OF ALL THE THINGS I've learned about the Queen in the days since her death, that she said of her public outings, ‘We're in the happiness business,’ is my favourite. It's such a lovely principle: this idea that, rather than being anything as airy-fairy, fleeting and intangible as an emotion, happiness is an industry. A thing you work for. As if all those hours and days and, presumably, ultimately, years the Queen devoted to turning up, waving, shaking hands, having flowers chucked at her willy-nilly, were hours (days, years) spent grafting at the coal face of Happiness, carving it out and distributing it – like Will Ferrell in Elf, only more, y'know, queenly. The royal family in ‘the Happiness Business’ is the jolly sunny salve to the royal family as…
