The Queen is said to have fought off her attacker using the heel of her shoe. The attempted assault is recounted in Power and the Palace by the former Royal editor of the Times newspaper, Valentine Low.

He says the Queen told Boris Johnson the story of her experience in 2008 when he was mayor of London. It is reported that the Queen was 16 or 17 years old when the incident happened on a train to Paddington Station. The man is said to have been touching the teenage Camilla Shand when she took off her shoe and hit him with it.

It was, she told Johnson, something her mother had told her to do if she ever found herself in that situation. When she arrived in London, she reported the incident to station staff and the man was arrested. Buckingham Palace has made no official statement on the story but is not disputing the details of the account. "She did the responsible thing," Low told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Not only was she resourceful and strong, she was a responsible citizen in making sure the man was arrested." Much of the Queen's public work in recent years has been supporting the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and rape.

She is patron of the charity SafeLives and has visited women's refuges and rape crisis centres across the UK and globally. In a number of powerful speeches, she has spoken of the courage of those who have experienced domestic violence and why they should not feel fear or stigma in coming forward. In a speech in 2020 she said: "Through my work, I have talked to many women who have lived with coercive control and domestic violence and, thankfully, come out at the other end as the victors not the victims. "They are some of the bravest people I have ever met. Their stories are harrowing and have reduced even the toughest of their listeners to tears. That is why it is so vital that these survivors should no longer feel any shame or any blame." And at a reception at Clarence House in April for SafeLives, she spoke of domestic abuse. (BBC/ Getty Images)