Happy New Year, readers! And I really mean that. We've all come to appreciate the fragility and the importance of life more than ever in recent times. When we can finally celebrate that feeling around the world ... well, what a celebration it will be.

As I write, London is in lockdown. I'm waiting for the edits for book 2 of the Her Majesty The Queen Investigates series, and busy mentally dispatching people across East Anglia for book 3, which will come out in 2022. That book is set on the North Norfolk coast, in and around the Sandringham estate, and it is a joyful part of my job that I can mentally visit the wide open landscapes, vast skies and air alive with birdsong in that part of the country - even if I can't go physically, as I did this time last year.

Nor can Her Majesty, of course. Like the rest of us who are playing by the rules (not all, but most), she is staying put at Windsor, and I can picture her exactly, going for a morning ride and sipping an evening gin and Dubonnet, attending to her latest jigsaw puzzle and her State duties, with Philip by her side. I wonder if she's had the jab yet. I hope so. Meanwhile, we hunker down and hope that by summer, the world will be a different place.

I wish you all, as the Queen would say, a happy and hopeful 2021. Now back to the writing shed. Brrrrrr ... it's cold.

SJ Bennett