Royal rift: How the Queen fell out with Margaret Thatcher on the Commonwealth's importance

Newspaper diarist Kenneth Rose kept private journals during his career. The royal biographer mixed within royal circles and had several conservations with Palace staff and he had this revelation about the monarch’s relationshp with Margaret Thatcher. In September 18, 1985 Mr Rose wrote: “Jean Trumpington to dine.

“She relates how when she went to take her leave of the Queen as a Baroness-in-Waiting on being promoted to be Under-Secretary in the Department of Health and Social Security, the Queen said of the PM, Mrs Thatcher, ‘She stays too long and talks too much.

“‘She has lived too long among men.’”

And, in June 1, 1997 Mr Rose wrote: “To Headington for tea with philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

“We talk of relations between the Queen and her Prime Ministers.

“The Queen is careful never to reveal what she thinks of each, although it is generally known that she and Margaret Thatcher had sharp disagreements on the importance of the Commonwealth.

“Isaiah now has an important piece of evidence.

“Both the Queen and Thatcher came to a gala at Covent Garden, but sat in different parts of the house.

“In the interval, the Queen let it be known that she did not want to meet Mrs Thatcher, who was sent to an upper room for drinks, as was Isaiah.

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Ms Hicks claimed that she sometimes writes to the Queen to tell her things of supposed interest.

She said: “The only time she has ever replied was when I sent my sympathy after one of her dogs had been killed by a Clarence House corgi.

“She then wrote six pages.”

Newspaper diarist Kenneth Rose kept private journals during his career.

The royal biographer mixed within royal circles and had several conservations with Palace staff during his career.

The Daily Mail has reported on excerpts from the diaries.

The excerpts reveal the Queen wrote the six-page letter on the death of a beloved corgi during the mid-1990s.