I’m glad to know Liz appreciated the Beatles, although I’ve always suspected that the chain-smoking, hard-drinking Princess Margaret, with her dramatic romances and her house on the Caribbean island of Mustique, must have been the first rocker in that family.

I saw a TV clip of Paul recorded backstage before his Jubilee performance that was a hoot. He described what he remembered most about Her Majesty’s 1953 coronation: that’s when his family acquired a television. He said he and his brother had been begging for one, but his necessarily frugal parents didn’t buy it “until my mother just had to watch the coronation.” Perhaps Beatles fans on the level of Dana already knew that charming story, but it was new to me. I suspect that young Queen Elizabeth getting her crown wasn’t Paul’s idea of what to watch on the new telly.

In any case, most of us have come to respect QEII for her tireless service to her people (even if we might disapprove of the proletariat having to pay her salary). But seriously, NO ONE can deny that the Brits put on the pageantry like no other people on the planet. Hang it up, Pope, Her Majesty’s got you beat all to hell and back.