and assumed it had taken massive conversations with her courtiers to persuade her to do this. no, she agreed right away. she loved it, she thought it was funny, she wanted a joke that she would not tell her grandchildren that she was about to do it and it shows the queen sort of relaxing. funnily enough, i think the pop culture elements of her celebration have done that. the personification of her by helen mirren and stephen frears�* film, the queen, that sort ina way, opened up the queen's personality to a whole new audience and people kind of realised how much they kind of loved her in that role. is she an exception? you have written a lot about other members of her family and this notion of unflappability, duty and a strong sense of kind of duty, is she almost the exception that makes monarchy still relevant? the truth is the queen's whole ethos was forged by growing up in the second world war. i mean, they were bound by that ethos, that sense of duty