Queen Elizabeth’s heartbreak as her childhood friend dies, aged 97

The Queen is understood to be heartbroken after the loss of a close childhood friend who helped her after Prince Philip’s death.

The Queen has been dealt another devastating blow with the loss of a close childhood friend just months after the death of her husband Prince Philip.

Lady Myra Butter, a cousin to the Duke of Edinburgh, was a childhood friend of the Queen and part of her inner circle. She died aged 97 in her London home on July 29, according to a death notice published in UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

Speaking to The Telegraph in 2021, Lady Butter revealed how she first came to know the Queen as a child and opened up about their time together in the 1st Buckingham Palace Company of Girl Guides, when it launched in 1937.

“(Buckingham Palace) got hold of some girls to be part of the thing to make it more fun,” she said.

“In the Guides and the Brownies it was a real mixture, which was really nice, some friends, friends of (the family), and all the people in the Royal mews, their children, they were Brownies and Guides. Just a normal sort of pack really.”

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Queen Elizabeth II attends a Service of thanksgiving for her late husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey in central London on March 29, 2022. Picture: Richard Pohle / AFP.

According to the article, the Queen also used to swim with Lady Butter, who once described the monarch as having a “very good sense of humour which has gone on for all her life”.

Lady Butter was born in Edinburgh in 1925 to Sir Harold Wernher and the great-great granddaughter of Russia’s Nicholas I, Countess Anastasia “Zia” Torby.

Her death notice read: “Myra Alice, Lady (CVO) died peacefully on Friday 29th July 2022 in London aged 97. Beloved wife of the late Major Sir David Butter. Adored mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Private family funeral in Scotland”.

Ingrid Seward, author of the book Prince Philip Revealed, told magazine Newsweek: “Lady Butter was wonderful. She is a daughter of the Wernher family and the Queen and Philip were very, very friendly with them and so was the Queen Mother”.

Lady Myra Butter has died aged 97. Picture: Twitter

Her death is understood to come as another devastating blow to the Queen who lost her husband in 2021.

The Duke of Edinburgh, who had been married to the Queen for 73 years, died at Windsor Castle in June last year.

Following the Duke’s death, Lady Butter – who also had a longstanding friendship with her cousin, the prince – described Her Majesty’s sense of loss as “incalculable”.

He had dedicated his life to the Queen and sadly died just before his 100th birthday.

In the past the Queen regularly called the Duke her “constant strength” and “guide”.

The pair was described as “love matched” and married in 1947 at Westminster Abbey.