An insult to our beloved Queen

In exactly 50 days from now, Queen Elizabeth II will become our longest-reigning monarch. Certain as the sun rising in the East, the Queen provides the greatest constancy most of us will ever know. Eighty-nine years old. I had to remind myself of that when I saw the picture of her behind the wheel of her Jaguar on Sunday, driving herself down the Long Walk to Church in Windsor. She had to move on to the verge to avoid a young family. Had it been Sun journalists, no one would have blamed her if she’d ploughed straight into the blighters.

The Sun showed a grainy clip from 1933 of seven-year-old Princess Elizabeth, her sister Margaret and their mother, then Duchess of York, larking about in the garden at Balmoral and making what seem to be Nazi salutes, aided and abetted by the future King, then Prince Edward. The only sensible reaction to The

Sun’s mischief is: you must be joking. Far from putting Princess Elizabeth in a bad light, it merely reminds us of the narrow escape we had from that ghastly fascist Edward VIII. What a piece of good luck it was that we were granted, instead, that earnest little girl, who may have raised an unwitting hand 80-odd years ago but has scarcely put a foot wrong since.