The five best anecdotes about the Queen

As the UK mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth II this week, millions of people across the world have been sharing their memories of the monarch as they reflect on her 70-year reign.

The Queen, who died last week aged 96, was known not only for her stoical service to the country throughout her life as Britain's longest reigning monarch, but also for her good humour and wit, which became even more apparent in later life.

A prank on American tourists

During this year’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, one of her former royal protection officers, Richard Griffin, shed light on the Queen’s dry sense of humour in an anecdote told to Sky News.

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Griffin said that he and the Queen had come across American tourists one day while they were walking through the Balmoral estate in Scotland. “There were two hikers coming towards us, and the Queen would always stop and say hello,” Griffin told the broadcaster. “And it was clear from the moment we first stopped that they hadn’t recognised the Queen,” he said.

During the ensuing conversation, one of the hikers asked the monarch if she had ever met Queen Elizabeth.

She replied: “Well I haven’t, but Dick here meets her regularly.”

Comforting a traumatised war surgeon

In his memoir, War Doctor, Welsh surgeon David Nott revealed a touching moment when the Queen helped soothe his trauma by letting him pet her corgis when he was invited to a lunch at Buckingham Palace.

As a surgeon, Nott had spent 30 years working in some of the most dangerous conflict zones in the world and had been in Aleppo, Syria, for six weeks before he met the Queen.

He recalled how he had become overwhelmed with emotion while recounting his time in the war-torn nation. “I hoped she wouldn’t ask me another question about Aleppo. I knew if she did, I would completely lose control,” he wrote.

He described how the Queen, noticing his emotion, looked at him quizzically and touched his hand before speaking to a courtier, who pointed to a silver box in front of her. The monarch then opened it to reveal dog biscuits inside.

“We fed the biscuits to the corgis under the table and for the rest of the lunch she took the lead and chatted about her dogs,” he wrote. He added: “‘There,’ the Queen said. ‘That's so much better than talking, isn’t it?’”

Shocking a Saudi prince

British diplomat Sherard Cowper-Coles recounted in The Sunday Times a now near-legendary tale of how the Queen left Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah – then Crown Prince Abdullah – shaken when he visited Balmoral in 2003.

The Queen offered Abdullah a tour of the estate and, after accepting the invitation, “the Crown Prince climbed into the front seat of the front Land Rover, his interpreter in the seat behind,” according to the diplomat.

“To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off. Women are not – yet – allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a queen,” Cowper-Coles recounted.

And Abdullah’s “nervousness only increased as the Queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time”. Speaking through his interpreter, “the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead”.

An Olympic mission with James Bond

The Queen delighted millions across the UK and the world when she appeared in a short cameo alongside Daniel Craig as James Bond, in a skit that featured in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.

It saw the fictional spy escort the Queen from Buckingham Palace to the Olympic Stadium in east London in a helicopter, with an actor playing the Queen shown jumping out of an aeroplane attached to a Union Jack parachute.

And making the scene “even more fun” was that the Queen had “kept her involvement secret from her family”, said The Independent.

A helpful push from the Archbishop of Canterbury

At her coronation in 1953, the Queen was required to wear a heavy set of robes, recounted Woman’s World magazine. Before the ceremony began, she turned to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him to give her a little nudge to “get me started”.

The carpet at Westminster Abbey had been laid with its pile going the wrong way, and so the Queen could barely move as the fringe of her robes got caught in the pile. Luckily, the archbishop was on hand to give the monarch a helpful push that allowed her to get going.