QUEEN'S servant Margaret ''Bobo'' MacDonald has died peacefully in her
sleep at her home in Buckingham Palace. She was 89.
Once described as the Queen's closest confidante, Miss MacDonald, a
farmer's daughter from the Black Isle, north of Inverness, served her
for 67 years, first as nursemaid and then as dresser, looking after her
clothes and jewels.
Her affectionate nickname is thought to have been the first word the
Queen uttered.
Miss MacDonald, who accompanied the Queen on dozens of foreign tours,
was forced by ill-health to retire about three years ago. She never
married.
Confirming Miss MacDonald's death, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said:
''The Queen is naturally very sad about the news.''
Her sister Ruby is also a member of the royal household, and used to
work for Princess Margaret.
The Queen, in a personal gift, made Miss MacDonald a Lieutenant of the
Royal Victorian Order in the New Year Honours in 1986.
Miss MacDonald, who was born in 1904, is said to have been the only
person outside the royal family to be allowed to call the Queen by her
abbreviated name, Lilibet.
Royal watchers through the years observed that she was probably the
only person who could, and would, say anything to the Queen that she
thought she should know.
They are said to have shared a bedroom when the Queen was a child, and
an air raid shelter under Windsor Castle in wartime.
Miss MacDonald featured in childhood essays by the future Queen. In
one about the morning of her father's Coronation in 1937, she wrote: ''I
leapt out of bed and so did Bobo. We put on dressing gowns and shoes,
and Bobo made me put on an eiderdown as it was cold, and we crouched in
the window looking on to a cold, misty morning.''
The servant accompanied the then Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of
Edinburgh on honeymoon in 1947.
When King George VI bade farewell to his daughter for what was to be
the last time, as she flew to Kenya in 1952, he said to Miss MacDonald:
''Look after the princess for me, Bobo.''
In her 80s Miss MacDonald still awoke her mistress with a cup of tea,
ran her bath, and laid out her clothes and jewellery.
It is said that on Miss MacDonald's birthday, the Queen returned the
favour and took her dresser a cup of tea.
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