It isn’t often a book makes me laugh out loud but this latest offering of Alan Bennett’s does just that.

This is a kindly and gentle satire on what happens in Buckingham Palace when the queen gets bitten by the reading bug.
Bennett writes with such restrained irony that the whole exercise comes across with great plausibility. Underneath the joke Bennett’s great love for the written word and its potential power is evident. The shock and horror of her aides and ministers as they recoil from this “Madness of Queen Elizabeth” and the ruthlessness with which they try to eradicate it is wonderful.
It is very brief, just 120 pages, and I read it this morning in just two hours.
Two hours of complete enjoyment.