The Queen had a genuine love of Suffolk, and close friends in the county, throughout her reign.
She stayed here privately most years, including visits to Newmarket, where she enjoyed her well-documented passion for horseracing.
She even made unofficial trips to see her statue in Newmarket in recent years, turning up in an unmarked car with only a driver and police officer.
No fuss, just the extraordinary sight of Britain’s longest-serving monarch stopping off in a Suffolk town - almost like any other visitor.
These are among the insights into her remarkable reign by the Queen’s representative in Suffolk, Lord Lieutenant Lady Clare, Countess of Euston, who knew her for more than 50 years.
She has spoken warmly of her, describing her as someone who was “highly intelligent, funny and beautiful” and who gave “immensely wise advice”.
Lady Clare, who lives at Euston, said: “The whole world has lost an incomparable Queen and a leader for all time. In our beloved Suffolk, a county the Queen had such affection for, we are completely devastated.”
Reflecting on her reign and their relationship, she added: “I have been lucky enough to have known the Queen for over 50 years. My mother-in-law [the Dowager Duchess of Grafton] worked for her as her senior Lady-in-Waiting all her life.
“She was inordinately kind to me over all those years.”
Their first meeting was at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, when Lady Clare was a teenager. She recalls even then there was an “aura of greatness” around her.
But it was at a subsequent stay at Windsor with the Queen, at one of the summer parties that would be held there most years, which provided a special memory – and an example of her care and attention to detail.
“We used to go riding in the morning and it was a very good opportunity to chat. She was really interested in the fact I was a Roman Catholic and wanted to know more about things - not critical or anything, just interested,” said Lady Clare.
“Later, she made sure that somebody took me to church, arranged for a car to take me to the Catholic church. That was rather wonderful, I thought then, for the head of the Church of England to take that much trouble. It was the courtesy of it.”
She added: “She wasn't a serious person, there was a lovely lightness of being with her. She took her duty and the idea of service to the country so seriously. She never complained about anything.”
But what of the Queen’s connections to Suffolk and love of the county?
There were of course, official visits throughout her reign. Snape, Aldeburgh, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds among them. Each one attracting huge crowds and excitement.
One of the most recent was in Newmarket, and a mishap on the carefully-planned visit left the Queen very amused.
Lady Clare recalled: "There is nothing she liked better than something going slightly wrong in carefully planned visits.
"When she last came to Newmarket on an official visit, a wonderful parade of Suffolk Punch horses and wagons proceeded down the High Street.
“No-one had told the brass band not to play the theme from the Dambusters - little did they realise the year before all the Suffolk horses had been trained to do a special criss-crossing exercise to that song at the Royal Norfolk Show.
“The moment they heard the music they started criss-crossing down the High Street. The police could do nothing about it.
"It really amused the Queen, she thought it was so funny.”
She used to stay at Sternfield, near Saxmundham, with Sir Eric Penn who was her Lord Chamberlain, and his wife.
Lady Clare added: “Lady Penn had a great deal to do with setting up the Aldeburgh Festival and the Queen came and opened that in 1967 and stayed with the Penns.”
But what most people will not know is that until recently, the Queen would stay in Suffolk every year, sometimes several times a year.
Her love of horseracing, and the fact she has horses here, gave her the perfect reason to visit. Her Newmarket-based Racing Manager, John Warren, was among her close friends.
Lady Clare said: “Until the onset of Covid, she was probably here twice a year.
“These were private visits, nobody knew. One person was asked to supper when she was staying with John Warren. She went around and the Queen opened the door - that was typical of the Queen. Can you imagine?
“That's what she is like. She is so down to earth. A guest who had been invited to supper was very startled when the Queen opened the door!”
And it was during these visits when she would sometimes visit her statue at the Newmarket Racecourse entrance, which was unveiled in 2016.
Lady Clare said: “She would go privately, just standing there in her headscarf and Macintosh. She just went in the Range Rover with a driver and a police officer.
“She wouldn’t have minded if someone had seen her - which somebody did. She likes that, she didn't always want it to be formal and overly-planned.”
But her first visit to Newmarket shows just how times have changed.
Lady Clare explained: “The first time she came she stayed with Queen Mary, she told me they were not allowed, as women, to stay at the Jockey Club and they had to stay somewhere in the High Street - which is quite funny when you think of two Queens staying there. Only men were allowed in the Jockey Club.
“They stayed in Palace House. Now it is rather grand but I don't think it was anything special then.”
The Queen’s Suffolk connections also extended to being patron of the Red Poll Society – the breed being part of the Suffolk Trinity.
Lady Clare said the Queen’s extraordinary common sense and way with people would be hugely missed.
"You cannot imagine anyone with that degree of common sense and wisdom. She had such an instinctive empathy with the people she was with. You felt you did not have to explain anything to her. She understood it all.”
Lady Clare said the monarch had been the “beating heart” of the nation and she would be missed enormously.
"The Queen herself said very recently that grief is the price we pay for love and our grief as a nation is beyond all imagining.
“I think we are going to miss her so much. The continuity she has provided through good and bad times has been unparalleled really. She has brought cohesion wherever she goes.”
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