An intimate view of Elizabeth II on her flight to England from Kenya shortly after she became queen on her father’s death, February 7, 1952
LONDON—On Sunday night I watched the BBC’s new documentary, Elizabeth II: Her Story, Our Century, a tribute to what would have been her 100th birthday on Tuesday April 21st. My most recent Royals Extra—The Centenary of a Nameless Princess Who Would Become Queen—told the story of her birth, christening, and first two years through century-old observations and photographs. On Tuesday I’m attending a reception at the British Museum where a scale model of the Queen Elizabeth II National Memorial by Lord Foster will be on display for King Charles, Queen Camilla and other invited guests. I’ll be sharing my reactions in a subsequent Royals Extra.
“Duty has overridden everything”
The BBC program swept through the arc of Queen Elizabeth’s 96 years, focusing on the highlights of her 70-year reign. The emphasis was on Elizabeth’s iron commitment to duty and service. As Queen Camilla said, “I think duty has overridden everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody have a sense of duty like she had.” Viewers saw previously unseen archive footage of Elizabeth’s childhood and clips from Royal Family, the film watched by 30 million people when it aired on the BBC in 1969.
The most poignant sight was of 25-year-old Elizabeth on February 7, 1952, when Prince Philip filmed her on their BOAC flight to London Airport from Kenya after the death of her father, King George VI, the previous day. Her expression flickered between sadness and a shy smile. As Prince Charles said when the BBC first showed him the footage in 2012, “Never seen this. So, these must be the first pictures taken of Mama when she knew she was Queen.”
“Did you put a wager on Street Sense?”
As I contemplate the milestone, I prefer to think of the lighthearted moments, three of which were personal, and the others gleaned from interviews with friends, family, and people who have spent time with her. I’m presenting them here without a paywall to all my subscribers.
My first encounter with the Queen came during her state visit to the United States in May 2007. I witnessed her unexpected liveliness when my husband Stephen and I were introduced to her by British Ambassador Sir David Manning during a garden party at the Embassy Residence. As I recounted in my 2012 biography, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, after she remarked that she understood Mr. Smith edited a Washington newspaper, he strayed from protocol and cheekily asked, “Did you put a wager on Street Sense at Churchill Downs?” He was referring to the winner of the Kentucky Derby, which she had attended for the first time the previous Saturday.
“With masterful diplomatic deflection, she ignored the question, but lingered,” I wrote. “Something about the phrasing must have piqued her interest.” He made a further observation about the race, which we had watched on TV, and then the two of them “went back and forth…replaying the race and its thrilling finish, in which Street Sense went from nineteenth place to first. ‘You could see the yellow cap!’” she exclaimed.
“The gaiety so often obscured by the dignity”
I noticed what I had not anticipated from the Queen: her “animated gestures, the expressive blue eyes, the flashing smile. For a minute or so, I had glimpsed the gaiety so often obscured by the dignity of the Queen’s role.”
Greeting Queen Elizabeth II with Sir David Manning, British Ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Lady Manning, during a garden party at the British Embassy in May 2007
I next saw the Queen in a private setting after I had been working for a year on my book about her. I met her at a reception at St. James’s Palace in June 2009 in honor of the Pilgrims, a group that promotes Anglo-American friendship. She wore a bright pink dress, with a single strand of pearls, simple pearl earrings, and a dazzling jeweled butterfly brooch. Her hair was smartly coiffed, and she moved in a deliberate way, pacing herself, engaging each person with a quick question, sometimes going back and forth. There were more than 600 people there, and I was among the 100 guests selected to be presented to the Queen. When I mentioned that I was in London to attend an Anglo-American wedding, she inquired about the date. “The Fourth of July,” I replied. “Oh,” she said, “that’s a little dangerous!” Once again there was a smile and a twinkle. “I hope all is forgiven,” I replied. Another smile, and she moved on.
Merely another guest
I described our third encounter in a Royals Extra on June 22, 2025, Part Two: An Insider’s View of the Royal Family, the second in a three-part series about conversations I had over the years with my friend Lady Elizabeth Anson, a cousin and confidante of the Queen. In March 2011, a month before the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, I was included in a private reception—again at St. James’s Palace—to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lady Elizabeth’s successful business, Party Planners. The Queen was in high spirits that evening, and what struck me most of all was that she was happily on her own, without any attendants running interference or making introductions. Here she was, in her own palace, but she was merely another guest—a mark of her humility. In my Royals Extra I shared more details about how the Queen looked and behaved, and what she said to her cousin afterward.
Lady Elizabeth Anson greeting Queen Elizabeth II at a party she hosted at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London on the eve of Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton, April 28, 2011
As for the accounts from others about her joie de vivre, Howard Morgan, a friend of mine who painted her portrait, told me that during her sittings, she talked “like an Italian.” He said she would wave her hands around, “enormously expressive.” Another friend described her blowing bubbles at a birthday party in the London Aquarium. During a cruise to the Outer Hebrides, the Queen and her family went ashore and she belted out songs while sitting on a wooden box. Tony Parnell, her former foreman at the 365-room Sandringham House on her Norfolk estate, told me that “you can hear her laughter sometimes throughout the house. It is a joyous laugh.”
Queen Elizabeth II in her Grand Duchess Vladimir Tiara with Prince Philip and Ronald and Nancy Reagan at a banquet in San Francisco’s de Young Museum, March 3, 1983
“I have an image of her sitting on a bed”
She also found relaxation in her “tiara time,” described to me by Carolyn Deaver, the wife of Ronald Reagan’s deputy chief of staff Mike Deaver, and confirmed by David Thomas, a former Crown Jeweler. I wrote about it in a Royals Extra on September 27, 2025, titled Queen Elizabeth’s California Adventure—Torrential Rains, Howling Winds, An Ambassadress Falling into The Monarch’s Lap, and Drinks at Trader Vics. Before formal dinners, the Queen would use a kit with special tools to decorate various diamond tiaras with pearls or gemstones. In this case, it was the Grand Duchess Vladimir Tiara that she wore with a matching necklace and earrings to a banquet at San Francisco’s de Young Museum on March 3, 1983. “The Queen likes to hook the pearls on her tiara,” David Thomas told me. “I have an image of her sitting on a bed, hooking the pearl drops on the tiara.”
I’ll close with a classic example of the Queen’s droll humor. When the monarch’s only American lady-in waiting, Ginnie Airlie, had a seventieth birthday party at Annabel’s nightclub in February 2003, the Queen was seated next to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the 7th Marquess of Salisbury, a longtime family friend. As Lord Salisbury recalled, “She told me she had never been to a nightclub so she was looking forward to the evening so she could say ‘I have been to a nightclub.’ We laughed about that.”
“Robert and I were in a nightclub last night”
The next day, Elizabeth II went to St. Alban’s Abbey outside London for a routine engagement involving a line of dignitaries. Lord Salisbury told me that when the dean of the Abbey saw him, he asked the Queen if she had met him before. “‘Oh yes,’ said the Queen in ringing tones,” Salisbury recalled. “Robert and I were in a nightclub last night till half past one.”
The larger public, of course, didn’t experience her light-hearted side firsthand. But somehow it came through, even from a distant point on the Mall or a grainy television shot of her on the balcony on Buckingham Palace. The Queen had a sparkle that pomp and ceremony couldn’t hide.
