Acknowledgements

I should like to thank my agent, Jonathan Lloyd, and my publishers, Roland Philipps and Charles Spicer, for their input and enthusiasm for this project. I am grateful to Morag Lyall for copy-editing the script, and to Rowan Yapp and the rest of the team at John Murray. I also wish to thank those who were kind enough to give me confidential interviews to discuss our present Queen.

Enormous thanks, as ever, go to my husband, Brian MacArthur, for his boundless support. He has lived with the six queens for far too long.