'This is ridiculous. Where've you been?', the Queen ripped into Philip: Her Majesty rarely loses her temper. But as a riveting new biography reveals, you know it when she does! 

By Ingrid Seward For The Daily Mail

Published: 19:38 EST, 16 August 2015 | Updated: 23:30 EST, 16 August 2015

The Queen and Prince Philip in Spain. According to a new book, Her Majesty rarely loses her temper, but when she does, everybody knows about it

In a major new biography, Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, paints a revealing and intimate portrait of Elizabeth II on the eve of her becoming Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. 

Here, in our second extract from her book, The Queen’s Speech, she gives a unique insight into her private personality — and her relationship with her husband . . .

On September 9, the Queen will surpass the 63 years and seven months that her great-great-grandmother, Victoria, ruled — making her the longest reigning monarch in British history.

This royal milestone is a momentous national occasion, but next year sees another that is just as remarkable and harder to credit. The Queen will be 90 on April 21, 2016. She defies her age: her brain is still razor sharp, her skin is perfect. When she smiles, her teeth are as white and her expression as generous as ever.

And unlike her great-great-grandmother, she has a wonderful, impish sense of humour.

One royal chauffeur had a favourite tale that he swore was true: he was driving the Queen back to London from Luton Hoo, stately home of the aristocratic Wernher family until the Nineties, at 2am, when he was stopped by a police motorcyclist on a country lane.

As the chauffeur wound down his window, the traffic policeman gestured to the black Daimler and the two identical cars that were pulling up behind it.

‘What are you doing, driving round here at this time of the morning?’ the officer demanded.

The chauffeur leaned out and said softly: ‘I have the Guv’nor in the back — the Queen. In the next car is the Queen Mother and in the third is Princess Margaret. This man next to me is Chief Inspector Perkins, who looks after the Queen.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman, ‘and if that’s right, I’m Roy Rogers and this bike is Trigger.’

A crisp voice came from the back of the car: ‘I’d get on Trigger if I were you because you’re ahead at the moment.’

But the monarch was acutely aware that this poor man had only been doing his duty. She sent a letter from the Palace to Hertfordshire’s chief constable, complimenting the policeman on his vigilance — and he was promoted.

Since her birth in 1926, year of the General Strike, the world has changed beyond recognition, but the Queen is unchanged and unchanging.

Prince Philip has described the Queen's role as the ‘Commonwealth physiotherapist’ as she has a deep understanding of all the countries of Britain’s former empire

Queen and Prince Philip arrive for service to mark VJ Day

She was just 25, with two small children, when she was crowned not only as Queen but as head of the Commonwealth, with more than a billion subjects.

‘In a way I didn’t have an apprenticeship,’ she has said. ‘My father died much too young and so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on and making the best job you can.’

Prince Philip has described her role as the ‘Commonwealth physiotherapist’. She has a deep understanding of all the countries of Britain’s former empire, their culture and politics, and an unrivalled skill at massaging the egos of their leaders. That knowledge has been hard won.

In the winter after her Coronation in 1953, she circumnavigated the globe and visited ten Commonwealth countries, opened seven parliaments, made 157 speeches and four broadcasts. She was 27 years old.

The Queen was just 25, with two small children, when she was crowned not only as Queen but as head of the Commonwealth, with more than a billion subjects

To help her today, the Queen has more than 200 members of staff, but left to herself she would far prefer the homely comfort of a small staff, with plenty of time for her dogs and horses.

She is not especially gregarious, choosing when she can the company of that dwindling number of friends who have not passed on to what she likes to call ‘greener pastures’.

Her tastes are simple and those who know her well say she is two different people: Lilibet, the pet name bestowed on her by her mother; and Her Majesty the Queen.

Lilibet would much rather wear a headscarf than a tiara, and sit on a rug for a family picnic, even in a chilling wind, than attend a sumptuous state banquet. Less hardy folk have been known to complain she seems quite impervious to cold.

Her Christian faith is strict and old-fashioned. Church-going is not a duty, but something she enjoys: she isn’t a fan of sermons, but four bishops are invited to preach at Sandringham when the family is there at the beginning of each year.

When she is at Windsor Castle at weekends, the Queen likes to go to the private chapel in the park near Royal Lodge, rather than St George’s chapel, which she considers too grand.

She has always enjoyed the regimented side of royal life and notices the minutest detail. During one parade, she spotted a guardsman fidgeting and remarked: ‘That man in the back rank, third man from the right, kept moving his fingers on his rifle. Why did he do that? Is he mad?’

Even her children are not immune from her insistence on protocol. They still bow to her when they come into a room. A friend of Princess Anne, witnessing her take a phone call from her mother, noticed she automatically stood up as she started talking.

The dogs, too, are subject to this stickler’s approach. They are fed in strict order, the eldest first and the youngest last, waiting for their names to be called out.

