Word: buckinghams
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...with the public once more. She has become a matriarch in autumn, presiding over "a family happy once again, the more credible for the traumas they have been through." Her country is prosperous and generally content with her performance. According to a 113-page Ipsos MORI poll commissioned by Buckingham Palace in January and seen by TIME, only 19% would like to switch to a republic - one more percentage point than in 1969. "This is the most stable measure in British polling," says Robert Worcester, who presented the poll to palace staff. No matter how you break down the respondents...
...Walk around Buckingham Palace - a combination of family home, hotel for foreign dignitaries, stage set for national ceremony, rambling office complex and art museum that reflects the Queen's jumble of roles - and complacency feels far away. If you think of the palace as Monarchy Inc. and compare its operations to a decade ago, the production line has been thoroughly overhauled - a process begun before Diana's death but accelerated in its wake. "People who view us as a Victorian institution aren't looking beyond the front of the building," says David Walker, an air vice marshal...
...reads fast and has a flypaper memory.) Dinners during regional trips used to strand her at the top of a long table with predictable dignitaries; now she will be at a round table with perhaps a nurse, the leader of the local Sikh temple and an entrepreneur. Parties at Buckingham Palace are increasingly built around themes, like honoring transport workers and members of the emergency services after the London bombings of July 2005. She has aligned the palace with the modern world in other barely perceptible steps: relaxing the rules for the 30,000 invitees to her garden parties...
...observant; this, "plus her fantastic memory, means she is not bored," says Hicks. A dry sense of humor helps. On a walkabout in Scotland, one person told her, "You look just like the Queen!" "How reassuring," she replied. When a visiting head of state managed to slip out of Buckingham Palace overnight, she quipped: "Has he taken his wife?" She can laugh at herself too, as when a new footman pulled back her chair as she stood up after a family dinner, but then immediately went to sit down again to continue a conversation and hit the floor. The whole...
...electric aqua dress, a rolling mass of corgis and dorgis in tow, she exudes surprising energy. In the country, she rides (helmetless) or walks the hills every day. Her staff is organizing her schedule to keep her visible and active with less strain by hosting more events at Buckingham Palace, and when she travels, seeing more people at slightly fewer venues. Her children will pick up more of her duties. But all who know her say that barring physical collapse, she will not abdicate in favor of Charles...