Queen hated her hands but was hilarious, says Rankin
QUEEN ELIZABETH didn’t like her hands and refused to pose with a sword, the celebrity photographer Rankin has revealed.
John Rankin Waddell said the late monarch cited a dislike of her hands as a “get out” when he had tried to make her pose with a sword for her Golden Jubilee in 2002.
He told the Tea with Twiggy podcast: “I was like, ‘I really want to photograph you holding the sword’, and she said, ‘I don’t like my hands’. [I thought] that’s the best ‘get out’ for holding the sword.”
Despite her resistance, Rankin, 56, who has also worked with Kate Moss, Madonna and David Bowie, was later contacted by the Palace to let him know the photograph he took was one of their favourites – because she was smiling so much in it. The photograph depicts the monarch beaming at the camera in front of a billowing Union flag.
Queen Elizabeth’s hands were almost always hidden as she chose to wear gloves when carrying out her Royal duties. Her glove-maker since the 1940s, Cornelia James, has said the accessory was “part of her style”, adding: “The mind’s eye picture of the Queen is the white gloved hand waving.”
Describing the portrait during an interview before the Queen’s death, Rankin, a Glasgow-born father-of-one, told the podcast: “She came in and this wave of empowerment washes over you. She was just so funny.
“I’m probably not supposed to say that [she disliked her hands], but what I loved about her is she’s so smart.”
Rankin said that before the shoot, he had seen the Queen laughing and joking with a footman – something he wanted his portrait to capture. “I was in the throne room and she was walking down this corridor and I could see her and the footman walking and they were both laughing, just cracking up, and I was like, ‘that’s what I want’. So that was in my head the whole time,” he said.