The current king of Canadian letters, Lawrence Hill, meets the current queen of England. It does my heart good to know that Larry is talking to people with power. I feel like he’ll convert them all to sense and send them back out into the world to do good.

Hill, whose meeting was scheduled after he won the literary prize this spring, described his 15-minute audience with the Queen as “great, actually.”

“She was much more conversational and relaxed than I had imagined that she would be, so I was able to enjoy myself and feel I was speaking to not just a queen but an ordinary person in conversation,” said the Burlington, Ont.-based writer, whose credits also include Any Known Blood and Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.

“Most of the conversation had to do with the historical questions the book explores, and she was really quite struck [by the story].”

Just a while ago I read in Ted Hughes’ letters that he had a similar experience—-was dreading meeting an old wind bag and came away absolutely charmed by the woman. Nice to know she’s still got it.