What sort of woman is she? Forget the cloying descriptions of courtiers and the indiscretions of "Crawfie" and her friends, and the portrait is rather an appealing one. Elizabeth II in person is much prettier than her photographs. Her coloring is excellent. Her mouth, a little too wide, can break into a beguiling smile. She is slowly overcoming her nervousness in public, but still becomes very angry when the newsreel and television cameras focus on her for minutes at a time. Her voice, high and girlish on her accession, is taking on a deeper, more musical tone. Years of state duties, of meeting all kinds and classes of people, have diminished her shyness. She was almost tongue-tied when she came to Washington as Princess Elizabeth, but her host on that occasion, President Harry S. Truman, was surprised by the poised and friendly Queen he met in London in 1956. All her adult life the Queen has been accustomed to the company of the great. Aided by a phenomenal memory and real interest, her acquaintance with world politics is profound. She is intelligent but not an intellectual. She does a great deal of official reading--so much, in fact, that she reads little for pleasure. The Queen's pleasures and those of her immediate family are so typical of the middle class that intellectuals are often offended. They would prefer more attendance at cultural events such as the Edinburgh Festival and less at race meetings. But the deep thinkers, worried because the cultural tone of Buckingham Palace is pitched to the level of Danny Kaye rather than T.S. Eliot, overlook the fact that attachment to such frivolity strengthens the popularity of the royal house. There is no evidence that the British admire or desire intellectual attainments in a monarch. Nor does history indicate that such lusty figures as Charles II and George IV were less popular than the pious Victoria or the benign George V. Thus, when the Queen spends a week at Ascot to watch the racing, as millions of her subjects would dearly love to do, or attends a London revue, her subjects, aware of the burden of her office, wish her a good time. And the descriptions of such outings, with their invariable reports on what the Queen wore, what she ate and drank, and what she was heard to say, are read avidly by a large percentage of her people. The people are flattered when the Queen appears at a polo game in sensible shoes and a print dress, accompanied by her children and her dogs. They are equally flattered when they see her in tiara and evening dress, regal and coldly handsome. When the newspapers printed pictures of the Queen and her royal hosts at a state ball during her visit to Sweden, the popular reaction was: "Doesn't she look lovely, a real credit to the country."