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Through his military service and his time working alongside her representatives in the island, Richard Graham met the Queen on five separate occasions including two occasions where he sat next to her at lunch, chatting over their meal.
Colonel Graham has described his Regal meetings for Express as part of the wide ranging coverage of her life, and legacy.
Through his military service, which saw him reach the rank of Colonel, Mr Graham was bestowed with two official Honours. He said he was “lucky” that both were presented to him by the Queen herself.
Pictured: Richard Graham during the Royal visit of the then-Prince Charles and The Duchess of Cornwall in July 2012. Picture by Tracey Bougourd.
“It’s not exactly meeting the Queen,” he said, “because you have a subliminal couple of minutes where you’re called forward. She was always very well briefed on those occasions – she had a question or a statement to make which was relevant to you, where you come from and why you’ve been recognised.
“Then you would get this sort of gentle little nudge from the handshake where she pushed you away and you would know your audience is over.”
Following retirement from the military, Colonel Graham was appointed Aide de Camp to three regal representatives during their tenures as Lieutenant Governor.
This led to small gathering which the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh attended, which Mr Graham was invited to.
“The Queen thought it would be a good idea to invite all the crown dependency governors and their wives and their secretarys and the senior civil servants in the home office, to a reception at the Palace especially for us. There was nobody else there and we had an hour with the queen and duke of Edinburgh and although there’s a certain formality to it, the queen and the duke made sure they came round and you were either spoken to as an individual or preferably as a group of two or three, chatting about whatever was the topic of the day.
Pictured: The Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) and the Duke of Edinburgh in Sark in 1949.
"I remember standing, I had the senior civil servant for the crown dependencies in the home office, myself and I think Charles Woodrow from Jersey who was my equivalent in Jersey, and the Duke came over and it was fairly topical at the time, as there was a badger cull going on and it was very controversial and the duke had an instinct that I think he found difficult to fight, to stir things up a bit and the senior civil servant made the mistake of making some statement about the badger cull and the Duke was in like a shot and you could see him winding her up and the more she dug, deeper into her hole and she couldn’t get out. Afterwards she said to me ‘he hates me’ and I said 'no, he probably loves you because he would have enjoyed that'. That was very much him. He liked lively conversations.
"I think she knew what she was doing when she married him – she knew he was not going to be the sort of quiet consort who never put his foot in it."
Her Majesty’s interest in her commonwealth and crown dependencies was clear to Mr Graham on that occasions and others when he either met her, or was aware of her work.
“I knew that from, particularly our experiences with Sark. There was a stage when the Barclay brothers and Tony Blair and his lot were in power in the UK and the Barclays Brothers were using their money to get access. There was quite an acute danger of Sark becoming almost a company town – they were using all sorts of persuasive means with Jack Straw who was Home Secretary at the time. There was a danger Sark was going to be the victim of manoeuvrings that shouldn’t have been going on – and the Queen stepped in.
"I don’t think there’s any reason why people shouldn’t know that."
Pictured: Chief Pleas in Sark.
She sent her Private Secretary Christopher Geidt on two occasions within a year to come over and the message went out to the Barclay Brothers ‘keep your hands off’. The message certainly went out to the politicians that this was one issue Her Majesty would not step back from.”
Mr Graham echoed other memories that many people have shared of The Queen's physical appearance and her demeanour.
“The age thing and perception is interesting. Up close she was not an old woman. Her complexion, a lot of 40 year old women would have wanted. Because she had beautiful skin.
“It wasn’t only her physical appearance up close, it’s also the spirit of the woman comes out.
"The third way I met her, she had lunch at Government House in 2001 and 2005 when she came over. The Governor had me sitting on her left for both of those. Now, I’m not usually a nervous type but Id be lying if I didn’t say I was wondering how that would go, what do you do…you’re told you don’t tap her on the shoulder and say what do you think about this , but then on the other hand you don’t want to sit there completely like a dummy.
"Of course she knew that, so what could have been a lightly nervous or uncomfortable three quarters of an hour was actually a totally relaxed experience. You would wait until she engages you in conversation and then it just flowed. There's an understanding you don’t repeat whatever she might have said to you unless its so sort of anodyne that it doesn’t matter at all. It's on those sort of occasions where she was sort of off duty that you see the spirit of the woman that didn’t always come out in public. And also sort of the girlish, she was still very much a young girl at heart.
Pictured: Guernsey's Government House, where Her Majesty dined and slept during visits to the island.
"I remember at one of the lunches we were all chatting away noisily, and she suddenly looked at her watch and said ‘hmm I think we should be moving. Time to go boys' and girls’ and clapped her hands and she then went off to get herself ready.
"Also, staying at Government House you get briefed in advance, for example all she asked for was a kettle and tea making kit and she would brew her own tea up in her room and serve it herself. She didn’t want people trundling up with trays and all that. So, there was that side to her – she actually would come alive a lot more, you’d get a glimpse of it in public where she and the Duke would be going along a row in the middle of the crowd and something sparks her off with that lovely smile but that’s there very much when she was off stage."
"I think the Queen, her sense of duty enabled her to see at any one time, in any circumstance, what was the right thing to do, said Mr Graham, "and that would come down to social behaviour.
"She will leave a big hole."
The Queen's visits to the Bailiwick part one
The Queen's visits to the Bailiwick part two
Taking coffee with the Queen, and other memories
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