Pinnacle of a career

Some years ago a former housekeeper of the Duke of Westminster sued him at an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal. It came out at the hearing, the Daily Telegraph reported, that her duties had included ironing the duke's monogrammed sheets, taking the Duchess her breakfast and and looking after such visitors as the Prince of Wales and princes William and Harry. "She once," the newspaper added, "pressed a pair of trousers belonging to the countess of Wessex."

A pair of trousers belonging to the countess of Wessex! Clearly she should have resigned immediately afterwards, since surely no other experience in the service of the Westminsters could ever top that. As she put the iron away she might well have felt, as Churchill did in in 1940, "... that my whole life had been but a preparation for this moment."