Yet, despite all of this, for the royal family, much has remained unchanged over the years. Weekends are spent at Windsor, Christmas holidays at Sandringham with its pheasant and partridge shoots and summer holidays at Balmoral with grouse shooting and deer stalking. At Buckingham Palace, footmen wait by every door in case it needs to open for a member of the royal family, although the powdered wigs and breeches have been replaced by military-style uniforms. It is still a world where servants must curtsey and bow to their royal employers, where bedsheets are turned down with the aid of a measuring stick and where rulers are used to set the places on dining tables.

Change may be on the horizon, however. In an interview with Newsweek magazine in June 2017, Prince Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne, said: ‘The monarchy is a force for good and we want to carry on the positive atmosphere that the Queen has achieved for over sixty years, but we won’t be trying to fill her boots. We are involved in modernising the British monarchy. We are not doing this for ourselves but for the greater good of the people. We use our time wisely. We don’t want to turn up, shake hands but not get involved.’

On the monarchy, he asked: ‘Is there any one of the royal family who wants to be king or queen? I don’t think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time.’ It was perhaps a compliment to the Queen and Prince Philip that he should say this, for they have performed their roles and duties so well that they have become a daunting double act to follow.

Prince Philip has been at the Queen’s side for seventy years. In the Queen’s own words, spoken at the Guildhall in London on their golden wedding anniversary: ‘He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.’

The Queen is the central core of the bond which has held their relationship together for seventy years. From the moment she saw Philip in his naval uniform at Dartmouth when she was a teenager, Princess Elizabeth had eyes only for him, persuading her father the King to allow her to marry him at the tender age of twenty-one. She has never wavered from her single-minded devotion to duty, which she pledged in her twenty-first birthday speech to the Commonwealth when she said: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.’ She has been sustained in keeping this solemn vow by her deeply held religious beliefs. Every year in her Christmas address she draws attention to Christ’s teachings and their importance in her life.