I've never been a fanatical royalist, but I always had a soft spot for the late Queen Mother.

1. She was a very sweet old dear.
2. She loved horse racing- and in particular National Hunt racing.
3. Her favourite television programme was Dad's Army.

And there's a fourth good reason to admire the Queen Mum: she was anti-Thatcher and supported the miners.

In the Sunday Express Camilla Tominey quotes Kenneth Rose, who says of his long-standing friend:

“There was no rapport with Thatcher. She would have thought that Thatcher’s economic measures were quite harsh. The Queen Mother’s Bowes-Lyon family had firm associations with County Durham so she knew quite a lot about the miners and didn’t like the miners to be criticised. I remember being at an event with the Queen Mother in the Eighties when a woman tried to curry favour with her saying something along the lines of ‘Aren’t these miners terrible’, but the Queen Mother bristled at the comment, and said she thought the miners were right. She said ‘We in Durham’ – she pronounced it Durr-um – ‘think they are rather patriotic’.”

Rose expresses the hope that the Queen Mother's support for the miners is included in the forthcoming official biography which is released next month. But seeing that the biography has been written by the hard-line neo-con William Shawcross, we shouldn't hold our breath.

The Queen Mum's backing for the miners certainly puts those so-called 'leftists' who did not support the 1984 strike to shame.

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