This is a new biography of the Queen and her role published for the Platinum Jubilee earlier this year, taking her life and reign up until the beginning of 2022 (so some of the references to record-breaking and transition are now redundant). It is very comprehensive, covering her personal life, constitutional issues, domestic issues, politics, foreign policy, everything basically. It is very readable though, and never flags or bores at any point.

Huge amounts have of course been written and broadcast about her since her death just over a month ago and I think many of us are still processing her departure from the scene she has graced for over 70 years...and I am speaking as someone who most of my adult life have thought of myself as intellectually a republican, and never an instinctive monarchist. Maybe it takes an exceptionally long reign like hers to gain an appreciation of the impact of her soft power on world affairs and in providing a centre of national gravity over and above party politics, however hard this is to justify in democratic and meritocratic terms. The book inevitably talks a lot about the Queen's undoubted sense of duty but the one thing that probably struck me most above everything else was the almost incredible breadth of her experience on the national and world stage, knowing every Prime Minister from Clement Atlee (before she was Queen) to Liz Truss, every US President bar one from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, and almost every major world leader over a period of well over half a century. This is surely a length and breadth of experience that will never be repeated anywhere in the world at this level. I think it is the loss of this that is most striking by its sudden (albeit expected at some point fairly soon) absence. In the words of the author, "unlike other public figures, there is a timelessness about the Queen, all the more so in her later years. She may have aged, like everyone else, but, even after seven decades, she has not dated". ( )