On the eve of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, I talked with my old friend Robert Hardman, royal expert and biographer of Queen of Our Times: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II, about what it all means: what he thinks could happen to the monarchy post-Elizabeth and whether the royal renegades Harry, Meghan, and Andrew will be a distraction this week. Perhaps most fascinatingly, he gives us snippets from some of the Queen’s meetings with fourteen U.S. presidents and tells us why both George W. Bush and Barack Obama were so thrilled to meet her.
“You get this often quite strained relationship between the White House and Downing Street, but the relationship between the White House and Buckingham Palace has always been very solid during the Queen’s reign,” says Hardman.