The Uncommon Reader on The Trees: “she rested on the ceremonial spade and recited by heart Philip Larkin's poem 'The Trees', with its final verse: Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May.”
The Uncommon Reader on The Pursuit of Love: “So it was lucky that this time her eye happened to fall on a reissued volume of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.”
The Uncommon Reader on Love in a Cold Climate: “Having finished the Nancy Mitford sequel, Love in a Cold Climate, the Queen was delighted to see she had written others, and though some of them seemed to be history she put them on her (newly started) reading list, which she kept in her desk.”
The Uncommon Reader on A Tale of Two Cities: “she began her Christmas broadcast with the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities ('It was the best of times.'”
The Uncommon Reader on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: “Sitting there with his hands pressed together like something out of Alice in Wonderland, he gave no hint of what he was thinking. Low confidence: this is a passing simile/comparison rather than a scene of the Queen actually reading the book, but the title named is specific and unambiguous, so kept per the project's generosity rule for…”
The Uncommon Reader on Tristram Shandy: “She flew to Scotland happy in the (occasionally exasperating) company of Tristram Shandy, and when she got bored with him Trollope (Anthony) was never far away.”
The Uncommon Reader on The Convergence of the Twain: “It's called "The Convergence of the Twain". (Same broadcast episode as: 'though she did not read the Hardy poem (rejected as not "forward-looking")' -- the two candidate excerpts describe the same scene, giving both the title and the poet.)”