Word: queene
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Just a few years ago, few would have predicted such an outcome. That republicanism has no political traction after a period when many Windsors acted less as exemplars than as reality-TV stars is due largely to the Queen. She may be remote, but her dedication to duty gets widespread respect. It could hardly be otherwise. Since 1952, she has received more than 3 million letters, hosted around 1.1 million guests at her garden parties, and made 256 official overseas visits to 129 countries. Asked to explain his mother's relationship with the country, Prince Andrew says: "It's slightly...
...Fergie, the death of her beloved mother at 101, are all behind her. Charles is at long last married to Camilla, which according to courtiers has reassured his parents about his long-term soundness; Princes William and Harry appear to be well launched. Robert Lacey, one of the Queen's biographers, says the long-running Windsor saga has resonance 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...
...What, precisely, is the Queen's job? There is not much she can do entirely at her own whim. Technically, she could dissolve Parliament to get rid of a Prime Minister she disliked, but it would provoke an unthinkable constitutional crisis if she tried. The great 19th-century journalist and constitutional scholar Walter Bagehot said the monarch had the prerogative "to be consulted, to encourage and to warn" the government of the day, but it is one Elizabeth II never exercises in public (unlike her opinionated son Charles). Yet she still derives power from her twin roles as head...
...matter how irrational may be people's desire to invest their love of country in a single person, the Queen's well-polished routine still resonates. In February she went to Reading, 65 km west of London, to open a hospital wing. She stepped out of the limousine wearing a lime green suit; the townspeople cheered and the hospital's cooks pressed their faces to the windows. As officials and doctors gave her a tour, the corridors were lined with hundreds of staff, patients and families who cheered and waved flags. Teenagers laughed and gave each other high-fives...
...assistant private secretary on duty, Edward Young, pointed out the Queen's professional skill: at just the right moment she turned to give the cameras a perfect backdrop of happy, flag-waving children. The emotional pitch was not quite the hormonal exchange of former U.S. President Bill Clinton working a rope line, but in her subdued way the Queen is a rock star whose charisma is curiously magnified because she seems to have no desire for the fame she cannot escape. As her limousine crawled away (she deadpanned to the chauffeur who tested it at the factory that its most...