A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown review – the head that wears the crown

In her public persona, she was everywhere present and nowhere to be found. Being all things to all men and all women, the Queen, as distinct from Elizabeth Windsor, had the luxury of being nothing in herself. This was her strength as a monarch, and her burden as a person. When, on 2 June 1953, the Archbishop of Canterbury – having counted to three, on the advice of Cecil Beaton, so Beaton claimed – lowered the 2.23kg royal crown on to the diminutive head of the Princess Elizabeth, it became welded there, and remained so for the rest of her life, whether she was wearing it or not.