There is a paradox at the heart of all books about the Queen. The very thing which makes her such a successful constitutional monarch is what makes her an impossible subject for biography. We do not know anything about her. The only book which brings her to life as a person is Marion Crawford’s The Little Princesses (reprinted by Orion, £8.99), a vivid picture of nursery life when Lilibet and Margaret Rose were growing up at 145 Piccadilly. Crawfie saw it all — the neatness, the horse-obsession, the deference to the rather awful mother, the selfless sense of duty, and the goodness.
No wonder this truth-teller had to be banished, punished forever. The young Earl of Essex, riding hotfoot from Ireland, covered in mud and sweat, burst in on Queen Elizabeth I at Nonsuch Palace at ten o’clock one morning. He saw the poor old lady several feet away from her wig-stand, with bedraggled grey hair about her ears and no make-up or jewels.
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