Cameron opened the meeting by saying it was the first time a monarch had attended a full cabinet since George III in 1781. He said Anglo-American relations had improved since then.

Apart from expressing the hope that the next Queen’s Speech would be shorter rather than longer, the Queen remained silent during her 45-minute appearance at the cabinet table but, according to the communities secretary Eric Pickles, she took a close interest in the discussion on the Afghan war led by Hague and Philip Hammond, the defence secretary.

In a sign that cabinet is no longer the true epicentre of decision-making it was not until a meeting in the afternoon of the national security council that ministers agreed a 4,000 troop drawdown next year in Afghanistan.

Although she has visited Downing Street before, the Queen was given a lightning tour of No 10, being taken from the Terracotta room to the Pillared room where her ministers stood in line to greet her.

It was during this guard of honour that she lapsed inadvertently into politics. Referring to her recent visit to the Bank of England, she told the chancellor George Osborne, ‘I saw all the gold bars, which, regrettably, somebody said don’t belong to us.’

A smiling Osborne replied: ‘Some of them were sold, but we’ve still got some left.’ Osborne has spent much of his political life criticising Gordon Brown for his sale of the gold.

In a further gift to the monarch, the Foreign Office declared that a tract of frozen land about twice the size of the UK in Antarctica was to be named after her as Queen Elizabeth Land.

The land, over which Argentina also claims sovereignty, had been previously unnamed. It is around 169,000 square miles (437,000 sq km), making up just under a third of the land mass of the British Antarctic Territory. The UK is 94,000 square miles (244,000 sq km).

Hague said: “The British Antarctic Territory is a unique and important member of the network of 14 UK overseas territories. To be able to recognise the UK’s commitment to Antarctica with a permanent association with Her Majesty is a great honour”.

The Queen has been on the throne for 60 of the 104 years since the UK claimed territory in Antarctica in 1908.

Britain became the first country to claim Antarctic territory and since then New Zealand, France, Norway, Australia, Chile and Argentina have also lodged official claims to some of the territory although most countries do not recognise them. It is expected that Argentina is going to object formally to the naming of Queen Elizabeth Land at some point later this week.

[Eve’s Dream:]

I rose as at thy call, but found thee not;
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I pass’d through ways
That brought me on a sudden to the Tree
Of interdicted Knowledge: fair it seem’d,
Much fairer to my Fancie then by day.

[Adam:]

How can I live without thee, how forgoe
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d,
To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.