The Uncommon Reader

by Alan Bennett

The equerry, with whom she’d never shared such confidences before and who ought to have been flattered, simply felt awkward and embarrassed. This was a truly human side to the monarch of which he’d never been previously aware and which (unlike its counterfeit versions) he did not altogether welcome. And whereas the Queen herself thought that such feelings probably arose out of her reading books, the young man felt it might be that she was beginning to show her age. Thus it was that the dawn of sensibility was mistaken for the onset of senility. Immune to embarrassment herself, as she was to any that she might cause, the Queen would once not have noticed the young man’s confusion. But observing it now she resolved in the future to share her thoughts less promiscuously, which was a pity in a way as it was what many in the nation longed for. Instead she determined to restrict her confidences to her notebooks, where they could do no harm. The Queen had never been demonstrative; it was not in her upbringing, but more and more these days, particularly in the period following Princess Diana’s death, she was being required to go public about feelings she would have preferred to keep to herself.