Following the success of Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown (2022), Valentine Low has adopted the same methods to explore wider relations between the palace and the government. He draws on memoirs, biographies, government and parliamentary papers and, above all, the many interviews he was able to conduct thanks to his unrivalled contacts as a respected former royal correspondent for The Times. The result is a serious and nuanced analysis which is also a rollicking read, spiced with plenty of good stories: many of his 660 footnotes record the source of an anecdote as ‘Author interview’, some attributable, some tantalisingly not.

Low’s account spans 200 years, beginning with William IV and ending with Charles III. The first three chapters cover five reigns, those of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI; the next eight chapters cover a single one, the seventy years of Elizabeth II. In spite of that, the earlier chapters don’t feel rushed or short-changed. They record in depth the extent to which the earlier monarchs interfered in ministerial appointments and in government (especially foreign) policy. Gradually, that interventionism has given way to a more hands-off conception of constitutional monarchy, where modern monarchs would not dream of interfering in the manner of their predecessors.

Queen Victoria was shameless in her favouritism and partisanship. At the beginning of her reign she was smitten with Lord Melbourne and at the end besotted by Disraeli – she began by supporting the Whigs and ended supporting the Tories, when a politically impartial monarch should have supported neither. She