Queen Elizabeth was known for her compassion, humor and sense of duty, and although she kept most of her opinions to herself, every so often, she let her “displeasure” show. In his new book Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. Her Story, royal biographer Robert Hardman shared how the late Queen let people know she wasn’t happy—and the move would definitely have been approved by her friend Paddington Bear.
Noting how “pragmatism” and “kindness” were some of her greatest traits, Hardman added that the late monarch lost her temper sometimes, too. “Outright fury was rare and only vented in-house,” he wrote. “No less dreaded was a silent signal of displeasure towards those who crossed an invisible line, one usually involving overfamiliarity, culpable incompetence or plain rudeness.”
This “silent signal” entailed a move straight out of Paddington’s playbook: The Hard Stare.
“Staff would call it, with some trepidation, ‘the look,’” Hardman wrote. Biographer Kenneth Rose once told Hardman, “If The Queen ever feels affronted about something, she has the perfect answer. She just stares at the person with open eyes, absolutely no expression.”
Aside from those in her inner circle, the late Queen disliked anyone behaving overly familiar, as Sir Robert Woodard, the former captain of the Royal Yacht Britannia, shared. “When I went over the top, her eyebrows would go up and I’d apologize,” he said, per Hardman. “She hoped you’d sort out the distance you needed to keep.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed with the statement, with Hardman noting Blair said the late Queen “can be matey with you, but don’t try to reciprocate, or you get ‘The Look.’”
However, the late Queen didn't pull a Paddington when it came to “innocent blunders,” with Hardman pointing out that she enjoyed it when things went awry in her carefully choreographed world.
One such incident that left Queen Elizabeth “impressed” happened when a woman’s phone went off at a garden party just as she was being introduced to The Queen. Instead of silencing the cell phone, the woman “slid her hand into her bag without averting her gaze” from Queen Elizabeth and “tossed the phone over the heads of the crowd, continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened.”
Hardman wrote that the late Queen was “highly amused” by the whole thing and “did not blink,” highlighting her admirable “capacity to be unshocked by almost anything and her tendency, in any tricky situation, to defer to the most practical solution.”