Though her corgis and the crossbred corgi-dachshunds or ‘dorgis’ can be ferocious little animals, there is never any fighting at mealtimes, because the Queen maintains such rigid discipline.

Controlled, unemotional and punctilious, she maintains such a dignified manner it is impossible for outsiders to see deeply into her private world. The experienced BBC documentary maker Edward Mirzoeff, who produced the Elizabeth R series to mark her 40th anniversary as Queen, spent a year with her and her entourage.

He lunched privately with her, talked with her in her sitting room and sat with her while her portrait was painted, as well as travelling with her to Sandringham and Balmoral. Yet he confessed that he could not claim to know her.

Though her corgis and the crossbred corgi-dachshunds or ‘dorgis’ can be ferocious little animals, there is never any fighting at mealtimes, because the Queen maintains such rigid discipline

Punctuality is important to the Queen. Many years ago, she shocked friends who were staying with the Royal Family at Balmoral, when she ripped into Philip for being late to a picnic: ‘This is ridiculous! Where have you been! Why were you doing that?’ The row soon subsided, but for those who were present it was an uncomfortable moment. The Queen rarely loses her temper but, when she does, she brooks no argument.

Her late private secretary, Lord Charteris, recalled a state visit in 1973 by President Mobutu of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) when his wife smuggled her pet dog through Customs and into Buckingham Palace, concealed in a fur muff.

The dog was discovered when Madame Mobutu demanded a steak from the kitchen for its supper. When the Queen heard about it through her staff, she said with tremendous force: ‘That dog is to be out of my house by three o’clock this afternoon!’

The Queen would much rather wear a headscarf than a tiara, and sit on a rug for a family picnic, even in a chilling wind, than attend a sumptuous state banquet

Charteris remembered: ‘She was really shaking with anger. Someone from Customs came immediately.’

Despite her insistence on duty, the great touchstone of her own life, she can be liberal-minded and forgiving. She is prepared to put up with all manner of minor indiscretions among her household staff (never servants), such as same-sex affairs and drunkenness, as long as the gossip stays within the Palace.

As Prince Andrew has commented, there is nothing that goes on in the household that the Queen doesn’t know about, but she prefers to keep it to herself.

She manages her enormous workload by dividing her time between tasks precisely. After Andrew was born in 1960, the Queen was determined to spend more time with him than she had been able to devote to her older children, Charles and Anne.

In her orderly way, she pencilled into her leather-bound appointment book the times when she would be with Andrew — and no crisis would prevent her from being with the baby.

As a grandmother, the Queen has spent more time with the next generation of children than she ever could with her own. Peter and Zara Phillips were particular favourites, and she is proud of how William and Harry have turned out despite the turmoil of their early lives.

She thoroughly approves of the Duchess of Cambridge and doesn’t give a fig for her being from an ordinary, middle-class background.

One dinner table tale, in fact, suggests quite the opposite: three days after her grandson Prince William’s engagement was announced to Catherine Middleton in November 2010, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were entertained to lunch at Sheffield University by its chancellor, whose name was Sir Peter Middleton.

The Queen, seated next to Sir Peter, turned and said impishly: ‘Any relation?’ When he answered in the negative, she suggested: ‘A little research perhaps?’

The Middletons and the Windsors might seem at first glance to be worlds apart. Kate certainly shows no sign of adopting the horsey, doggy lifestyle beloved of her grandmother-in-law. But the Queen admires how well Kate has embraced royal life, combining it cheerfully with duty and motherhood. Nothing could matter more.

As a grandmother, the Queen has spent more time with the next generation of children and is especially proud of how William and Harry have turned out despite turmoil in their early lives

She has high hopes that the Cambridges’ marriage will be as successful as her own.

Prince Philip has been her ‘strength and stay’ throughout her reign. She has always been tolerant of him, though his sarcastic turn of phrase can verge upon the cruel.

The Duke used to frighten her by driving too fast. If she asked him to slow down, he would tell her to shut up or get out. She learned that the sensible course was not to antagonise him. But there is a surprisingly tender side to their relationship, too, which appeared when the Queen asked her husband to be present at the birth of their fourth and last child, Edward.

Since the reign of the Stuarts it had been customary for Privy Counsellors and ladies-in-waiting to attend every royal birth, to ensure the baby was not switched.

In 1894, Queen Victoria relaxed this law, decreeing that it was necessary only for the Home Secretary to be summoned.

In 1948, shortly before the birth of Prince Charles, the Queen’s father George VI mercifully did away with the archaic regulation altogether.

But in the minds of most of her subjects, an expectant father’s place was outside the maternity ward, pacing nervously, and not at the bedside. This was an age so decorous it forbade publication of photographs of the Queen while she was pregnant, and it was never officially acknowledged that she delivered Charles by Caesarean.

Showing that she could be thoroughly modern, the Queen announced that Philip would be present at Edward’s birth in 1964 — though this decision was not widely publicised.

