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Fans of “The Crown” or the 2006 film “The Queen” know that Queen Elizabeth II was an accomplished driver. She was a truck mechanic during World War II and drove Land Rovers at her Balmoral estate all her life.
But in 1998, when then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visited Balmoral Castle, that was not common knowledge, leading to an awkward incident involving Abdullah and the queen.
The story comes from Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a British diplomat who first told the tale in his 2012 memoir. Cowper-Coles did not witness the incident, he said, but he heard about it from two very reliable sources: the two heads of state themselves.
It was a time of change for both royal houses. Princess Diana had died the previous year, and the British royal family’s cold reaction had made it less popular with the public than ever before. In Saudi Arabia, King Fahd had a severe stroke in 1995, leaving Abdullah the de facto ruler. (He wouldn’t officially become king until 2005.)
In September 1998, the queen invited Abdullah to Balmoral for lunch. Afterward, he was invited on a tour of the 50,000-acre estate.
“Prompted by his Foreign Minister, the urbane Prince Saud, an initially hesitant Abdullah had agreed,” Cowper-Coles wrote. “The royal Land Rovers were drawn up in front of the castle.”
The prince was instructed to take the passenger’s seat — on the left side in the United Kingdom. Then, “to his surprise,” the queen got into the driver’s seat on the right, turned the ignition and started driving them away.
Anyone might be surprised to see a head of state driving herself around, and a 72-year-old one at that. But in Saudi Arabia at the time, all women, royal or not, were banned from driving.
The queen — again, an experienced driver who knew the Balmoral estate well — began speeding the Land Rover through the narrow mountain roads of the Scottish highlands, “talking all the time.” Through his interpreter, Cowper-Coles wrote, a very nervous Abdullah “implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.”
Five years later, in 2003, Cowper-Coles was named Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Before he took his post, he was given a private audience with the queen, where she relayed this story to him, finding it humorous. A few months later, when he had his first meeting with Abdullah, Cowper-Coles told him he “brought greetings from HM the Queen, who had shared with me fond memories of their drive through the Highlands.”
Abdullah broke into a broad grin, recounting his nervousness. Prince Saud, also at the meeting, summed it up like this: “I suspect, ambassador, that Her Majesty steers the ship of state more steadily than she drives a Land Rover.”
“You’re not supposed to repeat what the queen says in private conversation,” Cowper-Coles wrote, but this story was “too funny not to repeat.”
The Saudi ban on women driving was lifted in 2018, three years after King Abdullah’s death and after years of protests and arrests of female activists.