Unaccustomed to putting pleasure before responsibility, the queen tries to think of reading as a means of fulfilling her "duty to find out what people are like." But secretly she delights in discovering other worlds and doing so incognito, the way on V-E night, many decades ago, she and her sister had slipped out of the palace gates and mingled, unrecognized by the crowds.
Reading "was anonymous; it was shared; it was common," she thinks. "And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognized."
It's not long before the queen's passion for reading begins to affect her work. She finds herself increasingly bored with all her ceremonial duties, eager to be done with the pomp and circumstance so she can get back to whatever she is reading. She takes to asking people she meets what books they're reading, which has the effect of making them feel uncomfortable and inadequate. And she asks the president of France at a state dinner what he thinks about Jean Genet, which leaves him utterly flummoxed. Even more alarmingly, she finds that reading has softened her up - made her aware of her own emotions and more sympathetic to others.
Needless to say, the queen's aides are not amused. Her private secretary engineers the departure of the bookish young page whom she's made her amanuensis, and persuades an ancient family confidante named Sir Claude to try to get her to lay off the reading. Not quite knowing how to do this, the doddering Sir Claude gently suggests that the queen take up writing instead - a suggestion she embraces with alacrity. Like Marcel in Proust's masterpiece, she says, she feels that her life "needs redeeming by analysis and reflection."
In recounting this story of a ruler who becomes a reader, a monarch who'd rather write than reign, Bennett has written a captivating fairy tale. It's a tale that's as charming as the old Gregory Peck-Audrey Hepburn movie Roman Holiday, and as keenly observed as Stephen Frears' award-winning movie The Queen - a tale that showcases its author's customary elan and keen but humane wit.
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