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Did I REALLY say that, Your Majesty? From the tycoon who could only parrot his wife to the rock star who began whistling, the great and good shook and spouted gobbledygook when they met the late Queen
Those who were presented to the Queen often found the experience discombobulating. Though it may have been the first time they had ever set eyes on her, they were often more familiar with her face than with their own.
They knew it in profile; they knew it head-on; they had seen it refracted through the visions of countless artists and photographers. So to meet the Queen face-to-face was apt to make you feel giddy or woozy, as though a well-loved family portrait had suddenly sprung to life.
America’s First Lady Michelle Obama first met the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2009. ‘Sitting with the Queen, I had to will myself out of my own head – to stop processing the splendour of the setting and the paralysis I felt coming face-to-face with an honest-to-goodness icon,’ she wrote. ‘I’d seen Her Majesty’s face dozens of times before, in history books, on television and on currency, but here she was in the flesh, looking at me intently and asking questions.’
A friend of mine, a magazine editor, was asked to one of the Queen’s regular ‘informal’ lunches for distinguished people from different walks of life. As he was ushered in, a senior courtier suggested that he might care to spend a penny.
When he said he didn’t think it necessary, the courtier advised him it was best to be on the safe side: one or two previous guests had ‘had an accident’ upon being presented. The comic novelist Kingsley Amis was invited to one such lunch in 1975. ‘He had been terrified for days about the unpremeditated fart or belch and was on a strict non-bean-and-onion diet,’ one of his oldest friends, Robert Conquest, gossiped sneakily to another, Philip Larkin.
Amis’s fear reignited itself 15 years later. Before going to Buckingham Palace to receive a knighthood, he grew so frightened of having an unspeakable incident in front of the Queen that, in the words of his son Martin, he ‘had his doctor lay down a firewall of Imodium and there was some doubt, afterwards, whether he would ever again go to the toilet’.
Another eminent man of letters – sophisticated, posh, loosely republican – accepted an invitation to one of the Queen’s informal lunches with his usual worldly mix of curiosity and condescension.
Over the course of his life he had met Marlene Dietrich, Jackie Kennedy, Dame Rebecca West... why on earth should he feel any different about meeting Her Majesty? But the moment the Queen arrived he turned to jelly.
‘Suddenly I felt physically ill. My legs felt weak, my head swam and my mind went totally blank. “So you’re writing about such-and-such?” said the Queen. I had no idea what I was writing about, or even if I was writing a book at all.
‘All I could think of to say was, “What a pretty brooch you’re wearing, ma’am.” So far as I can recall she was not wearing a brooch. Presumably she was used to such imbecility. I would not have believed that I could have reacted in such a way.’
Sometimes people would recognise in her not themselves but a close relation: a mother, sister, aunt or grandmother. When I was a little boy we had a nanny who looked to me so much like the Queen that I was convinced that this was who she was, and that on her days off she would moonlight to pursue her job at the Palace.
Her Majesty beams with delight as she meets a jockey at Royal Ascot
Rock star Phil Collins began whistling the theme tune from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind when he met the Queen
America’s First Lady Michelle Obama first met the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2009
Reading a newspaper story about the Queen’s humdrum daily habits, the forthright Australian republican Germaine Greer immediately thought of her own mother, and the two became melded in her mind. ‘Her Majesty watches telly while she eats, and she eats, apparently, five times a day, just like an old lady in a care home.
‘The Queen watches EastEnders and The Bill, when she could watch absolutely anything she chose, but she does not choose. Just like my mother.’
When people spoke of her, they spoke of themselves, and when they dreamt of her, they dreamt of themselves.
It’s like throwing a ball against a wall and catching it: the active participant does the catching and the throwing; the job of the wall is to remain so solid and still that the ball can keep bouncing back. Hillary Clinton recalled of a presidential visit to Buckingham Palace: ‘The Queen... wore a sparkling diamond tiara that caught the light as she nodded and laughed at Bill’s stories.’
To some extent, this was both the Queen’s talent and purpose: to radiate. Rob Halford, lead vocalist with Judas Priest, described a reception for the music business at Buckingham Palace in 2005.
‘I said hello to Roger Daltrey and had a bit of a chit-chat with Brian May. One of the lads from Status Quo was there... Suddenly, the Queen appeared at the far end of the room. She is a tiny figure, hardly more than five feet tall, but she has such presence. How can
I put it exactly? She just... radiates royalty.’
