The one thing the Queen Mother always said when she visited the nudist beach

For almost the entire 20th century, she was one of the best-known figures in British public. The personification of duty, and a symbol of national resilience during the Second World War, the Queen Mother remained a working royal until shortly before her death aged 101 in March 2002. She could be charming and was famously fond of the odd gin, but has been portrayed as snobbish and austere, too.

So what was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of George VI and mother to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, really like? Monday marks what would have been her 125th birthday. To celebrate, those who knew and worked with her away from the public gaze share their memories.

Lady Anne Glenconner’s parents were close friends of the Queen Mother. Lady Glenconner then became Princess Margaret’s Lady-in-Waiting for 30 years.

I knew her from when I was very small. She was such fun, magical really. We’d go to Glamis Castle in Scotland, where she lived and grew up.

She’d tell us stories about how Glamis was haunted by a ghostly woman with no tongue. “Come on, let’s go down to the bridge,” she’d say if we weren’t doing anything. “We might see a train go by.” And it did, and we were all enveloped in steam.I grew up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, which is very near Sandringham. Princess Margaret was my playmate. We’d accompany the Queen Mother – or the Queen, as she was then – and her family to the beach and go swimming.

Later, the Queen Mother liked to walk her corgis near a nudist colony, even though her security would warn her off. “Of course I’m going down there,” she’d insisted. “I hope the corgis bite their bottoms.”She came to my debutante ball in 1950 and asked the band leader to play her favourite tunes. She danced and danced, whirling about with my father and other people.

I was on the Buckingham Palace balcony for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. It was extraordinary, all those crowds.

There was a special cheer for the Queen Mother. She did that wonderful wave, like she was stirring a pudding. She was very warm and family orientated, looking after Charles and Anne when Elizabeth and Prince Phillip went on their six month Commonwealth tour.

She loved Dad’s Army and I would see her watching it before dinner. She stood all the way through. The Royal Family used to stand a lot. It’s what they were used to. The Queen Mother particularly liked Captain Mainwaring. She was very good at mimicking him and the rest of the cast.She wasn’t very keen on change. If furnishing had to be updated, she would insist on it being in the same chintz. But she lived through two world wars, losing her brother Fergus in battle in France in 1915, and I think she’d be sad at how little the world has changed, in many ways – all the division and conflict.

Lady Glenconner is the bestselling author of Lady In Waiting. Her latest book, Picnic Papers, is out now

Historian Gareth Russell wrote Do Let’s Have Another Drink: The Singular Wit and Double Measures of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

The Queen Mother has been depicted as aloof and uncaring at times. In The Crown, for instance, when there was a negative storyline, they often shifted it onto her – such as wrongly saying she was culpable for her cousins with learning difficulties being hidden away in a hospital. That image isn’t fair. She always looked after people.

Glamis Castle housed injured soldiers during the First World War. She would play cards with them, and run into the village to buy cigarettes, postcards and sweets. One young man told her he dreamt of working in the countryside, but he ended up in a shipyard. When he lost his his job during the Great Depression, she’d send money to his wife without him knowing.

She then made his dream of working in the countryside come true by asking him to be her gardener at Royal Lodge, Windsor. He stayed there until he died in the 1960s.During the Blitz, she and George VI famously stayed in London, spending their time visiting bomb sites and supporting victims.

She told a friend that if the Nazis ever made it to Britain, she would charge down the Mall, pistols in hand, shooting as many as possible, before they took her out. She’d practice in the Buckingham Palace gardens by shooting rats.

When homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, a friend advised to sack any gay staff to send a morale message out to the nations. She knocked the idea back firmly, saying: “If I did that, I’d have to go self-service.” Even Wallis Simpson, her sister-in-law, who didn’t like her at all, said her charm was justifiably famous.

Despite the satirical image, the Queen Mother had a really positive relationship with alcohol. She just enjoyed it and enjoyed conversation. It was never debilitating. She was in good health into her 11th decade, after all.

Fundraiser and campaigner Basia Briggs was the driving force behind the Queen Mother’s Gate in Hyde Park. It commemorated her ninetieth birthday and was unveiled in 1993

The idea behind the gate was to calm traffic coming into the park from Park Lane, but we needed a reason to do it and the Queen Mother took to the idea of it being in her honour.We showed her a model of the design and, despite what some silly people have said, she liked it and just made a couple of small design suggestions.

She was very open-minded and good natured. She was cheerful and full of jokes, and she wanted those around her to be cheerful and laughing, too. There was an event to mark the opening of the gate. She was supposed to turn up, do the formal bit and then go home, but the whole thing turned into a mammoth party and she overstayed.

I became good friends with her steward, William Tallon. He was flamboyant and made her laugh, unlike some of the other grey suits in Royal circles. They were like Tweedledum and Tweedledee – devoted to each other. She’d come across so much death in her time, but he was full of life. He told me she had laundry baskets full of sparkling dresses and elephants’ feet that had somehow been acquired as presents.

She wore high heels until she was 101 – an example to us all!

Basia works with domestic abuse charity Safe Lives, safelives.org.uk

Nicky Henderson trained horses for the Queen Mother and the Royal Family since the early 1990s, achieving more than 60 winners

Racing was her passion out of royal-duty hours. She had some very high-class horses, and she bred nearly all of them herself, at Sandringham. She loved coming down to my stables in Berkshire to see the training take place and be part of the process.

She enjoyed all the characters around the sport – some of them notorious. The sport is like a really big family. She could just relax. We had some lovely lunches and would speak almost every Sunday morning, where the topic definitely wasn’t always racing.

I think she was very much at her happiest in Scotland at Balmoral and her home at the Castle of Mey. She would talk about her adventures walking around the Highlands as a younger woman. She always had the same tipple, gin and Dubonnet. I hate to think how many half bottles of Dubonnet we have had in the house, as we thought we had better buy a new one, every time she came.

Nobody took it harder than the Queen or the Queen Mother if a horse was injured. If a horse performed disappointingly, she was so sympathetic and understanding and always felt sorry for the stable staff. I was with her when she got her 400th winner, Nearco Bay, May 1994. She enjoyed that. But she enjoyed everything.