You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. My name's Thomas Jones. This week,

the writer and filmmaker Jonathan Meads will read the piece he wrote on the Windsor earlier this year.

A review of Tina Brown's book, The Palace Papers. It appeared in the N.R.B.

at the time of Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee in June, under the headline,

Hat Pins Through the Brain. Before we get to the reading, Jonathan is joining me from Marseille

on the day of the Queen's funeral. The Queen's Jubilee has now been thoroughly eclipsed by her death.

Have your views changed at all since you wrote the piece, Jonathan, or intensified?

They have changed in a way which I think was not predictable. First of all, the worst Prime Minister

in living memory has gone, thankfully, having, among other things, lied to the Queen about the prerogation of Parliament.

And the Queen has died.

So one is left with a new rookie king who's been rehearsing for, goodness, how many years,

and a prime minister who may not be quite as terrible as Johnson

seems way out of a depth already.

Charles, King Charles, is famously interfering.

And I think in this instance, it may be very much the good that he interferes. He leaks all sorts of opinions, like thinking that it's not a very, very good idea,

or a humane idea to send people to Rwanda.

It's not a great idea to shoot people in the Straits of Dover and so on.

And the crown may come to have a far greater influence than it did during his mother's reign, very long

rain in which one of the extraordinary things of the crowds today and over the past few days

is that they are celebrating or paying thanks to someone of whom they knew nothing.

She was extraordinarily mute, and one would occasionally get some sort of hint of what her opinions were subjects other than horse racing.

But for the most part, she was a kind of blank on which people

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