What the Queen will miss most in self-isolation

Seven hundred pages of memoir is stretching it a bit even for an ex-inhabitant of No. 10 with David Cameron’s need for self-justification. Halfway through For the Record I was tempted to skip a chapter or two, but then I encountered a passage that made the slog worthwhile. Talking about his relationship with the Queen, her 12th prime minister notes two essentials in preparing for the weekly audience. First check the BBC news headlines because she is always formidably well informed. Second get up to speed on what is happening in the horse-racing world. (He used to check with his bloodstock agent friend Tom Goff whether one of her horses had won that week or one of her mares had foaled.) The week after Cameron’s father died, the monarch even enquired of a completely flummoxed Prime Minister whether the late Cameron senior’s horse was running at Windsor that evening. It was.