The Queen doesn’t do interviews. That’s what journalists have for years been told.

But she made an exception for one Canterbury film-maker.

Peter Williams speaks to the Queen

As the monarch observed dozens of her parade horses, Boughton’s Peter Williams stood in the wings.

That was until Sir John Miller, the man charged with looking after the animals, shot him a wink and a nod to give him the go-ahead. For the 50-year-old, it was as if he was having an out-of-body experience.

This set in motion an 18-minute on-the-record talk with the sovereign. It was, according to Peter, the first time she had ever been interviewed.

“I had no intention of interviewing the Queen beforehand,” he says.

“I had no idea nor ambition to do it. It’s well-known in the business the Queen does not give interviews.

“In fact, if you said I would be the first person to interview the Queen, I would have thought you were potty.”

It was 1984. By that time, the miners’ strike had begun. The Queen had seen her son Charles marry three years prior in one of the most-watched television events of all time.

This came just a month after she was fired at by a teenager when she rode down The Mall to the Horse Guards Parade.

The Falklands War, Prince William’s birth and Michael Fagan’s Buckingham Palace break-in – which saw him storm into the Queen’s bedroom – all took place two years before the interview.

However, Peter, now 88, spoke to her on just one topic that had always held a special place in her heart: horses.

He had spent much of that year shooting a documentary on the Royal Mews.

Tucked away behind Buckingham Palace, the building is said to be one of the Queen’s favourites. It is where the horses used during royal parades reside, along with the carriages and cars that ferry the Windsors about during the events.

“Sir John was about to retire and he was open to doing a documentary profile on the Royal Mews,” Peter continues.

“Horses have a big part in the Queen’s life, so the person in charge is also a big person in the Buckingham Palace team.”

Peter was following Sir John for most of the shoot.

They followed the equerry as he judged horses and worked with the state coaches and Rolls Royce Phantoms.

Over that period, Peter saw the Queen on a number of occasions. Footage in the final cut shows her exercising a Canadian-bred horse named Burmese she had regularly ridden over the years.

“The Queen was there for many of the sequences that we did. Conversation with her was free and friendly, but never recorded,” Peter remembers.

“We’d recorded her talking to John, the grooms and the horses. It was pretty much all about the horses.

“We just stepped back. It wasn’t my job to interview her.”

It was not until the penultimate day of filming that Sir John quietly told Peter over a cup of tea: “We’ll be seeing Her Majesty again at the stables tomorrow. That will be your last chance to have a word with her.”

Surprised, Peter responded: “What do you mean, John?”

“Well, if Her Majesty is going to be in this film, this will be your last chance to get her. I’ll tip you the wink when to go in.”

As his crew gathered for breakfast the following morning, Peter asked his colleagues what questions they would pose to the Queen during an interview. His inquiry was met with laughter.

The director of the picture asserted: “The Queen does not give interviews, Peter.”

But this time, she did. And over the course of it, the conversation was focused on the horses, while chains clinked and hooves clopped in the background.

She described the Royal Mews as being “like a small village that belongs to Buckingham Palace”.

“I do remember asking Her Majesty whether a particular Windsor Grey was a whole horse,” Peter notes.

“That meant ‘has it been neutered?’ If you told me I was going to be asking the Queen that question when I got up that morning, I would have disbelieved you.”

Afterwards, the show’s photographer took some publicity shots of the monarch.

After she left, the snapper blurted out an obscenity as he realised that he had only taken them in black and white. The images were supposed to appear in the TV Times – in colour.

Peter ran outside, knocked on the window of her Rolls Royce and asked her if she would return to be photographed again. After a pause, she did.

“I learned how gracious and how sympathetic she is during that situation.

“It could have been very difficult for the chap who hadn’t taken the photos. She’s an extraordinary woman.”

Just days later, though, Peter received a call from the royal press office. He says there was “consternation” among officials when they learned what had happened.

The journalist was told: “If you use this interview, then we can no longer say the Queen never gives interviews.”

“That was the beginning of a long negotiation,” he recalls.

“We could have made a great fuss of the interview at the time. But that’s not my style. In the end, we suggested a compromise of splitting the interview into three and using it in different places in the film as if it were conversation.”

The fact she had given an interview stayed under the radar for the following 38 years – despite it appearing on ITV.

Before the documentary, called The Queen and Her Ceremonial Horses, was beamed into people’s homes, Peter and his crew were invited to Buckingham Palace for a preview screening.

There, he watched the programme projected inside the building’s cinema.

The room was filled “with hundreds of people”, but perched on the seat next to him was the Queen.

“That was a nervous moment,” he recounts.

“She laughed in all the right places and it was just wonderful to sit beside her to watch it.

“The people of the mews appreciated what we were doing – which was putting their work on the record. The whole experience was a very happy one.”

Details of the interview are included in Peter Williams’s book Being There; Titanic, Marlon Brando and the Luger Pistol. It can be bought from Waterstones, or directly from peter@pwtv.co.uk.