There was a queen that was overthrown here. So I was affected by all of that and felt profoundly grateful for the opportunity to live in Hawaii, and I set out at once to try to fit in.
I do an international beauty pageant called Queen of the Universe for UNESCO, and what we do is we build kindergartens around the world.
When Pakistan beat England at cricket, my Pakistani cousins remind me how English and British I am. When they say, 'You're one of the Queen's advisers,' for them it's, 'Wow - anything's possible in the U.K.'
When I'm singing I'm always trying to get to the highest point possible. I'd fly to the top of Buckingham Palace to sing to the queen.
I'm not the Queen. I'm not a huge superstar; I don't get paparazzi around me.
I have an inner drag queen. Or rather, I feel like I was a drag queen in a past life.
We fixed on No. 4, Queen Street Place, for our City offices, and it was from there that so many of my patented inventions were dated.
Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie.
Ambiguity and the horror of possibility play a part in so many of my favorite horror stories: Shirley Jackson's 'We Will Always Live in the Castle,' Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves,' Victor LaValle's 'Big Machine,' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Stewart O'Nan's 'The Speed Queen,' and so many more.
Queen songs tend to be about very personal things: personal dreams and personal ambitions.
I literally got a private invite for lunch with the Queen. There was just 10 of us. And I was absolutely petrified because you can't take anyone with you, and no other sportspeople were there. There was the head of the military, and then the Queen sat next to me.
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
The photograph of the Queen sitting stiffly across the table from Glasgow resident Susan McCarron is so natural and expressive that it looks utterly fake. It looks like an artist's portrait, complete with symbolism, humour and poignancy. No wonder the palace and the press have interpreted it in such different ways.
I speak for all Malaysians in expressing my admiration for the Queen and the grace, poise and selflessness with which she has carried out her duties during her long reign. She represents the very best of British traits: dignity, resilience and hard work.
To be a queen of a household is a powerful thing.
Sarah Palin is a figure of fun on the American left, easily lampooned as a know-nothing, gun-toting ex-beauty queen who loves God and the red, white and blue above pretty much anything else except for Todd, her macho husband, who races snowmobiles across the Alaskan tundra.
Prime ministers come and go, but so long as he or she lives, the sovereign remains, receiving and reading all state papers and meeting once a week with the prime minister to advise, enquire, and comment - sometimes sharply, as was the case with Queen Elizabeth II and Mrs. Thatcher - on affairs of state.
Prince Charles was once obsessed with a particular beauty, Anna Wallace, and couldn't understand why she walked out on him after he spent the evening dancing with Camilla at the Queen Mother's 80th birthday party.
I play the Wicked Queen in 'Snow White.' I'm not typecast. It's terrible. I should be Prince Charming.
When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
