buckingham palace insists that, like any citizen, the queen is entitled to privacy of medical issues. the palace will therefore say nothing about the nature of the investigations ordered by her doctors. i think this is a matter of concern rather than alarm. had this been a procedure or an operation, then they would have put out a medical bulletin, but this trip to hospital is sort of somewhere in between, so i think the initial intention of being just to do this covertly, but it came out in the open, and now we all know about it. less than 24 hours before the queen's hospital visit, she was hosting a reception for global business leaders at windsor castle. she appeared to be relaxed and on good form, but the inescapable reality is her age — she's 95. the queen's advisors