Elizabeth the Queen (83 page)

He would regale her with stories, such as the time at a garden party when he found a sticky bun containing an entire set of dentures
.

Patrick Plunket, 7th Baron Plunket, a close adviser and friend of Elizabeth II since childhood, the impresario of her social life from the beginning of her reign until his death at age fifty-one in 1975.
Private collection of Shaun Plunket

Wilson relied on the Queen’s confidentiality. When he was worried about fellow cabinet ministers undercutting him, she gave him a shoulder to weep on
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The Queen with Harold Wilson at Balmoral in September 1975 after he confided to her that he planned to step down as prime minister on his 60th birthday the following March.
Private collection of Lady Wilson

Elizabeth II stepped out of the car, her eyes reddened from crying. “Ma’am, would you like to go upstairs?” “Yes, I think I would,” replied the Queen
.

The royal family in Westminster Abbey during the funeral service of Louis Mountbatten, the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. From left: Princess Anne, the Queen Mother, Captain Mark Phillips, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Philip, and Prince Edward, September 5, 1979.
Associated Press/TopFoto/The Image Works

Her life in the Highlands offers the Queen a taste of normality, and a sense of freedom
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Elizabeth II laughing at the Braemar Games near Balmoral Castle as the Queen Mother, Diana, and Charles join in, September 1982.
©Mirrorpix

“Come show me this lions’ cage of yours,” said Elizabeth II
.
“Do I need a whip and a chair?”

The Queen in the indoor riding school at Windsor Castle with Monty Roberts, the “horse whisperer” from California, before he demonstrated his technique for “starting” horses, April 10, 1989.
Photograph by Pat Roberts

“It’s the American way,” Frazier said afterward. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

The Queen being hugged by sixty-seven-year-old Alice Frazier during a visit to Frazier’s home in Washington, D.C., May 15, 1991.
Associated Press

Prince William “has no desire to climb the ladder of kingship before his time.”

Prince Charles and his sons, William and Harry, second and third in line to the throne, after Harry’s graduation from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where William was also training, April 12, 2006.
Ian Jones Photography

She had first glimpsed the future prime minister when he appeared at age eight with her son, Prince Edward, in a school production of
Toad of Toad Hall.

The eighty-four-year-old Queen greeting forty-three-year-old David Cameron, her twelfth prime minister, as he arrives at Buckingham Palace to “kiss hands,” May 11, 2010.
Ian Jones Photography

“To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deepest sympathy.”

Queen Elizabeth II after laying a wreath in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin on May 17, 2011, during her four-day state visit to Ireland, the first since her grandfather, King George V, toured Dublin a century earlier.
Arthur Edwards/AFP/Getty Images

David Cameron called William and Catherine “the team of the future.”