Though the Queen was always discreet about writing in her notebooks, her equerry was not reassured. He had once or twice caught her at it and thought that this, too, pointed to potential derangement. What had Her Majesty to note down? She never used to do it, and like any change of behaviour in the elderly it was readily put down to decay. ‘Probably Alzheimer’s,’ said another of the young men. ‘You have to write things down for them, don’t you?’ and this, taken together with Her Majesty’s growing indifference to appearances, made her attendants fear the worst.
