LISTEN. Do you hear laughter all the way from Buckingham Palace? If not, I fear the Queen, now pushing Victoria's record 63 years on the throne, is seriously gripped by the "not amused" syndrome forever associated with the 19th Century monarch.

Perhaps a dip into the memoirs of Lauren Bacall would indeed persuade her that "Ms Bacall had a much better bite at the carrot" than herself. And perhaps she can easily imagine herself saying to anyone who mentions that they are reading Harry Potter: "Yes, one is saving that for a rainy day." The rest of us certainly can.

The Queen has never been known as a reader - until now. Alan Bennett turns her into one in this longish short story, which is one of his most ingenious and entertaining pieces of work.

Also deeply thoughtful, it has the Queen converted to reading by accidentally stumbling into a travelling library in the nether regions of the Palace. Feeling obliged to take out a book - an Ivy Compton- Burnett novel - she tells the Duke that evening: "We have a travelling library.

Comes every Wednesday." He replies: "Jolly good. Miracles never cease." Authentic tone, eh?

Her new, wide reading makes the Queen realise she has missed much, though she has been everywhere and seen everything.

Most crucially it opens her to the world of feeling. In a key passage she reflects: "I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me." The shielding of the Queen from knowledge of illness, even death, among immediate servants is suggested as one example.

But the Queen's avid reading, even snatching moments while in the royal coach distracts her from her duties, making her late for engagements and careless with her wardrobe. Courtiers and the Prime Minister - a thinly-disguised Tony Blair - try to swerve her from it. But the Queen goes one step further.

Authors, she reckons, have "a voice", which she lacks beyond the lacklustre speeches she has to deliver. She decides to write a book, not "facile reminiscence" but "analysis and reflection". Hinting at its possible contents she observes: "One has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children.'' Our real Queen probably isn't laughing now. Nor are we - which of course is exactly what Bennett intends. Of course, the Queen will never get round to the devastating book imagined by Bennett. But it's nice to think that one day she might read out Philip Larkin's poem The Trees at a tree-planting ceremony: just one of the delicious conceits dreamed up by Bennett in this little gem of a story.