Many – perhaps most – of those who met her came away fretting that they had said too much, or too little, or had been too pushy, outspoken, unforthcoming or loopy. Coming face-to-face with the most recognisable person in the world drove many into a frenzy of grandiose circumlocution.
In 1969 the Queen asked the newly appointed US ambassador Walter Annenberg where he and his wife were living. He replied: ‘We’re in the Embassy residence, subject, of course, to some of the discomfiture as a result of a need for, uh, elements of refurbishing and rehabilitation.’
Unfortunately, their conversation was being filmed by the BBC and, nowadays, it is this absurdly prolix sentence, of all those he uttered over the course of his life, for which Annenberg is most commonly remembered.
Often the presence of Her Majesty could spur even her most self-assured subjects into spouting nonsense.
At a Palace reception for British Book Week, the actress Miriam Margolyes was approached by the Queen.
‘And what do you do?’ asked the Queen. Margolyes felt the gibberish gush forth. ‘Instead of saying like any normal person, “Your Majesty, I am an actress who records audio books,” I took a deep breath, and declared, “Your Majesty, I am the best reader of stories in the whole world!”’
According to Margolyes, the Queen looked back at her, rolled her eyes, sighed, and turned to Margolyes’s neighbour. ‘And what do you do?’
Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, daughter of the 8th Marquess of Londonderry, marries Mark Birley
In 1965 the four Beatles went to the Palace to receive their MBEs. ‘Have you been working hard recently?’ the Queen asked. John Lennon’s mind went blank. He couldn’t think what on earth they had been doing
Did it ever cross the Queen’s mind that most of her subjects were deranged? In 1956, the then Lady Annabel Birley and her husband Mark were at a large reception. As they entered, her old friend Patrick Plunket, the Deputy Master of the Queen’s Household, grabbed her arm.
‘There you are! Come and meet the Queen!’
Lost for something to say, Lady Annabel thought of dogs. ‘Ma’am, we have a very small dachshund called Noodle who we love and who is very spoilt and sleeps every night in our bed,’ she said. The Queen then turned to Mark, who went blank and repeated, ‘Ma’am, we have a very small dachshund called Noodle who is very spoilt and sleeps every night in our bed.’
The Queen, recalled Lady Annabel, ‘simply nodded and smiled’.
In 1965 the four Beatles went to the Palace to receive their MBEs. As teenagers, they had entertained lustful thoughts about the young Princess Elizabeth.
‘They were very formative teenage years, and the Queen was sort of, 24, or something, so to us she was a babe,’ recalled Paul McCartney half a century later.
‘We were like, “Phwoar!” There was a certain lustfulness in us teenagers. That’s what we used to say in Liverpool, “Just look at the heat on her!” So we grew up loving the Queen.’
Perhaps their teenage infatuations clouded their brains, or might it have been the marijuana that John Lennon later claimed they had smoked in the Palace loo before the ceremony? Either way, their conversation with the Queen proved awkward. ‘Have you been working hard recently?’ the Queen asked. John’s mind went blank. He couldn’t think what on earth they had been doing.
‘No, we’ve been having a holiday,’ he replied. In fact, they had been recording. She turned to Paul: ‘Have you been together long?’ ‘Yes, we’ve been together now for forty years...’ he began, echoing the old music hall song, My Old Dutch.
‘...And it don’t seem a day too much!’ Ringo and Paul chorused together. The Queen looked nonplussed, evidently not catching the reference. ‘You started the group, did you?’ she asked Ringo. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They did. I joined last.’ Afterwards, the four of them posed with their MBEs. ‘She was just like a mum to us,’ said John. ‘She was so warm and sweet. She really put us at our ease.’
Forty years later, at a Palace reception, the Queen had just finished exchanging a few words with the radio presenter Terry Wogan and the rock star Phil Collins.
Possibly out of a sense of relief that his ordeal was over, Collins began whistling the theme tune from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.
The Queen heard it, and turned and smiled. ‘What was that?’ she asked. Collins was struck dumb, so Wogan attempted to help him out. ‘He was calling ET, ma’am,’ he replied. (‘Even as I said it wishing I’d kept my mouth shut,’ Wogan later recalled.)
