The royal reader.

This is a wickedly funny little novella. It's a simple conceit: the Queen, out exercising the corgis, stumbles on a municipal bookmobile. In the name of good PR, she picks out a title, and obliging reads it. And the floodgates are opened. Soon HM is blowing through Trollope, putting the French president on the spot with her questions on obscure playwrights and drilling her subjects on their current reading during receiving lines. Needless to say, the Establishment is in an uproar. Even the corgis retaliate, chewing the library copy of the McEwan to a pulp. This passage, when the Queen is on her way to the opening of Parliament with a contraband novel, is particularly genius, and worth quoting at length:

Still, it is an ill-tempered royal couple that is driven down the Mall, the duke waving viciously from his side, the Queen listlessly from hers, and at some speed, too, as the procession tries to pick up the two minutes that have been lost.

When they got to Westminster she popped the offending book behind a cushion in the carriage, ready for the journey back, mindful as she sat on the throne and embarked on her speech of how tedious was the twaddle she was called on to deliver and that this was actually the only occasion when she got to read aloud to the nation. 'My government will do this...my government will do that.' It was so barbarously phrased and wholly devoid of style or interest that she felt it demeaned the very act of reading itself, with this year's performance even more garbled than usual as she, too, tried to pick up the missing couple of minutes.

It was with somer elief that she got back into the coach and reached behind the cusion for her book. It was not there. Steadfastly waving as they rumbled along she surreptitiously felt behind the other cushions.

'You're not sitting on it?'

'Sitting on what?'

'My book.'

'No, I am not. Some British Legion people here, and wheelchairs. Wave, for God's sake.'

When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He thought it had probably been exploded.

'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.'

The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device.

The Queen said: 'Yes. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.'

The footman said: 'Yes, ma'am.'

It was as if he were talking to his grandmother, and not for the first time the Queen was made unpleasantly aware of the hostility her reading seemed to arouse.

'Very well,' she said. 'Then you should inform security that I shall expect to find another copy of the same book, veted and explosive-free, waiting on my desk tomorrow morning. And another thing. The carriage cushions are filthy. Look at my gloves.' Her Majesty departed.

'Fuck,' said the footman, fishing out the book from where he had been told to hide it down the front of his breeches.

Brilliant. The reviews have quibbled that the story is slight, and that Bennett uses too snobby a tone. Well, there's not a whole lot to it, but the whole point of the snobby tone is to mimic that stiff upper lip the Establishment is so apt toward. Bottom line: a fun, quirky read, perfect for a lazy Sunday morning.

Pithy Verdict: We are very amused.