Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, however, found that things came less naturally during her weekend with the late Queen. From misunderstanding the rules of Ibble Dibble, to being forced to borrow appropriate shoes on a rain-soaked walk, Gillian Anderson depicted Thatcher as, for once, out of her depth (another tip for Balmoral-goers: ensure you have brought a wardrobe for every possible occasion, from black-tie dinners to hunting and fishing in the River Dee).
The real Iron Lady is said to have described her trip to Balmoral as ‘purgatory’, while The Independent describes how the royals ‘put [her] through the ringer’. The Telegraph has stated that the second-hand wellies were true to life.
In a tribute to the late queen, former Prime Minsiter Theresa May recalled a memory of her own time at Balmoral, when she dropped some cheese on the floor during a picnic. ‘I turned around to see that my every move had been watched very carefully by Her Majesty the Queen,’ Mrs May said. ‘I looked at her, she looked at me, and she just smiled.’
Princess Anne, her son Peter Phillips and Queen Elizabeth II, at Balmoral in 1979
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And while Diana may have won over the royals during her Balmoral Test, the Princess would later say that her visits to the estate would be surrounded by ‘negative atmospheres’, filling her with stress and sapping her of energy. ‘I panic a lot when I got up to Balmoral,’ she told told Andrew Morton. ‘It’s my worst time, and I think: “How the hell am I going to get out of this?”’