queen, having been ‘closed’ just long enough to allow MPs their mid-term break. Black Rod will be human for the day and there will be much toing and froing, loud door-banging and the like. A ‘silver stick’ will attend ...”

“... What happened to Rosa Travers, after she’d been skinned (carbolic acid and phenol), had her nose snipped, received paraffin injections in her breasts and was irradiated to remove undesirable body hair? That would have been the first part of her prize ...”

“... higher courts ‘shall hold that office during good behaviour, subject to a power of removal by Her Majesty on an address presented to Her by both Houses of Parliament’. The formula, which comes from the Act of Settlement 1701, was intended to prevent any recurrence of the Stuart practice of dismissing judges at ...”

“... In Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution, Anthony Blunt instructs Her Majesty the Queen about pictures. ‘Because something is not what it is said to be, Ma’am, does not mean it is a fake.’ ‘What is it?’ she asks. Sir Anthony gingerly suggests: ‘An enigma?’ Here as in Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood, the figure of the spy illustrates the irreducibility of human and aesthetic mystery, the contradictions that all personalities enshrine, the confusion that no amount of pedantic energy can resolve ...”

“... on the way things went. She was by turns an evangelical zealot, an enthusiast for the expansion of her empire and a passionate humanitarian. But she was never quiet. In all her mutations she left her own mark on minds and events. It is not too much to say that this ...”

“... the 1590s included in the book shows Queen Elizabeth I as a puffed up hen: the only concession to Her Majesty’s dignity is the steady eye that peers out from a great ruff of feathers. More ridiculous than glamorous, Elizabeth’s pretensions are reduced to the vanities of an ageing queen. Sharp and subversive, the image is gritstone to the polished ...”