‘Ah,’ said the Queen, and moved on. Collins turned to Wogan. ‘Why did I do that?’ he said. ‘What came over me?’
‘The Royal Effect,’ said Wogan. ‘You say the first thing that comes into your head, and you carry the memory of your foolishness with you to the grave.’
Why the Queen loved corgis so much? She could bark back at them!
The royal butler Paul Burrell says that it was a joke among the Palace staff that the things most important to the Queen were horses, dogs, Prince Philip and her children, in that order.
‘That is a little unfair,’ he adds. ‘It is just that she is perhaps more passionate about horses and dogs.’
Those who knew her would compare her character to that of a regular upper-class English countrywoman: straightforward, understated, down to earth. Yet being followed around by ten corgis at a time would have marked out anyone else as deeply eccentric.
Prince Philip would grow irritated by the way they kept blocking his path. ‘Bloody dogs! Why do you have to have so many?’ he once snapped at the Queen. ‘But they’re so collectable,’ she explained.
Corgis were rebellious in a way that Queen Elizabeth II could never be. Their clamour was her refuge, their indifference her comfort. Unlike humans, they were unimpressed by Her Majesty. Even her children would have to defer to her, bowing or curtsying, walking behind her.
But the behaviour of the corgis was modified by no such deference: she would follow them into the room, rather than vice versa, and if they felt like barking, bark they did. And she, in turn, released from pleasantries, could bark back at them.
When Gordon Brown and his family stayed at Balmoral, he found the Queen ‘a gracious hostess’ but noticed she could be petulant towards her dogs. ‘She was surrounded by her corgis and the boys [Brown’s sons] were delighted and shocked in equal measure when she told one of her dogs to “shut up”.’
The corgis could also provide an escape from talking about anything too painful. David Nott is a consultant surgeon at three London hospitals. Two months a year, he offers his services to victims in war zones.
Stationed in Aleppo, Syria, in 2014, he had been operating in a makeshift hospital, often by torchlight, while bombs exploded around him. Ten days after his return, he was a guest at one of the Queen’s regular lunches.
‘I hear you’ve just come back from Aleppo?’ she began.
Sometimes the Queen’s corgis seemed to act not only as companions but also as avatars, behaving as she herself might have done in a life less constrained
When Putin made a state visit to the UK, David Blunkett's guide dog Sadie barked at the Russian leader. The Queen said to the then home secretary: ‘Dogs have interesting instincts, don’t they?’
Nott’s mind raced back to a day when seven children from the same family had been brought to him. Their mother was dead. One of the boys had his buttocks blown off; the white blobs over his face were his sister’s brains. Nott could not save the boy: all he could do was comfort him and hold his hand while he died.
In 20 years of operating, it was the most pitiful sight he had ever seen. Overcome with emotion, Nott found himself unable to answer the Queen’s simple question. ‘I could feel my bottom lip quivering. I couldn’t say a word. There’s no doubt I was suffering from post-traumatic stress.’
‘She picked all this up. She said, “Shall I help you?”. I thought, how on earth can the Queen help me? Then she started talking about her dogs and asked if I’d like to see them. I said I would.
‘I was trying not to cry, to hold it all together, and suddenly a courtier appeared with the corgis. Then a silver tin with a screw-top lid labelled “dog biscuits” was brought to the table.
‘The Queen opened it, broke a biscuit in two and gave half to me, and she said, “Why don’t we feed the dogs?” We kept feeding them and stroking them for half an hour or so as she chatted and told me all about them.
‘And she did it because she knew I was seriously traumatised. The humanity of what she was doing was unbelievable.’
Sometimes the Queen’s corgis seemed to act not only as companions but also as avatars, behaving as she herself might have done in a life less constrained. In 2003, the Russian president Vladimir Putin undertook a state visit to Britain. At a Palace reception he was introduced to David Blunkett, then home secretary.
Blunkett’s guide dog Sadie greeted the Russian president with a series of aggressive barks. The Queen patted the dog. Blunkett took this for a sign of approval, ‘as if to say, “Good dog! Good dog!”’ He later apologised for Sadie’s behaviour. ‘Dogs have interesting instincts, don’t they?’ replied the Queen.
Adapted from A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown (Fourth Estate, £25) to be published August 29. © Craig Brown 2024. To order a copy for £21.25 (offer valid to 31/8/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
Tomorrow: Why Coronation photographer scolded Philip