Born out of the empire, the Commonwealth, in the words of the former Conservative prime minister John Major and others, has somehow been held together by an invisible glue that was Queen Elizabeth.
Major once said: “The Queen’s relationship with the Commonwealth is intensely personal. You only have to see the Commonwealth heads of government – and particularly the African Commonwealth heads of government – with the Queen to see what they think of her, and of the institution of monarchy itself.”
The Commonwealth’s secretariat resides in the fading grandeur of Christopher Wren’s Marlborough House on Pall Mall, and has been led by a succession of secretary generals of varying quality, but its beating heart has always been the Queen.
