The Queen was my boss for 18 years – these are the special things she did despite being the most famous person in the world

A woman who worked as an aide of the late Queen Elizabeth II for 18 years has revealed some unexpected details about her boss – including that the monarch was a ‘gutsy’ driver who loved to travel at high speed.  Samantha Cohen, 56, spoke to the Sunday Times about her time working with Her Majesty, discussing how she joined the press office some 25 years ago, before being promoted to the royal’s communications secretary, and then her assistant private secretary.

Cohen said she first saw the woman who’d become her future employer during the head of state’s visit to Australia in 1977 during her Silver Jubilee year. A schoolgirl in Brisbane at the time, Cohen said she was ‘beyond excited’ about the occasion.  Not only would she go on to work for Queen Elizabeth for nearly two decades, she would also become ‘one of [her] most trusted aides and closest confidantes’.  During those many years, Cohen saw the Queen nearly every day. She also did three Australian tours with her, in 2002, 2006 and 2011.

Samantha Cohen sits behind the late Queen at a ceremony to open the Mersey Gateway Bridge in Widnes in June 2018

She describes their relationship as ‘very respectful’, adding that the monarch did not have any favourites. Cohen simply saw her job as making the life of the royal – who she described as an ‘incredible’ employer – ‘as easy as possible’.  She and her family, husband Richard Halle and their children (who are now 13, 16 and 19-years-old), would often relocate to wherever the Queen was – for example, spending summers in Balmoral and Christmas in Norfolk at Sandringham, where they were given a cottage during their stay, and gifts complete with handwritten tags from the monarch.

During the summers in Scotland, when Cohen’s family would be given a home to stay in, the children would sometimes bump into Her Majesty who ‘loved [when] families having a nice time and hearing what everyone was doing’.  Describing the royal as a ‘shy’ person who wanted to be ‘a family woman’ as well as the head of state, Cohen said she loved the privacy she enjoyed at Balmoral, as well as hosting everyone and allocating rooms for guests.

Cohen said the royal was ‘gutsy’, adding that she would ‘drive her cars fast around Balmoral’. Her passengers would reportedly be left ‘white-knuckled’.   Another remarkable character trait of the late monarch, according to Cohen, was that she had ‘no ego’, and that despite being one of the world’s most famous people, she was ‘the antithesis of celebrity’.

Rather than being a show off who was intoxicated by being royalty, the Queen ‘took [her role] very seriously and performed it to perfection’, while also remembering that it was separate to her as a person.  While she saw the royal at her happiest when she was off-duty, according to Cohen, she also enjoyed the Australian tours, finding them more relaxing ‘because there was less protocol’.

After Australians voted to keep Elizabeth as the head of state in 1999 (a narrow victory), during a visit to the country the following year (her 13th trip there) the Queen gave a speech in which she spoke of how the decision was up to the citizens.  ‘I have always made it clear that the future of the monarchy in Australia is an issue for you, the Australian people, and you alone to decide by democratic and constitutional means. It should not be otherwise,’ she said.

In May 2018, shortly after Prince Harry wed Meghan Markle, the Queen asked Cohen to work for the couple, sharing her vast experience. She left the Royal Family in October 2019, after 18 years of working for the institution.  She has not commented publicly on the bullying accusations surround the Duchess of Sussex – claims the duchess denies.

Despite formally leaving The Firm, Cohen was so trusted, she was asked to join January 2020’s ‘Sandringham summit’ – the now infamous meeting where the royals and Harry hammered out the deals of him leaving the family as a senior working member and moving abroad.

Cohen, who was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 2016 for her personal service to the monarch, went onto work for Boris Johnson in 2022, and later as chief of staff to the global chief executive of mining company Rio Tinto.  She left that role last month in order to spend more time with her family.

Her favourite job, she revealed during the interview, was working for the Queen, which included highlights like the royal’s delight at taking a day trip to Italy for lunch with then-president Giorgio Napolitano. At the age of 88, the monarch had reduced her travel abroad.

While there, they also visited Pope Francis before flying back to England. The Queen thought it was fun to do a day trip to Europe – something she hadn’t done before. As she boarded the plane home, she said to Cohen: ‘Well, there you go, we did it.’