A group of American tourists once approached the Queen as she was out walking near her Balmoral estate. Not recognising the unassuming woman in a headscarf, they asked if she lived nearby. “She answered quite non-committally that yes, she had a house quite close by,” says the writer Karen Dolby, recounting a talk given by Richard Griffin, the Queen’s former protection officer. “They asked if she’d ever met the Queen, and without missing a beat she replied ‘no’ but pointed at Richard Griffin, and said, ‘but he has’. And then they walked on, none the wiser. I think her sense of irony and lightness of touch reflected her humour very obviously.”
The Queen’s sense of humour was not always obvious in public, but those who knew her or met her privately would often remark on it. Speaking in 2012, Rowan Williams, the then archbishop of Canterbury, said: “I found, in the Queen, someone who can be friendly, who can be informal, who can be extremely funny in private. Not everybody appreciates just how funny she can be. Who is quite prepared to tease and to be teased.”
