Sunday 27 November 2022 05:38 PM New book on the Queen reveals late monarch's amusing attempt to make light of a ... trends now
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The Queen’s sanguine - and hilarious - response to a threat on her life is revealed today in a compelling biography of the late monarch.
Written by author and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth, the fascinating new book gives a charming insight into the Queen’s remarkable sense of humour.
Mr Brandreth, a former Conservative MP and trusted confidant of the senior Royals, reveals how throughout her reign, the monarch took the possibility of being in the firing line in her stride.
She even managed to make light of an attempt on her life at Christmas last year when a masked intruder wielding a crossbow approached a police officer in the grounds of Windsor Castle and announced he had come ‘to kill the Queen’.
The late Queen Elizabeth II recording her annual Christmas broadcast in the White Drawing Room in Windsor Castle last year
The teenager suspected of scaling Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow in a bid to 'assassinate the Queen in revenge for 1919 Amritsar massacre'
Mr Brandreth tells how when the Queen was told about the incident, she said to one of her team: ‘Yes, well, that would have put a dampner on Christmas, wouldn’t it?’
The amusing anecdote is one of a number of heartwarming tales contained within the book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait which is being serialised in The Mail + and the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.
Mr Brandreth, who occupies a unique position as a friend and biographer of the Royal Family, recounts a number of stories which highlight the sadly passed sovereign’s wit and love of a practical joke. He tells how it was her ‘wry, dry, humorous way of looking at things’ that particularly struck him.
‘The fun of spending time with the Queen was both finding out how much fun she was and discovering unexpected things about her,’ he wrote.
‘She really could sing ‘When I’m cleaning winders’ and the other songs George Formby sang to his banjolele when she was growing up during the war - and with Formby’s authentic Lancashire accent, too. (She was the Duke of Lancaster, after all.)’
It follows revelations in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about the remarkable way the Queen welcomed Meghan into
