Author(s): Matthew Dennison

Royal Families

Monarchy in Britain is a mindset - sociological and emotional - seldom scrutinised save by diehard supporters or detractors. Matthew Dennison's new biography of Elizabeth II offers to evaluate a magisterial reign now spanning seven decades and the Queen's record as practitioner of monarchy. The person of the monarch is the closest an ethnically and culturally diverse society comes to a visible representative of past, present and future, although population changes since 1945 have made it impossible for Elizabeth II convincingly to embody the wide-ranging outlooks and aspirations of a muddled demographic. Instead she is understood as the champion of a handful of 'British' values endorsed - if no longer practised - by the bulk of the nation: service, duty, steadfastness, charity, stoicism: a visible definition of an aspect of 'Britishness'.