The Annie Leibowitz portait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II surrounded by her great grandchildren...quite simply, stunning. And mesmerising. [...] Having admired her many gruelling decades of public engagements, her fortitude, diplomacy and devotion to duty vanishingly few of us would want to be Queen in her stead.

Queen Elizabeth II, who turns 90 in April, carried out 306 engagements in Britain last year, a tally in The Times newspaper showed Friday. The queen, who became Britain’s longest serving monarch in September after more than 63 years, also conducted 35 engagements abroad, having paid state visits to Germany and Malta.

From the World Service to the Queen and even Norman Wisdom, Britain punches above its weight in the soft power stakes. [...] But the global soft-power reach of the UK is a phenomenon all on its own.

As we wait with bated breath to see if Vladimir Putin’s Q&A today will cover Prince Charles’s unflattering comparison of him to a certain wartime German leader with a distinctive moustache, the Kremlin-funded news channel Russia Today has hit back by highlighting the royal family’s historical links to the Nazis.