The Queen made an extraordinary personal intervention with ministers in order to prevent her cousin being kidnapped by the IRA, a new book reveals.
In 1971, the Duke of Kent, an Army officer with the Royal Scots Greys, was sent to Northern Ireland with his unit.
However, the former Northern Ireland prime minister, Lord O'Neil received a warning that the IRA were planning to kidnap the then 35-year-old Duke when his unit entered Belfast.
The peer passed the message on to the Queen via her private secretary. She, in turn alerted Prime Minister Edward Heath during her private audience and he relayed a warning to his ministers.
The Queen, pictured, made it known she did not want her cousin, the Duke of Kent deployed to Northern Ireland with the Royal Scots Greys in 1971
The Duke of Kent, pictured, was an officer with the Royal Scots Greys who were sent to Belfast in 1971. The Queen made it known she did not want him sent to Northern Ireland where the IRA had plans to kidnap him
Commanding officers were then told, very clearly, that the Duke was not to be sent to Belfast without special orders. A few weeks later, the Duke was posted back to the mainland.
The revelation appears in Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II by Robert Hardman who discovered the secret correspondence in the National Archives.
He quotes the Ministry of Defence official, A.W. Stephens, who informed the Prime Minister's private secretary, Robert Armstrong, on February 11: 'The Queen's wish that the Duke should not be sent into Belfast has been carefully noted.'
Mr Hardman said: "This was a time when kidnappings were on the up - a British diplomat had been kidnapped by separatists in Quebec months earlier - and the Queen was clearly worried enough about the credibility of this rumour that she intervened with the PM.
