It’s been a year and a half since the UK’s longest-reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 96, before being officially succeeded by her son Charles at the King’s Coronation last May.
And while the monarch’s official birthday is usually celebrated on the second Saturday of June, Sunday 21st April marked the late Queen’s 98th birthday.
Now, former royal butler Grant Harrold has shared how the family celebrated the important date in their calendar in private.
Speaking on behalf of Slingo, Grant says that while the family didn’t “publicly” mark the occasion, they will “raise a toast to her” and will spend much of the day “reflecting” on the late Queen.
Elsewhere, he says members of the public are likely to flock to Windsor, where the Queen was laid to rest.
Queen Elizabeth II is buried at Windsor Castle – specifically, in the King George VI Memorial Chapel, located inside St. George’s Chapel.
He adds that there may well be flowers “sent by family members” to mark her birthday, while well-wishers may also want to put flowers on the grave to pay their respects.
Speaking on behalf of Slingo, Grant Harrold says: “Royal family will spend day reflected on the Queen.”
“They won’t publicly do anything. Privately, I have no doubt they’ll raise a toast to her in the evening. I’m sure the day will very much be spent reflecting on the late Queen.”
“Flowers will be left on tomb sent by family members.”
“I can almost guarantee that if you were to go to Windsor Castle that day, it’s very likely there’ll be some flowers on the tomb that have been sent by the family members.”
“Sometimes on royal anniversaries, flowers are sent to royal graves. It’s very possible there will be flowers on the tombstone.”
“There will also be well wishers there on the day as well, who may want to put flowers on the grave or around the area.”
“She had an amazing sense of humour,” he continued.
“With the Queen I used to hear about her sense of humour and the fact that sometimes you couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not and she had this amazing humour and sometimes she’d catch you off guard.”
“So I’d heard about this, and I remember being with her in Scotland and one night I went in to announce dinner.”
“I went to see her and I walked up, nodded my head and said ‘dinner is ready’ and there were other guests there. ”
“She walked out the room and she kind of looked back towards the room and nobody else had followed her.”
“Of course, royal protocol kind of states they should follow or at least already be in the dining room and they were all still in the other room chatting.”
“So she ran down the corridor and I remember looking thinking ‘the Queen is running, what do I do?’ so I started running, well not running because I thought it would be rude to run as a butler so I kind of did a trot into the room and when we got in there she looked around and she smiled and I heard the rest of the guests running down the corridor to come in.”
“She looked at me then she gave me a wink as if to say ‘how about that’. I was like ‘oh my god, you are so cool’, and I loved that. Everyone knew that’s what she was like, which I then discovered.”
“When they say she lit up a room, you went into the room and you knew she was in the room. You walked in and you could spot her and she was always so polite, so polite, always smiling and making a joke or comment.”
“Very observant, she noticed every detail. I used to get excited if I was on duty and she was there. To me it was brilliant, it was so exciting.”
“On the observant part, when there was a state dinner or a banquet she would inspect the table.”
“You’ve got an army of staff, but she would still go around the table to make sure it had been done correctly. She noticed things if something wasn’t right.”
