She almost never put a foot wrong. As a statement, that may not soar, may not sound like the highest praise, but it is. Over her long reign, to have got almost everything right, never to have stumbled, never to have misjudged, never to have fallen below the occasion, is an Everest of an achievement.
So much to admire in the Queen’s record seems at first sight unglamorous, prosaic. Search for moments of triumph or glory, search for moments of audacity, or genius, or inspiration, and the harvest will be thin. And so we end up with words like “dutiful”, or “faithful”, or “tireless”