Did a prime minister's ordeal inspire the Queen's Christmas message? In 1931, he was elected MP for Lanark, Scotland, and later became Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain, then prime minister. Aged 37, Sir Alec signed up for military service during the Second World War, but a medical examination revealed a lesion in his spine and tuberculosis in the surrounding bone. In September 1940, he underwent a six-hour operation to remove the diseased area, pronouncing, on waking up: "Doctor, you have put the backbone into a politician." The next three years, however, marked the hardest of his life. Medical practice of the day dictated that, after such a serious operation, a patient was put in a full-body cast and lay prone until the bones healed. "Alec Dunglass lay in a sort of living death, encased in a plaster sarcophagus and facing the possibility of being a permanent cripple," wrote his biographer Kenneth Young. In 1942, the cast was replaced by a brace, which permitted the patient "his greatest joy: to read again and to turn the pages for himself." During this time, Sir Alec was miserable. "I often felt I would be better dead," he admitted. But he passed the time by reading weighty tomes: works by Engels and Lenin, the Communist Manifesto, biographies of 19th- and 20th-century politicians, and novels by Dostoyevsky. According to another biographer, DR Thorpe, Sir Alec finished Karl Marx's Das Kapital, making him the only British Prime Minister to do so. When he returned to the Commons in 1943, he challenged Winston Churchill in debates on Poland's future, aided by the knowledge he had gained from his books. In addition to reading, Sir Alec spent many hours learning how to arrange flowers - "because I was best at it and if I didn't do it nobody else would," he explained - and even taught himself needlework. "There were dark hours of despair, but there was faith," wrote Young. His blessed sense of humour, though sorely tried, was not extinguished. He took up embroidery and worked sufficient petit point for eight dining room chairs. After his recovery, and his father's death, Sir Alec became the 14th Earl of Home and took a seat in the House of Lords. He became Foreign Secretary under Harold Macmillan, though never seemed to aspire higher. Asked in an interview whether he could ever become prime minister, he said: "No, because I do sums with matchsticks." However, this didn't stop him, and in October 1963, after renouncing his title, he succeeded Macmillan for 363 days at the helm, the second shortest premiership in the 20th century. Though 23 years older than the Queen, the pair were already firm friends outside of their official weekly meetings. Sir Alec shared with Her Majesty a love of nature - since childhood, he had kept plant diaries and collected butterflies - and he helped to name the Royal horses. One day, after listening to the bagpiper over breakfast at Balmoral, he is said to have dubbed three new foals "Blessed Relief," "Bagpipes" and "[Out of] Earshot." Sir Alec's tenure as PM was unremarkable, apart from one bizarre evening in April 1964, during which two students from the University of Aberdeen turned up at the house where he was staying and announced a plan to kidnap him. He foiled his intended abductors by plying them with beer. The Conservatives lost that year's election and Sir Alec stepped down, serving as Foreign Secretary under Edward Heath until his retirement in 1974. In the years that followed, Sir Alec retreated from public life, spending his time writing, fishing and shooting. He died, aged 92, in 1995. Even at the end, he recalled his days in that "plaster sarcophagus" as the most formative of his life. "When I was ill [I] looked over the edge," he said. [It was] a glimpse of the infinite. And if indeed it was Sir Alec Her Majesty was referring to, then what better message to pass on at Christmas: a glimpse of the infinite, a reminder to us all to pause for reflection, from her dear, departed friend.