Dame Judi’s new love gets Queen’s seal of approval
DAME Judi Dench spoke last year about the dramatic effect that her companion, conservationist David Mills, has had on her life. Now, the Queen has given their relationship her seal of approval.
The Oscar-winning actress, whose husband, the actor Michael Williams, died in 2001, was allowed to bring Mills with her to the State banquet held at Windsor Castle on Tuesday in honour of Irish president Michael Higgins. Until recently, only spouses would be welcome at State dinners.
‘It was a magnificent occasion,’ Sir Terry Wogan tells me. ‘It was the longest dining table I have ever sat at.’
The 75-year- old broadcaster, who was born in Limerick, adds: ‘It was the end of the beginning in the total reconciliation of our great nations.’
Other diners included Samantha Cameron, seated next to the Duke of York, and actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who was placed next to Princess Michael of Kent, and, controversially, f ormer IRA commander Martin McGuinness.
‘Who are we to criticise the Queen’s judgment?’ asks Wogan.
Dame Judi, 79, who played the monarch’s great, great grandmother, Queen Victoria, in the film Mrs Brown, and Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love, began courting Mills, 70, four years ago. ‘It’s great to meet someone who shares your sense of humour and interests,’ she has said of Mills, who runs the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey. ‘I haven’t really talked about him, but it’s jolly nice to have someone to laugh with.’
Mills has helped Dame Judi, whose mother was Irish, to cope with the macular degeneration that she suffers from.
‘He draws and paints beautifully, so that’s lovely,’ she said. ‘I love to paint, but my eyesight’s not good.
‘People do read scripts to me, but I’ve always loved someone to tell me the story of something, rather than read i t myself. It captures the imagination in a way reading the script wouldn’t, like a child being told a story.’