The baby was born in the bathroom of the Belgian Suite at Buckingham Palace, which had been converted into a delivery suite.

The Queen with a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne at Royal Windsor Horse Show in 1956.  As Prince Andrew has commented, there is nothing that goes on in the household that the Queen doesn’t know about, but she prefers to keep it to herself

The Duke’s sardonic humour could not be suppressed, even at this moment. ‘It’s a solemn thought,’ he remarked, ‘that only a week ago General de Gaulle was taking a bath in this room.’

The modern streak in the Queen’s nature might partly be what has kept her so young. In the past few years she has become a proficient user of the internet, perhaps goaded by her own admission to Microsoft boss Bill Gates, as recently as 2005, that she had never used a computer.

With mobile phones, by contrast, she was an early starter. The Queen has had one since 2001, when she was given a handset by Prince Andrew, with the family’s numbers pre-programmed so she could call them on speed-dial.

Andrew has always considered himself the technology expert of the Royal Family: it was his responsibility therefore to set up the royal video recorder to tape the racing in the Eighties. A Palace page would then press the play button when the Queen or her mother had time to watch the day’s events.

These days, the Queen has a Blackberry smartphone, also given to her by Andrew, on which she can send and receive emails. However, she prefers to dictate her messages, rather than type them herself.

She is intrigued by gadgets and was delighted in 2009 when President Obama and his wife Michelle presented her with an iPod loaded with video footage of her visit to the U.S. two years earlier.

Her relationship with the White House is strong, stretching across six decades, and she has met every President since the Fifties except Lyndon B. Johnson. Ronald Reagan once described her as ‘charming and down to earth’.

Her friendship with Michelle Obama seems especially good. At an official reception, the Queen was seen to put a comforting arm across the First Lady’s back, perhaps to help calm her nerves.

Prince Philip has been her ‘strength and stay’ throughout her reign. She has always been tolerant of him, though his sarcastic turn of phrase can verge upon the cruel

She must have recognised, too, that Mrs Obama was the mother of adolescent children and could not spend as much time as she wanted with her young family — a feeling the Queen understands very well.

Observers who might have expected the two women to have little in common were pleased and surprised to see them joking together about the disparity in their height. The President, meanwhile, described himself as being ‘as excited as a schoolboy’ to be meeting a woman he had only ever seen ‘on stamps and documentaries’.

One gadget she can’t get used to is the digital camera. Since she was a schoolgirl, she would visit the royal stud, then at Hampton Court, to see the mares and foals. Armed with a Box Brownie, she would pick her favourite foals and photograph them as they grew.

A few years ago, John Warren, the Queen’s racing adviser — and the son of a greengrocer — suggested she try his digital camera. ‘It wasn’t for her,’ he conceded later. ‘The Queen is a creature of habit and couldn’t get used to looking at a digital screen. She loves her routine.’

That routine includes beginning the day with the Racing Post, always the first newspaper that she turns to. Her passion for horses has been with her since childhood, when she kept a collection of 30 or more toy ponies on wheels on the landing at her parents’ house in London, 145 Piccadilly.

From the moment she was first lifted onto the saddle, horses have remained her principal recreation. Even as she approaches 90, the Queen is sometimes glimpsed with her headscarf tied firmly under her chin riding her favourite hack, Emma — one of the fell ponies she breeds.

Her routine includes beginning the day with the Racing Post, always the first newspaper that she turns to. Her passion for horses has been with her since childhood

She has bred racehorses since 1945: the first was a colt called Rising Light, one of the first she documented with her Box Brownie. Her busy schedule means that she rarely gets to race meetings on more than ten days a year, and sees perhaps only a tenth of her stable at competition.

But she follows their progress as carefully as any owner and watches the recorded highlights of the day’s racing on TV. The chief exception is Royal Ascot, which she insists on attending.

But casual observers, who know the Queen only through her Christmas broadcasts, would have little inkling of this passion for racing because she refuses to discuss it publicly — just as Prince Philip never mentions his enthusiasm for cricket.

When Queen Victoria became Britain’s longest ruling monarch in September 1896, ousting George III, church bells rang throughout the country and beacons blazed on hilltops. In London, everything from printed handkerchiefs to china plates bore the legend: ‘The longest reign in history.’

Victoria was delighted and wrote in her diary that this was ‘the day, on which I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign’.

The Queen also keeps a hand-written diary. It will be many years before we know what she records in it, but surely, on September 9, she will permit herself the satisfaction of reflecting that no monarch has served her country longer or more dutifully than HM Elizabeth II.

• Adapted from The Queen’s Speech: An Intimate Portrait Of The Queen In Her Own Words by Ingrid Seward, published by Simon & Schuster on August 27 at £20. © Ingrid Seward 2015. To pre-order a copy for £14, visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808. Offer until August 22, P&P is free.

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