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While we often see many of the royals out and about in public undertaking their royal duties, the majority of their lives behind palace walls are often shrouded in mystery and no one’s more than The Queen herself.
So when newly-knighted, actor, writer and broadcaster Sir Michael Palin, revealed the Queen had made him privy to a particular part of her nightly routine, we were all ears.
The Queen let Sir Michael in on her nightly routine. (Image: Getty)
Talking to The Sun, the former Monty Python‘s actor said he’d been chosen to sit next to the Queen during a dinner at Windsor Castle when the 93-year-old monarch revealed she kept a diary.
“We were talking about diaries after I mentioned that I kept a nightly journal of where I’d been and the people I encountered,” Sir Michael says.
“She said she did too, the difference being that while mine may have been for publication hers was definitely not.”
“She commented that she found it quite difficult because it always made her a bit woozy and said, ‘I usually manage to write about 15 minutes before my head goes bump’, and then she did an imitation of her head hitting the table, as if she had fallen asleep.”
Sir Michael added that after dinner he and a handful of guests were taken to the royal library when the Queen showed them King George V’s diary.
“It had entries like ‘Had to see Churchill – again!'” recalls Sir Michael.
Writer, broadcaster and former Monty Python‘s star Sir Michael Palin at his Investiture in June. (Image: Getty)
Since Sir Michael’s revelation, a former member of the royal household told The Sun that the Queen writes her diary with a black ink fountain pen only, in a series of booklets bound in soft calves’ leather.
The Queen also reportedly marks each diary with her cypher – E11R – and a Roman numeral.
“Writing the journal will be the last thing Her Majesty does every night, no matter how late the hour or how weary she may be,” the former household member tells the publication.
Royal author and historian Hugo Vickers says Queen Elizabeth likely picked up the habit when she watched her own father, King George VI, do the same thing.
“She definitely keeps one,” Vickers says, “in fact she was once asked by a visiting bishop ‘Do you write it in your own hand?’ And she riposted: ‘I can’t really write it in anyone else’s’.
“But I doubt she will give much away in the diary, because she has a lifetime of training in not saying things.”
The Queen has kept a diary since she was a teenager, likely inspired by her father, King George VI, who kept one also. (Image: Getty)
But, as you would expect the diaries are guarded with its contents kept under the utmost secrecy.
According to a palace insider who spoke to The Sun, the Queen asks for all blotting paper used to absorb the ink to be destroyed, so no one can read the reverse impression.
The insider also reveals the diary is taken with her wherever she is staying and kept in a black leather case, a smaller version to one of the red dispatch boxes which contain Government papers.
Other monarchs who have kept dairies of their day include George V and her great great grandmother Queen Victoria, whose journals – edited by her daughter Princess Beatrice, an undertaking which took 30 years – are now kept at Windsor Castle library.
