At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.
'Now that I have you to myself,' said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, 'I've been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.'
'Ah,' said the president. 'Oui.'
This is Alan Bennet, imagining a literate Queen Elizabeth. (See: NPR.org.) Bennet's conclusion is that reading would humanize the good woman. If she wasn't too busy ruling.
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