To mark 100 years since the birth of Queen Elizabeth II, former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond, who covered the Firm for 14 years, mainly during the turbulent 1990s, recalls her memories of the former monarch
Essentially, I remember the late Queen as a fairly shy woman who probably would have loved to have been something like a farmer‘s wife, but who was thrown into one of the most public and high profile jobs on the planet.
It was, however, a role that she embraced and, in the end, she very much enjoyed being Queen. She had a dry but quite mischievous sense of humour. She rather liked it when things went a bit wrong on an official engagement – the car stalling or her plane being grounded in a thunderstorm – hardly surprising when you live a life so planned and regulated.
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Like her son, Charles, the Queen had for many years to negotiate a very difficult path between family matters and her role as monarch. She had to deal with the highly emotional problem of her sister wanting to marry a divorced man, and then with Margaret‘s divorce from the man she eventually married.
Worse than that were the troubles of the 1990s when the marriage of Charles and Diana was so hopelessly breaking down. Somehow she managed to keep them both on side. Even in her darkest days, Diana told me that she still adored the Queen.
Then of course there was the whole saga of Harry and Meghan, followed by the catastrophic downfall of Andrew. It was a lot for a sister, a mother and grandmother to deal with, especially alongside the onerous responsibilities of being monarch and Head of State.
I travelled extensively with the Queen and also met her many times at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Even so, she remained something of an enigma to me.
Her great skill was not allowing any of us truly to know what she was thinking or feeling. But I treasure the moments when I saw her a little off-guard, off-duty for a moment. For example, when I glimpsed her putting on her lipstick without a mirror just before entering one of the main reception rooms at the Palace.
Or when she invited me, along with a few other journalists, on board Britannia when it was berthed in South Africa. It was the start of a momentous visit which delighted an overexcited President Mandela. The Queen had a glint of real joy in her eyes as she told us that this was her first visit back to South Africa since she had visited with her parents and sister in 1947.
She was really looking forward to it, and she struck up a deep friendship with President Mandela. From then on, highly unusually, they called one another by their Christian names: Elizabeth and Nelson.
And, of course, I will never forget the huge crowds – up to a million people – gathered outside Buckingham Palace to celebrate the Golden, Diamond and then the Platinum Jubilee. It was an unforgettable sight and one which the Queen never expected and always found humbling.
I think she will be remembered as a woman of quiet dignity who devoted herself to her role and her duty, sometimes at the expense of her family life. She was guided by her deep faith and her belief that she had a God given duty to serve her country until her dying day. And she did.
And I think that sense of duty is something that we see today in King Charles. Despite everything – his health issues and the turmoil created by Andrew and Harry – he remains a man in a hurry to get things done, to carry out his duty and carry on his mother’s work. And I think the late Queen would very much approve of the way her son has begun his reign.
He has maintained the dignity of the monarchy and retained the basic structure of the royal life she created – but, at the same time, he is making it rather less remote, more approachable – – and definitely more huggable! I think his mother would approve of this kind of progress, which follows one of the old guard’s maxims: at the Palace, it is always a question of evolution, not revolution.
Now, that might well change when William comes to the throne, but for now the Queen’s legacy is very much in evidence.
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