Jokes about queens are a feature of Alan Bennett’s new long short story. Some involve Elizabeth II, the uncommon reader of the title. Some are to do with Norman Seakins, the ill-favoured kitchen boy who is lifted out of his sphere and promoted to royal literary advisor to the annoyance of the traditionally minded palace staff (“Not dolly enough,” complains an equerry). Others bring the two kinds of queen together, as when Her Majesty reads up on the novelist JR Ackerley’s gay London life and is “surprised that the Guards seemed to be as readily available as the book made out and at such a reasonable tariff”. There is fun to be had from the details of the royal schedule (a ride on a super-tram, a ukulele concert, a tour round a cheese factory) and from Prince Philip, who is always good for a laugh (“All right old girl?” “Of course. I’m reading.” “Again?”). The Queen’s pompous private secretary, Sir Kevin Scatchard, is a comic character with echoes of Sylvie Krin’s Sir Alan Fitztightly in Private Eye. A predicta-bly disastrous soiree for unsociable authors at Buckingham Palace and the cameo of a very whiffy old courtier are larky interludes in a story that has the gentle inconsequential pace of a fairy tale or a dream.

Bennett’s fond portrait of the Queen is an extension of his dramatic creation in A Question of Upbringing – a shrewd woman, sharper than those around her, with the mischief damped down. He has her take to reading, progressing from Ivy Compton-Burnett to Nancy Mitford, on to Sylvia Plath, Dickens and then Proust, whose great work provides solace during a wet August at Balmoral. Her Majesty’s wanderings in the republic of letters upset established protocol: asking her subjects what they are reading, instead of whether they have had far to come, holds up audiences; the corgis are exercised less energetically; and when she recites Philip Larkin’s poem The Trees at a municipal tree-planting, the self-seeking Sir Kevin and the facile prime minister step in to thwart her. First, Norman is removed to the University of East Anglia, then a plot against the Crown is only just foiled by the Queen’s Tudor decisiveness.

The author’s taste for the camp cliché, his surreal exchanges (when a book secreted in the state coach is destroyed for security reasons, the Queen protests “Exploded? But it was Anita Brookner”) and the easy satire on management jargon (“I’m just kicking the tyres on this one, ma’am”) are not intended solely to amuse, but nor do they simply bolster a cosy argument about the civilising benefits of libraries, or a jibe at bestsellers. We may start with some snap literary judgments – on Dick Francis (“they only take one so far”); or, “Trollope is not Proust” – but rereading is shown to bring its complex rewards. The Queen revises her early opinion of late Henry James; and Jane Austen, whose minute social distinctions are at first meaning-less to a monarch, comes to be appreciated.

For all its hilarity The Uncommon Reader has a heartfelt tone. It offers a lament on old age, some thoughts on reticence and a backward glance at a life wasted. At times, it even seems to side with Sir Kevin’s view that reading is a selfish practice. Before his story’s final surprise, Bennett gives the Queen a moment of reflection: “Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of purpose.” It is not at all what we expect to read by or about a national treasure.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Faber/Profile £10.99 pp124
Buy the book here at the offer price of £9.89 (inc p&p)

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