Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
TALE OF TWO QUEENS
When these stunning photographs of Her Majesty featured in Weekend, Mail writer Robert Hardman revealed the two very different stories behind them
In 2007 Robert was allowed unprecedented access to the Royal Family for a book and TV series. The cameras followed the celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz as she shot her striking portrait of the Queen. Here he describes the extraordinary encounter.
The Queen sits for an average of four painted portraits each year and a similar number of official photographs. But this shoot at Buckingham Palace is different. Annie Leibovitz is not here to photograph just another Christmas card or birthday portrait. Her images will serve as a curtain-raiser to one of the Queen’s most important tours of recent times. It is 16 years since she last set foot in the US, and President Bush has invited her to return.
Annie’s reputation as one of America’s musthave portrait photographers might dazzle most celebrities, but at the Palace she and her dozen assistants have stumbled across a subject who is not overly impressed. The Queen was asked by Annie to wear her Garter robes: the intricate and cumbersome regalia of the oldest order of chivalry in the world. Putting all this on has not been easy, and the Queen has had to postpone engagements. When she is informed that Annie has a few other outfits in mind, the sovereign is not amused.
‘I’m not changing anything,’ she informs her press secretary, Penny Russell- Smith, as she sweeps into the state apartments, a faithful page trotting behind with her velvet train. ‘I’ve done enough dressing like this, thank you very much. I’ve had enough!’ Her mood is not improved by the size of Annie’s team. She has never encountered an operation this big just to take a photo. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stay very long,’ says the Queen firmly. ‘It’s taken me such a long time to put all Annie Leibovitz (seated, right) prepares to photograph the Queen at Buckingham Palace this on.’ Annie has spent days planning this shoot and had been hoping to photograph the Queen in the garden, too. It now looks as if this could all be over in minutes. She needs to move fast. She steers the Queen to a chair near an open window in the White Drawing Room. ‘Your Majesty, if you sit here like this, I’ll do the rest,’ she says.
Before taking a single frame, though, Annie decides to rearrange things. She wants the Queen to remove the dazzling diamond-packed tiara that is sitting on her carefully prepared hair. This is going to require some serious tact. ‘I think it will look better without the crown,’ Annie says boldly. You can sense the collective stiffening among the royal staff. The needle on the regal pressure valve is already in the danger zone. Annie presses on, piling on the flattery. ‘I’ve heard you do your own hair, which I believe is so amazing. Can we try it without the crown? It will look… less dressy.’
Everyone has a fuse, including monarchs. ‘Less dressy?’ asks the Queen in exasperated disbelief. ‘What do you think this is?’ she adds, pointing to her Garter robes. Short of putting on her coronation kit, this is, indeed, about as dressy as the Queen could be. ‘If you take the crown off…’ Annie begins. The Queen breaks into a mirthless laugh as her dresser explains the problem. If the tiara – it is not a crown – is removed, it cannot go back on because the Queen’s hair will be out of place. ‘You can’t… OK, erm… well…’ Annie is searching for the most diplomatic solution. ‘I have an idea,’ she says. ‘Let’s take a couple of frames with it on, then we’ll take it off for the rest of the shoot.’
‘Well, I’ll have to go back and tidy my hair,’ says the Queen, mellowing slightly.
And so the shoot begins. From a near disastrous start, it gets better. The Queen does, indeed, remove her tiara and, in due course, her Garter robes. Annie gets her photographs and, by the end, the Queen is smiling as she departs for her engagements. Annie has seldom had a morning like this, but she enjoyed the experience. ‘I liked her feistiness. It made me admire her even more. I thought she totally pulled herself back together and started to enjoy herself. She was funny.’
The footnote to the story is that the BBC was forced to apologise when the trailer for the TV series appeared to show the Queen storming out of the shoot in a huff. It admitted that Her Majesty was actually walking into the shoot, not out of it, and the footage had been edited out of sequence. It’s safe to say neither she nor Annie were amused.