Queen Elizabeth's former aide and personal assistant is opening up about what the former royal was like behind the wheel.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Times published Saturday, Oct. 12, Samantha Cohen—who worked with the matriarch for 18 years, at one point as her assistant private secretary—described Queen Elizabeth as a "gutsy" driver who liked to go "fast."
"She was gutsy,” Cohen told the publication at the time. “She would drive her cars fast around Balmoral.”
Queen Elizabeth—who passed away on Sept. 8, 2022 at the age of 96—was known to be an accomplished driver, and at one point even scared then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with her apparent need for speed, The Washington Post previously reported.
"The royal Land Rovers were drawn up in front of the castle," Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a British diplomat who documented the moment in his 2012 memoir, wrote about the former prince's visit to Balmoral for lunch.
According to the diplomat, to the prince's "surprise" the Queen "got into the driver's seat on the right, turned the ignition and started driving them away."
The Queen, who was 72 at the time, then drove Prince Abdullah around the Balmoral estate and, at one point "began speeding the Land Rover through the narrow mountain roads of the Scottish highlands while talking all the time."
As The Washington Post reports, "Through his interpreter...a very nervous Abdullah implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead."
Months later, when Prince Abdullah met with Cowper-Coles—then the Majesty's Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—another Saudi royal, Prince Saud, said, "I suspect, ambassador, that Her Majesty steers the ship of state more steadily than she drives a Land Rover."
Queen Elizabeth II drives her car away from the Windsor Horse Show in Windsor, Berkshire, UK, 16th May 1982.
In the same Sunday Times interview, Cohen described the former queen as a "shy person" who valued her privacy.
“It always struck me that in a world of celebrity, where we had all sorts of celebrities coming into the palace, the Queen was the antithesis of celebrity,” she explained.
“She was the maestro. She understood this was her role. She took it very seriously and performed it to perfection," the former aide added. "But she knew it was separate to her as a person. She was never intoxicated by the allure, never showed off, was never tempted to preen. I loved that so much about her, because she had no ego.”
