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.

Als die Pathologen Heinrich von Kleists Leichnam untersuchen wollten, brachte sie bereits der Schädel in Schwierigkeiten. Die Kopfsäge soll zerbrochen sein beim Versuch, die Schädeldecke zu öffnen. Solche Widerborstigkeit bis in den Tod blieb zunächst der einzige denkwürdige Befund. Das Hirn selber zeigte keine Auffälligkeiten. Hingegen fanden die Mediziner eine vergrösserte Leber, eine verdickte Galle und reichlich schwarzes Blut. Es seien dies, so schreibt Günter Blamberger in seiner Kleist-Biografie, nach einer schon damals überholten Auffassung die körperlichen Symptome gewesen für ein cholerisches, melancholisch-hypochondrisches Temperament. Die Pathologen suchten nach Zeichen, die ihnen das Unerklärliche deuten sollten; dass sie fanden, was ihnen ihre Lehre allererst suggerierte, mag uns wunderlich scheinen. Jedoch taten sie bloss, was heutige Exegeten und Biografen auch tun: im Horizont der eigenen Erfahrung und des eigenen Wissens das vielfach rätselhafte Leben Heinrich von Kleists ergründen.