A royalist by ardent persuasion and very nearly a Cockney by accident of birth, you'll not find me among any lining up - and there are such sad souls - to cast aspersions on Her Majesty the Queen, whom God preserve long enough to save us all from the machinations of her eldest son as monarch!
It is, of course, respect for the post than for the person that drives one primarily. If Churchill averred that a democracy was the worst of all possible political options apart from all the rest, what he really meant was a democracy under a constitutional monarch being so far the better than presidential rule as per France or America or anywhere.
One does though have enormous personal affection for the person of the Queen. The years of duty and so forth. But also for the very occasionally revealed wit of the woman. Not too many bon mots have escaped the inner sanctum over time, but one came up the other night on the television that had me purring.
Some programme or other about - I forget precisely - the arts or culture or somesuch, had a smartish looking chappy moaning about the lack of public taste in modern England. Well, you and me both ordinarily I would agree. But in his case one could tell that by 'taste' he meant something terribly fashionable, a la mode, and accessible only to those of desperately refined minds. (If one says, at this point, that he came over as terribly 'precious', one does not by that mean in any way valuable!)
So, it seems this chap had once nerved himself to ask of Her Majesty at some 'cultural event' what were her views on taste qua taste? A rather impolite question on the whole and one clearly intended to land her in it.
But rising triumphant to the occasion as ever she might, it appears that Her Majesty merely - wisely and softly - replied "I am not sure it really helps."
Marvellous, simply bloody marvellous! Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am!
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