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.

In the past, Britons were scathing about the cruelties of the old Roman empire and the excesses of Catholic empire builders such as the Spanish and the French. They convinced themselves that their empire was different and benign because it rested on sea power and trade rather than on armies.

But then, you know, I'm very happy, I've got to this stage in my life and I'm not dead. I haven't got married and divorced and done all that palimony business, you know all that mess.

To get married, I need to first fall in love.

I think that romantic comedies have a special place in most people's hearts, especially the younger demographic.

I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.