 Shall be devoted to your service and to the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong This is BBC News from London Buckingham Palace has announced the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Your first audience with Her Majesty the Queen is really a pretty nerve-wracking experience because the equity tells you all sorts of things that you've got to do Where to shake hands, how to shake hands, what to say, how to address Her Majesty and You're kind of worried you're gonna stuff it up, but after a few moments it becomes incredibly Informal and she's brilliant at asking questions that elicit a great torrent of stuff and There's a lot of laughter that suddenly was with The audiences that I had sadly and rightly I can't tell you what She said or what we said, but there was a lot of laughter Well, of course this was taken at my first audience because my first audience was the one when I went to the palace and the Queen inviting me to form a government and at that moment when you walk through the door and You have that first audience it becomes real that you are Prime Minister You're taking on this privileged position, but also this responsibility But Her Majesty was so good at putting everybody at their ease and both that audience and the Audiences I then went on to have with her subsequently They were conversations She was incredibly well informed had immense experience knowledge and wisdom and it's a moment In the week when you're away from the hurly burly of politics And you can actually sit down with somebody with experience and wisdom knowledge and understanding And have that conversation about the issues of the day Well, my first audience was pretty extraordinary because of course we had a hung parliament The Conservatives were much the biggest party after a great election victory in 2010 But when I went to see Her Majesty I had to ask I'd like to form a government But I can't tell you exactly what sort of government it's going to be because Gordon Brown had left Downing Street and the coalition hadn't quite been put in place So I think although she had seen Prime Minister's come and Prime Minister's go I think this was probably the first time someone had said I can't tell you exactly what the government is going to Look like but I will form one. Well, the first audience was surprisingly relaxed I expected it might be a little distant a little difficult, but it wasn't I was greeted at the door. I was introduced to the Queen. We sat down in two chairs There was absolutely no one else present except a large ring of corgis Most of whom were well behaved but not invariably on every occasion And that was it. There was no private secretary, no notes And it was just a conversation. Nothing was barred Nothing was out of court Everything was discussed and if the Queen wished to raise Subjects she did if she wished to respond to what I was telling her she certainly did And I found it both very cathartic very interesting And something frankly that one looked forward to each week It was an extraordinary treat to be able to go to Barramorell every year for six years And one of the best parts was when in the evening you'd get into Her Majesty's Car, a Range Rover, and she would drive at breakneck speed up the hill and onto the moor and there At a sort of converted bothy, an old cottage on the hill would be the Duke of Edinburgh With a barbecue he'd built himself barbecuing grouse for your dinner And I'm not making this up you sat down and Prince Philip and Her Majesty the Queen Served your dinner and cleared it away and washed it up While you sat talking with the other guests and I remember I think it was sort of year five I thought well I now surely can help and got up and put on the marigolds and started doing the washing up And I remember Her Majesty saying what on earth is the Prime Minister doing? I'd broken with the protocol rapidly sat back down and did what I was told The UK hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2018 And we were very fortunate Her Majesty was at the opening ceremony in Buckingham Palace And she was also willing to open up she very kindly opened Windsor Castle up for us to have Some of them part of the meeting One of the events that I remember was we were having a meeting at Windsor Castle We were having a lunch we had a reception before the lunch Nobody apart from myself and one or two officials knew that Her Majesty would be coming to that reception She walked into that room and immediately the atmosphere changed There was this huge sense of love and respect for her and people wanted to talk to her And she just had lit the room up I know for a fact that world leaders coveted nothing more than to be bathed in the luster of her Radiance and I remember vividly as foreign secretary how they would lobby me I won't give you their names but they would lobby me to come not on a government to government visit They didn't want to meet the politicians they wanted a state visit Because they hoped for the chance to meet Her Majesty the Queen And that was because they knew quite what she had seen and done in her life And they knew like Barack Obama that she truly was one of the most remarkable world leaders if not the most remarkable world leader that that he'd ever met When the Queen was surrounded by other world leaders particularly at meetings of Chogham the Commonwealth heads of government meeting it was quite extraordinary to see how they all wish to be close to the Queen to shake hands with the Queen to be photographed with the Queen She was not only the head of the Commonwealth she was to them quite a remarkable figure It is absolutely and completely impossible to imagine they would have reacted that way had we been Republic and had the head of our state been a president it was the magic of the monarchy and the magic of that particular monarch that made such a remarkable a remarkable reaction from people I think her greatest legacy is demonstrating just what a brilliant model our constitutional monarchy is she was an extraordinary symbol of national unity she brought the country together but she also did so much to represent and symbolise Britain abroad and that was really based on the fact that she was so true to her word when she was in her 20s and said whether my life be long or short it will be dedicated to your service she fulfilled that in every year and every month and every week of her reign I think the extent to which she was a very human being was most beautifully was most beautifully illustrated when she sat alone in her seat at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh it indicated to the extent that behind the monarch behind the pageantry behind the majesty of the throne there was a family there was a human there was a marriage and the queen faced exactly the same difficulties in her private life as everybody in this country can imagine in their own lives and that particular poignant picture is one I think that will remain in my mind for the rest of my life and I think will remain in history too one of the striking characteristics of her late majesty was her devotion to duty she gave a selfless life of service actually committed to when she was 21 at just the age of 21 she said she would devote her life however long or short to our service and she did that and in a world of like celebrity and sort of people wanting to grab the limelight she was very humble as well and I hope that there will be a legacy for the country of more of a sense of the importance of service and duty I think there has been no other monarch in our history who has seen such a phenomenal increase in the prosperity in the opportunity in the longevity of the of the British people as she has in her reign and for that reason alone I think that she should be recorded as Elizabeth the Great