Queen told me ‘be quiet!’
Miriam Margolyes OBE on the moment the Queen told her to shut up at a British Book Week reception in Buckingham Palace: “The crowd was huge and noisy but, despite her being tiny, about my height, we immediately spotted the Queen, looking exactly as she should, with a helmet of iron-grey hair and her handbag clamped like a grenade to her elbow. We quickly shuffled into a semicircle, using a Trooping the Colour technique, and pasted rictus smiles on.
“In a few moments… Unbelievably, Her Majesty the Queen was standing in front of me. ‘And what do you do?’ she asked. Instead of saying like any normal person ‘Your Majesty, I am an actress who records audio books,’ I took a deep breath, and declared, ‘Your Majesty, I am the best reader of stories in the whole world!’
“Her Majesty looked at me wearily, rolled her eyes heavenwards, turned away to my Scottish friend. She said to him, ‘And what do you do?’ He replied, ‘Your Majesty, I’m an academic trying to help dyslexic children to read. We’ve discovered that if the letters on the page are printed in different colours it helps the children to absorb the information more easily.’
“‘How fascinating!’ I said. ‘My goodness, I didn’t know that.’ At which, Her Majesty turned back to me and said sharply, ‘Be quiet!’
“The ‘t’ of ‘quiet’ was especially crisp. Everyone looked down. Undeterred, I spoke again: ‘I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, I got carried away with excitement.’”