When the Queen opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in three weeks’ time, she will do so safe in the knowledge that no one listening will have attended as many of these summits as she has. Her Majesty has been Head of the Commonwealth for more than six decades, bringing to the task her own particular brand of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Understated it may be, but time and time again in the making of The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story, a BBC documentary I have fronted about her relationship to that organisation, I was told that it might not have survived without her – at least not in its current form; 53 nations, 2.4-billion people, a third of humankind.

And yet out on the streets of UK, in Bolton or Belfast, if you asked people what the Queen does, I doubt there’d be many who would mention the Commonwealth. I hesitate to imagine what Her Majesty might think of that, but my guess is she would be miffed. We know how much the Queen values the Commonwealth. She’s talked about its achievements on countless occasions; and in 2015 she remarked that it had all happened “within my lifetime”.