Matthew Dennison is the author of The Queen, a new biography of Queen Elizabeth II. His other books include Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West. He is based in the UK.
Q: Why did you decide to write this biography of Queen Elizabeth II?
A: On the eve of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, the first in British history, I wanted to see if it was possible to reach an assessment of the Queen's record as practitioner of monarchy and to celebrate her achievement in safeguarding the monarchy through seven decades.
My feelings for monarchy are much like those attributed to the royal commentator Richard Dimbleby 70 years ago: I feel a deep romantic reverence for this wonderful institution that contributes so much to life in Britain and across the Commonwealth.
This doesn't mean that my biography of the Queen is cloying, sentimental or sycophantic; I hope it's a balanced account, but one without unnecessary cynicism that rightly applauds a figure of considerable moral authority, who is held in high esteem across the globe.
Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about her?
A: Part of the Queen's achievement is to have remained at one level unknown. She's both the most famous woman on the planet but also among the most elusive.
We know that she likes racing and corgis and the country, that she prefers sheets and blankets to duvets, that her favourite jewels are those whose history resonates for her, but of her private thoughts and feelings we know virtually nothing.
This is deliberate on Her Majesty's part: it enables her to embody the consensus politics that she rates so highly, to be a Queen for all Britons and a unifying rather than a divisive force.
As soon as she expressed a strong opinion, she would alienate someone. And so she avoids the contentious and has miraculously resisted celebrity culture and social media intrusiveness, both of which inevitably diminish those who embrace them.
But a result of this unknownness is that there are many misconceptions about the Queen: that she's cold, remote, earnest. On the contrary, she's affectionate, kind and with a sharp, dry wit.
And given she has been obliged to read state papers, provided for her by Parliament, every day of her reign, she knows an enormous amount about ordinary people's lives, their concerns, anxieties, and hopes.
Q: How did you research her life, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: In researching the life of one of the best-known - as well as the oldest! - people in the world, the problem is filtering the information available. Sometimes the memories people share with one are unreliable; sometimes, without realising it or necessarily meaning to, people tell one something really wonderful.
So I spoke to people; I read letters and diaries; I read astonishing numbers of newspapers, beginning in the 1920s; I watched hours and hours and hours of film footage, again beginning with Pathe newsreels in the 20s; I studied paintings and sculpture and photographic portraits and pieces of clothing; I read memoirs of politicians and statesmen and clerics and jewellers and courtiers and couturiers and soldiers and farmers.
And I asked questions, questions, questions of anyone I encountered, even if their own encounter with the Queen had lasted only minutes.
What most surprised me was the extent to which the Queen was guided to be monarch as her father and grandfather had been; a sense that she was being presented with a blueprint for sovereignty endorsed by her immediate predecessors, giving her virtually no room to manoeuvre - and I was moved by the extent to which she accepted this expectation and by her fidelity to family models.
In the 21st century, we make an assumption that people need self-expression, a sense of self-determinism and autonomy. The Queen's approach has been more modest than that.
She has great confidence in herself as sovereign, embodying a historic vocation sanctioned in her coronation oaths, but on a human level she shows great humility: a recognition that is the position that is extraordinary, not her own personality - which, of course, becomes extraordinary in itself - and so she hasn't flexed her muscles, insisting on doing things her own way, but instead has done what she believes is expected of her.
Her admiration and respect for her father, George VI, and grandfather, George V, have played a significant part in her approach to sovereignty.
Q: What do you think her reign will be remembered for most?
A: The Queen's reign has coincided with a period of British retrenchment globally: the demise of Britain as the world's foremost imperial superpower.
Yet while Britain is a smaller, less significant country than she once was, the Queen herself has suffered no similar downgrading. She inherited an imperial throne, the grandest monarchy in Europe, and she remains the world's only global monarch, through her very careful nurturing of the Commonwealth and other countries' desire to retain her as sovereign: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc.
So she herself deserves to be remembered as an adroit stateswoman, who has used the soft power at her disposal in order to cultivate ties of friendship internationally, but who has also consistently done her best to embody and perpetuate British prestige.
For Britons alive today, the Queen embodies continuity. In doing so, she provides an element of unity and consensus in what is now an immensely diverse nation. Many people are unsure what it means any more to be British, but they recognise that the Queen embodies key elements of the best of Britishness: concepts of service and integrity, an understatedness, a sense of fair play.
I think many people forget that the survival of the monarchy through decades of economic downturn following the Second World War is in itself an achievement.
Every institution of British life - and this applies to many other countries, too - has suffered as a result of increasing disrespect for authority since the '60s: the church, parliament, the judiciary, the police, the armed forces.
Not the Queen, who continues to command widespread respect. Her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, about whom I've also written, announced that she was “the doyenne of sovereigns.” Elizabeth II wouldn't dream of saying this sort of thing; instead other monarchs say it about her.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm currently writing a life of Roald Dahl. This will be my fourth literary biography - I've previously written about writers Vita Sackville-West, Beatrix Potter, and Kenneth Grahame.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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