“They are not royal. They just happen to have me as their aunt.”

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

[To the suggestion that Great Britain might someday want a Republic:] We’ll go quietly.

Good memories are our second chance at happiness.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendour that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

There are long periods when life seems a small, dull round, a petty business with no point, and then suddenly we are caught up in some great event which gives us a glimpse of the solid and durable foundations of our existence.

At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Christmas story. A young mother and a dutiful father with their baby were joined by poor shepherds and visitors from afar. They came with their gifts to worship the Christ child.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.

I believe that there is a great fear in our generation of being labeled as priggish.

[On being criticized for her serious expression:] I simply ache from smiling. Why are women expected to beam all the time? It’s unfair. If a man looks solemn, it’s automatically assumed he’s a serious person, not a miserable one.

I hope people will think very carefully about the future.

1992 is not a year I shall look back on with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it hasturned out to be an Annus Horribilis.

We have all felt those emotions in these last few days. So what I say to you now, as your queen and as a grandmother, I say from my heart.

Twenty years after the Andy Griffith Show when Andy did Matlock, he hired me for four episodes. I told him I wanted to develop an Aunt Bea type role for Matlock, but he was against it.

Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.

I want to be the coolest aunt in the entire world.

Ten years ago, desalination was the crazy aunt in the attic. That’s changed. It is now entering the mainstream and being taken seriously.

That’s enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.

With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.

I come from a huge family and out of all 34 of my immediate family members, my heavier influences were women. Between my grandmothers, aunts, older female cousins, and of course my mother,

However, I was very conscious of the fact that both sides of my family were drastically different and my aunts, cousins, and uncles varied in different shades of brown.