Queen Elizabeth II’s Australian right hand Sam Cohen shares royal family insights
Australian Samantha Cohen, who spent 18 years at The Firm working closely with Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle, has now opened up about life behind the palace walls.
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Samantha Cohen’s eyes well up when she recalls the Christmases and summers she and her family shared with the late Queen Elizabeth II.
The 54-year-old spent 18 years with The Firm, much of that time as the assistant private secretary to the longest reigning monarch in British history.
Their relationship was close – they saw each other almost daily – and for nearly a decade, she had her own bedroom at Windsor Castle.
“I was away working a lot with a young family but the Queen made it easy, if there was an evening function I’d stay over and sleep in my own bedroom at Windsor so I didn’t have to drive back to London at night,” she said, in a wide-ranging interview.
“When we were on duty at Balmoral we could bring our families, my children had summer holidays there and, when I was on duty every two years at Sandringham, they came there for Christmas, it was a beautiful time.
“The Queen and I used to talk a lot.
“I miss her, she was a special woman.”
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The Queen entrusted the Brisbane-born doer – dubbed “Samantha Panther” for her no nonsense work attitude – implicitly, so when she suggested the royal family modernise by launching YouTube and social media accounts, they conformed.
“I suppose I did move the royal family onto social media,” she says of her time working as deputy communications secretary for HM in 2007.
“We needed to modernise the way the family had done things, things had been done in a certain way for a long time so we proposed a royal channel on YouTube.
“We did a mock up and showed The Queen what YouTube was. She said ‘fantastic,’ she was up for it.
“The first Christmas broadcast on YouTube in 2007 was a little scary because we didn’t really know what we were doing, setting up a royal channel for the first time.
“The broadcast got a million hits in not very long.
“As part of that package we put them on Instagram and then Twitter.”
Soon afterwards Ms Cohen, who now works as chief of staff for mining giant Rio Tinto, received calls from The Vatican and White House saying, “the Queen had a channel on YouTube before we did.”
So successful was the launch, Ms Cohen was subsequently invited to the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in Vatican City to help Pope Benedict XVI start his own channel.
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Born to a general surgeon father and university academic mother in England, Ms Cohen, who was raised in Tenerife, Brisbane, began her career as a journalist at the Sunshine Coast Daily.
She then dabbled in politics, notably as media adviser for Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Liberal Senator John Herron, before moving to England for a public relation position.
But it was an innocuous advert in PR Week for a two-year position as media officer to the royal household that would change her life.
She landed the role, then went on to become head of royal communications and, eventually, assistant and deputy private secretary to the Queen.
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Ms Cohen recalls as “the best times” her two royal tours accompanying her majesty to Australia.
In 2002, the Queen and her husband Prince Philip visited South Australia and Queensland.
In 2011, the couple went to Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne before heading to Perth for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). It would be the Queen’s last tour down under.
“The Queen had no ego, she was so comfortable in herself, yet she loved it when things went wrong, if a cake was not cutting, or a plaque didn’t unveil, because everything was so perfectly organised it spiced her life up when things went wrong,” she said.
After helping organise CHOGM in London in 2018, the Queen asked Ms Cohen to stay on as private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
She left amid allegations of bullying against the Duchess, Meghan Markle, which Meghan strenuously denied.
But in his book “Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown” author Valentine Low alleged Ms Cohen was “screamed at” before and during the pair’s first official tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand, despite organising it.
“Sam always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers,” a source is said to have told Low.
“They (Meghan and Prince Harry) were impossible and pushed her to the limit. She was miserable.”
Ms Cohen won’t elaborate on the claims except to confirm she was one of 10 aides interviewed by the palace after a bullying complaint was made by the then head of communications Jason Knauf, in October 2018.
The results of the investigation were never made public despite the palace saying they would be.
“I was only supposed to stay for six months but stayed for 18 – we couldn’t find a replacement for me and when we did we took them on tour to Africa with Harry and Meghan to show them the ropes but they left (quit) as well while in Africa,” she said.
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After departing the royal family, Ms Cohen went on to do work for the environmental charity Cool Earth.
Two years later, she was appointed chief executive of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. While in the job, she set up The Queens Green Canopy Project which saw three million trees planted throughout the UK in honour of the Queen.
“It was my gift to The Queen,” she said, adding, “She loved trees and nature and knew every tree in the Buckingham Palace gardens.”
Around that time, Ms Cohen was plucked on the recommendation of Australian political strategist Sir Lynton Crosby to become director of office for British prime minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party after the Covid “partygate” scandal. Johnson was reportedly excited at the prospect of “Samantha Panther” bringing order to Number 10.
“I was brought in because there had been a lot of change,” she said.
Ms Cohen, said to be fiercely loyal to the royals and liked by King Charles for her unstuffy attitude and resourcefulness, remains in contact with The Firm.
Her son Tom, now 19, was chosen as a schoolboy by the Queen to be page of honour at the state opening of parliament alongside three other members of the royal family.
“I have to be tough sometimes – but I’m not the caricature of Samantha the Panther,” she said.
“The name came about when I was in a junior position at Buckingham Palace and overseeing an event with high profile celebrities when an agent called asking if someone was on the guest list and I said ‘sorry they’re not’.
“They kept phoning back and I said ‘I’m sorry we can’t invite everyone’.
“The next day I was in the press. I hadn’t shouted. If anything I was new and trying hard to be nice.”
Her best job to date?
“I loved, loved, loved the job as the Queen’s assistant private secretary, they were happy times because the Queen was in great form and Aussies are liked by the royals because we’re outside the hierarchy and we don’t take ourselves seriously,” she said.
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Ms Cohen was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen in November in 2016 and last May was awarded the British-Australia Society Award for Contribution to Anglo-Australian relations for her outstanding contribution to strengthening relations between the United Kingdom and Australia. In accepting the honour, she joined a famous roll call of past winners including Kylie Minogue, Barry Humphries and David Attenborough.
“I was in the palace for a long time and was keen on strengthening the relationships between Australia and the UK – I used to organise lunches for the agents general in London and if a visiting governor, or when (former Governor-General) Quentin Bryce came to Balmoral, I was the Aussie in the house who made them feel comfortable,” she said.
Does she think Australia should become a republic in the face of clamouring calls for an elected head of state?
“I think the royals do an extraordinary job and the relationship between the two countries is special, it’s always been symbiotic,” she said.
“I think they are a wonderful asset for this country and the Commonwealth, including Australia.”
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