Robert Hardman

Yes, Ma’am

How the Queen redefined her role, with a little help from Sir Humphrey

Less than four months away from her Diamond Jubilee — only the second in history — we still tend to forget that we have the oldest monarch (85) and oldest consort (90) in history. We see a monarch who is reassuringly unchanged — and unchanging — in an uncertain world. It is an integral part of her appeal, at home and overseas. In Australia right now, the republican tide is out. Invited to field a ‘royal’ phone-in on national Australian radio earlier this week, I was struck by the consistent level of affection for the Queen. In half an hour, I encountered only one and a half republicans. It could have been Radio Royal Berkshire.

Yet what lies at the root of the Queen’s enduring popularity is not her small-c conservatism. It is, actually, quite the opposite. It is the fact that she has steered the monarchy through more change in the last 25 years than her predecessors managed in the previous century.

This is the Queen who dumped the debutantes, invented the walkabout and let the cameras through the door. She has transformed the Edwardian culture of the Palace and the Victorian structure of the royal household. She has stabilised the royal finances and moved them off the Civil List for the first time since the French Revolution.

But perhaps most intriguingly of all, she has quietly, beneath the media’s radar, rewritten the entire job description of the sovereign. She’s created a new manifesto for future monarchs; the guidelines which younger royals will follow when they take the reins. But the curious thing is that the Queen hasn’t done this historic and crucial work in consultation with an earnest committee of dusty constitutionalists. Rather, I have discovered, she has been inspired by one of our foremost comic scriptwriters.

For the last two years, I have had privileged access to the world of Elizabeth II while writing my new book, Our Queen, an insider’s view of the modern monarch and the monarchy.

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