Prince Philip once told royal author Gyles Brandreth that Queen Elizabeth had “the patience of a saint.” She rarely lost her temper—certainly never in public—and as Brandreth wrote in his bestselling biography, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, the late Queen never did “anything that could for a moment be described as undignified.” Perhaps that’s why it was so upsetting to Queen Elizabeth when she was accused of storming out of a photo shoot with legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz.
In 2007, the late Queen posed for Leibovitz at Buckingham Palace, and as Brandreth noted, Elizabeth “occasionally, but very rarely” got annoyed “with photographers and film crews if she felt they were being intrusive or making an unnecessary fuss.”
Vogue, who spoke with Leibovitz after Queen Elizabeth’s death, reported that Her Majesty “arrived late, not in a terribly good mood, and was wearing a tiara, which wasn't in Leibovitz's plan.” However, according to Brandreth, wearing a crown and her Order of the Garter robes had been “agreed in advance.”
The session was filmed for the documentary A Year With The Queen, and in a clip, the photographer suggests that Queen Elizabeth remove her crown to make the look “less dressy.”
“Less dressy? What do you think this is?” the monarch exclaimed. In a scene from a trailer for the documentary that was showed to journalists, Queen Elizabeth was then seen briskly walking down a palace hallway saying, “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this, thank you very much.”
The implication was that the late Queen had left the session in anger, but actually, the footage was taken as she was walking to the photo shoot. “She did not storm out at all,” Brandreth wrote.
The BBC issued an apology to Queen Elizabeth and as a result, the controller “who had told journalists the trailer showed the Queen ‘walking out in a huff’ resigned,” the author continued.
As for Leibovitz’s account of the day, she told Vogue that one comment from Queen Elizabeth took her by surprise.
“At one point when things had calmed down—after the misunderstanding about her wearing the tiara or not wearing the tiara—she settled into the shoot and became quiet,” the photographer recalled.
“She then said, ‘I think Princess Margaret would have been a much better subject.’ That moment of vulnerability—it makes me cry right now to think of it…that there was this moment in the middle of the session when she thought that maybe she was not a good enough subject, that she kind of questions herself. We got to see all sides of her that day.”
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