Read Online The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

Mr Heath and Mrs Thatcher) and that as the novelty of their weekly interviews diminished so, too, did the flirting.
    It was another aspect of the myth of the Queen and her prime minister, the decline of the prime minister’s attention to her personal appearance coinciding with his dwindling concern with what Her Majesty had to say, how the Queen looked and how the Queen thought, both of diminishing importance, so that, earrings or no earrings, making her occasional comments she felt not unlike an air hostess going through the safety procedures, the look on the prime minister’s face that of benevolent and minimal attention from a passenger who has heard it all before.
    The inattention, though, and the boredom were not all his, and as she had begun to read more, she resented the time these meetings took up and so thought to enliven the process by relating them to her studies and what she was learning about history.
    This was not a good idea. The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it. One evening he was addressing her on the subject of the Middle East when she ventured to say, ‘It is the cradle of civilisation, you know.’
    ‘And shall be again, ma’am,’ said the prime minister, ‘provided we are allowed to persist,’ and then bolted off down a side alley about the mileage of new sewage pipes that had been laid and the provision of electricity substations.
    She interrupted again. ‘One hopes this isn’t to the detriment of the archaeological remains. Do you know about Ur?’
    He didn’t. So as he was going she found him a couple of books that might help. The following week she asked him if he had read them (which he hadn’t).
    ‘They were most interesting, ma’am.’
    ‘Well, in that case we must find you some more. I find it fascinating.’
    This time Iran came up and she asked him if he knew of the history of Persia, or Iran (he had scarcely even connected the two), and gave him a book on that besides, and generally began to take such an interest that after two or three sessions like this, Tuesday evenings, which he had hitherto looked forward to as a restful oasis in his week, now became fraught with apprehension. She even questioned him about the books as if they were homework. Finding he hadn’t read them she smiled tolerantly.
    ‘My experience of prime ministers, Prime Minister, is that, with Mr Macmillan the exception, they prefer to have their reading done for them.’
    ‘One is busy, ma’am,’ said the prime minister.
    ‘One is busy,’ she agreed and reached for her book. ‘We will see you next week.’
    Eventually Sir Kevin got a call from the special adviser.
    ‘Your employer has been giving my employer a hard time.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Yes. Lending him books to read. That’s out of order.’
    ‘Her Majesty likes reading.’
    ‘I like having my dick sucked. I don’t make the prime minister do it. Any thoughts, Kevin?’
    ‘I will speak to Her Majesty.’
    ‘You do that, Kev. And tell her to knock it off.’
    Sir Kevin did not speak to Her Majesty, still less tell her to knock it off. Instead, swallowing his pride, he went to see Sir Claude.
     
    I N THE little garden of his delightful seventeenth-century grace-and-favour cottage at Hampton Court Sir Claude Pollington was reading. Actually, he was meant to be reading, but he was dozing over a box of confidential documents sent over from the library at Windsor, a privilege accorded to him as an ancient royal servant, now ninety at least but still ostensibly working on his memoirs, tentatively entitled ‘Drudgery Divine’.
    Sir Claude had entered royal service straight from Harrow at the age of eighteen as a page to George V, one of his first tasks, as he was fond of recalling, being to lick the hinges with which that testy and punctilious monarch used to stick the stamps into his many albums. ‘Were there a problem discovering my DNA,’ he had once confided to Sue Lawley, ‘one