You might expect meetings between the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury to be the most strait-laced of affairs, but Dr Rowan Williams has disclosed that the monarch likes to “tease and be teased” and is “extremely funny in private”.
Paying his own Diamond Jubilee tribute to the Queen in a film released on YouTube by Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop also suggested the sovereign had helped the nation keep its head in times of crisis. “I hadn’t had any contact at all with royalty before coming into this job,” said Dr Williams. “I didn’t know what to expect, really. I found in the Queen someone who can be friendly, who can be informal, who can be extremely funny in private (and not everybody appreciates just how funny she can be), who is quite prepared to tease and to be teased, and who, while retaining her dignity always, doesn’t stand on her dignity in a conversation. “I think we’ve been enormously fortunate in this country to have as our head of state a person who has a real personality – a personality that comes through more and more, I think, in her public utterances. “Someone with insight and judgment, and with immense stamina and a depth of commitment that I think is immensely impressive to all of us.
“And in living that out as our head of state, she has, I think, genuinely helped us as a society to keep our heads collectively, not to be panicked by change.