Queen Elizabeth’s funeral: ‘That smile is unforgettable’: Camilla’s TV tribute

The Queen Consort paid a televised tribute to the late Queen in which she recalled how Her Majesty had laughed when she saw Camilla wearing mismatching shoes on the day of her wedding to Prince Charles.

Camilla, the Queen Consort, in Cardiff on Friday. Picture: AFP

The Queen Consort paid a televised tribute to the late Queen in which she recalled how Her Majesty had laughed when she saw Camilla wearing mismatching shoes on the day of her wedding to Prince Charles.

Her affectionate recollection came in a short film broadcast on Sunday (Monday AEST).

Remembering her wedding day in 2005, the Queen Consort said: “I remember coming from here, Clarence House, to go to Windsor the day I got married when I probably wasn’t firing on all cylinders, quite nervous and, for some unknown reason, I put on a pair of shoes and one had an inch heel and one had a two-inch heel.

“Talk about hop-a-long, and there’s nothing I could do. I was halfway down in the car before I realised and you know, she – she could see and laughed about it and said, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry.’ And she did, you know, she had a good sense of humour.”

The highly personal BBC broadcast was a reflection of the closeness of the relationship ­between the Queen Consort and the Queen. It followed the example set when members of the royal family, including Prince Charles, the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex, broadcast a televised tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh after his death in April last year. The Queen Consort praised the Queen’s achievements as a ­female head of state. “She has been part of our lives for ever,” she said. “I’m 75 now and I can’t remember anybody except the Queen being there.

“It must have been so difficult for her being a solitary woman, and there weren’t women prime ministers or women presidents, she was the only one, so I think she carved her own role.

“She made a rule that she had her private time and her private passions and then her public role, and I think that is very important that the diary is planned out so you know when you’re on duty. Then when she went up to Scotland in August, that was the moment where it was her enjoyment.

“Although she was probably working with her red boxes throughout, she could have her family to stay, she could do the things she loved.”

She also talked of the Queen’s love of horses. “Her real passion was racing,” she said. “She was able to escape to Sandringham. She had the stud next door. She could go every day, see her foals, work out the next meetings for the year. I think she always kept that as her private bit. You wouldn’t dare question her or argue with her on how horses are bred, or how it ran, because you’d get a very steely blue-eyed look back again.”

She also told how she took the Queen to some of her charities, including the Ebony Horse Club in south London and Medical Detection Dogs. “She loved both of them. It was real sort of genuine enjoyment and she asked lots of questions. She’s got those wonderful blue eyes that when she smiles, you know, they light up her whole face. I’ll always remember that smile, that smile is unforgettable.”

While Camilla’s tribute made clear the high regard she had for the Queen, the Queen also held her in high ­esteem. They had come a long way from the days when the ill-feeling over the role Camilla played in the break-up of Charles’s marriage to Diana was such that the Queen would refuse to be in the same room as her. Over the years there was a rapprochement and the Queen gave a warm speech at the couple’s wedding.

The Times