The dogs, horses, diamonds, furs, full-length evening gowns of lace and pearls; private jets and limousines; the ever-present jostling retinue; the push and shove of photographers and the clamor of crowds – Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth II had a lot in common, each taking herself very seriously and needing to be seen to be believed.

Whereas the Hollywood actress was majestic mainly in her vulgarity and brashness, however, the late Queen, as is evident in this pair of biographies, did her level best to be reticent, even nonexistent. The best known of her few recorded utterances are “Oh really?” and “Are you sure?” She had a tendency to stare at a person with “absolutely no expression,” or at best “an expression of controlled irritation.”

Her speeches were platitudinous: “We shall remember our past, but we will no longer allow our past to ensnare our future” – the sentiment expressed whether she was in Ireland, France or America. If people she knew had died, she’d say nothing, but a labrador killed by rat poison or the death of a corgi might result in reams of commiseration.

When Margaret Thatcher fainted at a diplomatic function, the Queen said with remarkable lack of sympathy: “Oh look, she’s keeled over again.” When Princess Anne was shot at and nearly kidnapped in the Mall, the monarch “continued with her state visit in Jakarta the following day as if nothing had happened.” During the time of the many collapsing royal marriages, she’d be “absolutely transformed ferreting for rabbits.” You feel she was barely aware of being a mother. Returning from some lengthy antipodean tour, she’d rush off not to see her children but her racehorses. She missed Charles’s first three Christmases.

This sense of human distancing is what makes such biographies difficult and is why royal books are mainly a rubbish genre, since there’s so little to go on. Bricks have to be made with little straw. Hence the space devoted to the fact that Elizabeth did the washing up after picnics, visited a pub in Stevenage........

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