Traditionally, royal females who have not had the luck to become queens regnant have been granted very limited roles. They have been expected to look pretty, be discreet, do charitable good deeds, and - if married to princes or kings - be quietly supportive and, above all, fertile.

Since the Second World War, as female expectations and opportunities have risen, becoming a royal woman - and remaining a royal woman - has seemed less and less an attractive proposition.

Captives' was a deliberate bridging exercise, an attempt to use detailed knowledge of what Britain was like on the inside, to reach a deeper, more variegated understanding of how its peoples experienced external adventures and aggression over a quarter of a millennium in four continents.

To be sure, political unions between European countries have often failed in the past, but usually only after relatively brief periods. Denmark and Iceland separated after 130 years; the unions between Spain and Portugal and between Sweden and Norway each lasted less than a century.

Home is where my family is.

My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged us to study and enjoy many different types of music.

When I sing in Spanish, my tone is different. I feel more relaxed because that's how I speak to my family.

The second child of a small farmer with six children, I come from a village in Bihar on the border of Nepal called Belwa. I was there till the age of 17 and studied in a Hindi-speaking boarding school run by Catholics in a nearby district town.