Bilimoria: She’s full of surprises

“The Queen’s never put a foot wrong. For example, this year, I was on the committee of the Royal Windsor Horse Show. As you know, the Queen is absolutely passionate about horses, and she’s very knowledgeable about them, and genuinely loves them.

“One of the most important events for her was the final night of the show. If you remember, she had not been able to attend the state opening of parliament this year, and we were told that she may or may not be able to attend. We then told the advisory committee on the day, ‘look, she may be coming, but she may leave early, so please don’t stand up. She would like to slip out without making a fuss.’

“Not only did she come on time, but she also stayed until the performance was over, two and-a-half hours later, until 10:30pm in the evening. She enjoyed every minute, and at the end of it, she’s doing a whole lap in a carriage and didn’t leave until just before 11pm. She’s just absolutely remarkable.

“I remember once staying over Windsor Castle. After the dinner, she said, ‘I have a surprise for all of you.’ It’s amazing the way the Queen follows all the traditions. All the ladies and she

went off after dinner and sat and had coffee together in a drawing room. The men stayed with the Duke of Edinburgh. Then we all got together again, and she said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for each one of you and the guests. Let me take you to the archives.’

“We went to the archives, and there was an exhibition tailor-made to each one of us as guests. And in my case, there was a section of the Queen Anne’s dollhouse. There was the cellar, and there were miniature bottles of beer in there, and it was Bass beer. And Bass, of course, is now Molson Coors. Well, they were my joint venture partners, and this was at the time serendipitious, I was forming my joint venture with Molson Coors.

“And I used to play polo for Cambridge, and there were Persian paintings of polo. There were extracts from her grandfather’s diary, King George, written during the war, when he was talking about his views on prohibition. It had counted that they had gone to so much trouble to make it relevant to me, and I’ve never forgotten that.

“That was 2009. By the end, she accompanied us throughout afternoon and walked us through pointing things out, then in the archives going around with each one of us.”