OPINION:
I have spent recent days in the company of some strong, silent types. Not in real life, you understand, which has been filled with the usual cacophony. But the qualities of stoicism, reserve and silent service are much discussed in two books that have just been published. The first, The Palace Papers, by former magazine editor and writer Tina Brown, sweeps through 20 years of tumult within the house of Windsor to offer a verdict on the royal house's health; the other, a biography of Condé Nast's reigning editrix, Anna Wintour, by Amy Odell, tries to understand the making of one of the most powerful women in modern media, who, it transpires, is as stubbornly inscrutable behind her trademark sunglasses as any queen.
"The mystery of royalty was preserved by the maxim 'Never complain, never explain'," writes Brown in an early chapter before going on to explain, over more than 400 pages, just what makes the Windsors tick. The big takeaway is that Queen Elizabeth II rarely shows candour, avoids emotional confrontation, especially within her family, and has a sense of duty which is expressed via an absolute sacrifice of self.
"The Queen opts in public to show very little emotion at all," writes Brown, who spent two years interviewing dozens of royal acquaintances, former employees, politicians and current servants of the household to produce a gripping portrait of the Windsors' rather bourgeois and banal domestic life. "We are never tired, and we all love hospitals," observed Queen Mary, the Queen's grandmother, of the royal agenda, which is governed by a waspish retinue of royal servants who seem mainly interested in the accretion of their own influence.
Everyone has much to say about the Queen, but as one of history's longest-serving monarchs, few knock her commitment to the job. Her family has been mired in successive scandals, but she has steadfastly stuck around. "Her epic stoicism has come to signify the endurance of the nation," writes Brown. "The power of a royal silence is the monarchy's ultimate mystique."