When Elizabeth II was crowned - the sixth female monarch since the Norman conquest - the world lit up in her favour.

The British Museum was our first real museum, the property of the public rather than the monarch or the church.

Between 1945 and 1965, the number of colonial people ruled by the British monarch plunged from 700 million to five million. In 1956, just three years after the coronation, the Suez canal crisis and Anthony Eden's humiliation ended all notions that Britain was a world superpower.

I've written extensively on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and seen up close how those women, who were born when the country hoped for a male heir, made their way as leaders.

Anglo-Saxon kings often used to favour their sister's son to their own - for at least you could guarantee there was your own blood in your sister's son!

In memory, everything seems to happen to music.