Let's hear it for Princess Anne, the brave, plain-talking workaholic who holds ... trends now
The Princess Royal has topped the league table for Royal duties for many years so it comes as no surprise that she's started this year at full speed.
The variety matches the quantity. Ranging from being President of the Save the Children Fund to a role as Admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps, nothing seems to ruffle her.
At the start of the year she, accompanied by her husband, Sir Timothy Laurence, Anne visited Sri Lanka where, among her many duties she met the President.
A 19-year-old Princess Anne pictured in the grounds at Sandringham. She had first undertaken royal duties the year before
Princess Anne with her horse Doublet, after winning the three-day event at Burghley, Lincolnshire in 1971
A proud Queen takes photographs of Anne as she compete in horse trials at Burleigh. Anne became the Three-Day Event Champion on this occasion
As Prince Philip is said to have once remarked that Anne was the son he had wished to have
When Princess Anne married Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey in 1973, she was the first child of a monarch to be wed in a live televised ceremony
Then it was back home to Gatcombe for a training day before leaving for Rosyth in Scotland to watch a new naval frigate, HMS Venturer, being built.
From a Big Curry Lunch as an Honorary Freeman of the City of London to a Commonwealth dinner at Buckingham Palace - followed by another dinner for the Special Boat Services Association at Windsor Castle - it never stops.
And we are still only at the start of the year, with dozens more such appointments lined up.
Anne, the Princess Royal is unique.
She remains the most enigmatic member of the Royal Family, an aloof and seemingly unemotional woman who has never allowed the ermine cloak of Royalty to fall and expose her real hopes, fears and ambitions.
She has a devastating wit, a total disregard for the approval of others, and as a former European Three-Day-Event Champion, which she became in 1971 at her first attempt, her physical courage has never been in doubt.
Princess Anne knows exactly who and what she is. Very few men or women are permitted to call her by her Christian name.
It is always Your Royal Highness at first, thereafter, Ma’am – to rhyme with jam not anything else.
Anne survived a kidnap attempt by a gunman who shot her bodyguard five times; the scandal of being the first – and only – daughter of a reigning sovereign to be divorced and remarried (to a former servant of her mother), and seen the marriages of two of her brothers, Charles and Andrew, break up in bizarre circumstances.
She has seen both her nephews, William and Harry, marry and have children.
And seen Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, desert the Royal Family for the United States, to become ‘independent.’
Not that you will ever hear a word of criticism about any of them from her lips.
When she married her first husband, Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey in 1973, she was the monarch’s first child to be wed in a live televised ceremony.
The wedding to husband number two, Tim Laurence, whom she met when he was serving as a ‘Season Officer’ on board the Royal Yacht, Britannia, was a low key ceremony held at Crathie Parish Church near Balmoral in Scotland, because of the obstacles she would have encountered, as a divorced woman, marrying in church in England.
And even in Scotland there were difficulties, as Anne did not give the required fifteen days notice for the wedding. So technically she broke the law.
Beginning at the age of 18, when she presented symbolic Leek emblems to the Welsh Guards on St David’s Day, 1970, Anne has continued to pursue her Royal duties with unflagging energy and dedication.
Today, well over seventy, there is little sign of her slowing down.
She never stops, carrying out up to five different engagements in a day, some of which are stultifyingly boring.
Though when I mentioned this aspect of her work to her, Anne's reply was a masterpiece in classic, diplomatic understatement.
She merely admitted that: 'Some are perhaps less interesting than the others.'
A workaholic, she hates having a day off. As she told me, ‘I do not like sitting around doing nothing…I try to fill the time.’
In carrying out these duties, she has occasionally been required to show a thick skin – and keep a straight face at some of the remarks she has to listen to.
I was present in Houston, Texas, at a special dinner, where she was guest of honour and the host stood up to welcome her. He opened his speech by asking the Princess …'To congratulate your mother on being re-elected.'
She didn’t bat an eyelid.
The years have not been hard on Anne. She doesn’t require the services of a personal trainer to keep her stomach hard and flat, or a hairdresser in constant attendance to keep every strand in place.
Neither do her hands show any evidence of a weekly visit from a manicurist.
She has beautiful eyes, a fine complexion and she still wears the same size 10 clothes she wore 20 years ago. She claims that many of her outfits are, indeed, that old.
As the centuries-old Royal traditions of secret protocols, ancient grievances and stifling class distinctions are discarded there is not one word of criticism from the woman
