The day Sophie Wessex was offered a job at Waitrose because she was so good at packing her weekly shop! As the Duchess of Edinburgh turns 60, palace insiders reveal the surprising reasons she’s fast becoming the Royal Family’s safest pair of hands

She’s widely seen as one of the monarchy’s safest pairs of hands, but should she ever decide on a change of career, the Duchess of Edinburgh would, I can confidently predict, be snapped up by her local Waitrose.

Packing her bags on a supermarket trip with her great friend Mary Montagu-Scott some time back, Sophie so impressed the checkout assistant, who was oblivious that she was Queen Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law, that she said they had some in-store vacancies and the manager would happily take her details. Smiling, the senior royal thanked her politely and giggled all the way home.

‘The lady clearly had no idea who Sophie was,’ Mrs Montagu-Scott, daughter of the late Lord Montagu of Beaulieu recalls. ‘And that’s just the way she likes it, to be honest.

‘Sophie is both an asset to the nation and to the Royal Family, but more than anything she is a fantastic friend.’

Tomorrow, the duchess turns 60, which may be surprising to some given how youthful she has been looking of late.

Typically, she will spend the day with little fanfare at Bagshot Park, the Surrey home she shares with her husband, Prince Edward, also 60, with a handful of friends. Their children, Lady Louise Windsor and James, Earl of Wessex, are both away from home (she at university and he at boarding school).

Last year, she carried out 257 engagements at home and abroad, making her the fourth hardest working royal on the team. Many involve visiting unglamorous local community centres and thanking volunteers – royal bread and butter, in other words. But there is much she undertakes below the radar, too, volunteering with a number of local organisations, from serving lunches in charity kitchens to taking up cudgels with those in authority on issues such as women’s rights and the care of those with disabilities.

She often drives herself to visits, does her own hair and make-up and travels with a minimal entourage. To mark her landmark birthday, I have accompanied the duchess on several engagements in recent months and spoken to close friends and organisations she has worked with for decades to get a sense of who Sophie really is – and why she will play such a crucial role in our unexpectedly slimmed-down monarchy in the next decade and beyond.

It’s worth noting, of course, that the former Sophie Rhys-Jones was the first ‘commoner’ to marry a senior member of the Royal Family when she and Edward (then seventh in line to the throne) tied the knot at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1999.

Her father, Christopher, now 93, worked for a tyre importer and her late mother, Mary, was a charity worker and secretary. Their daughter had already been dating Edward for around six years during which the late Queen had afforded her several extraordinary privileges for the time, including allowing her to stay over with Edward at Buckingham Palace (the first unmarried girlfriend to do so, paving the way for other royal brides-to-be, such as the Princess of Wales who is now a close confidante to Sophie).

The marriages of Queen Elizabeth’s three other children had all imploded with varying degrees of public fallout, and the late sovereign was personally, as well as professionally, keen that Edward and Sophie – who started dating in 1993 when she worked in PR and chaperoned him at a real tennis tournament – took their time and got it right.

There were hiccups along the way. The couple memorably faced several major public embarrassments over their commercial activities in the early days of their marriage. However, they sensibly chose to give up their respective businesses and become full-time working royals. (A friend who comforted Sophie at the time tells me she was ‘devastated’ by the fallout from the so-called ‘Fake Sheikh’ sting in 2001, when an undercover red-top tabloid reporter claimed she made inappropriate remarks about public figures, but despite it all she insisted on fulfilling a charity event she was due to attend.) Since then, Sophie has committed herself to more than 70 patronages and charities, embracing causes that are at the less fashionable end of the scale.

For several years, she has travelled to trouble-spots across the world, highlighting the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, including to Ukraine last year, as well as Chad. They are visits she has personally pushed for, sometimes in the face of official reticence, and she plans to step up her work further in the sphere. ‘She is careful not to overstep the mark but, equally, she’s not afraid to shy away from the hard questions that need to be asked and hold feet to the fire,’ one senior Whitehall source told me.

Indeed, shortly before Christmas, I watched her give an impassioned seven-minute speech – without notes – at the Foreign Office in London on the plight of oppressed Yazidi women in Iraq. ‘The devastation that conflict-related sexual violence has… doesn’t just stop when the guns fall silent, the devastation continues in the lives of those who have survived. Communities are devastated, families are torn apart,’ she said.

I watched her on another engagement, on behalf of The Lighthouse in Woking, Surrey, which offers support and services to many on the margins of society.

For several years, Sophie has travelled to trouble-spots across the world, highlighting the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war, including to Ukraine last year. Here, she is photographed beside the late Queen in 2015

Sophie served Christmas dinner to dozens of clients, chatting with and hugging men and women who, in all honesty, others might walk across the street to avoid.

In another room, she spoke with a group of Ukrainian women as they made decorative angels (she’s very ‘arty’, friends tell me) with such empathy that several wept as they thanked the duchess for her support.

She even candidly revealed the Royal Family’s plans for Christmas at Sandringham, telling a group of women: ‘Between the King’s speech and teatime, we try to rush out with the dogs before it gets dark.

‘We rush out, get back, get changed, get the dogs, rush out, walk, go back, get changed for tea. It’s busy. I don’t know how many changes of clothes we do a day, but it’s a lot!

‘Boxing Day, we all are normally outside, round and about the estate, shooting, walking… It’s not going to be quiet, there’s going to be quite a lot of us. But it’s fun.’

Lucy Brown, chief executive of Disability Initiative, has known the duchess for years. Sophie and Edward chose the charity as their first public engagement after their wedding, and Sophie later agreed to become patron.

‘She volunteered for us during Covid, helps with our strategic planning, holds meetings and events for us at Bagshot, and has even steamed in personally to champion some of the people we help,’ enthuses Lucy.

‘She’s also got a great sense of humour. A few years ago, all our clients wrote on a piece of paper a phrase or word to describe her, and we put them in a treasure chest and gave it to her.

‘I told her I’d taken out all the cheeky ones – like ‘nice bottom’ – and she said, ‘Why?!’

‘She told me to stick them back in. I don’t think people realise how vast her impact is because she keeps things so under the radar.

‘But she doesn’t take herself too seriously. We gave her a kazoo as a birthday present and she played Sweet Caroline on it for us at an event. Very funny.’ Sophie is also honorary president of Leaf, a charity that promotes a better understanding of farming.

Chairman Philip Wynn says: ‘As a student, she spent her summers in Kent fruit-picking. ‘She gets it. I remember being in a food lab with her doing blind tasting and she had no hesitation tasting the insect protein cookies. The kids didn’t think much of it, but she was game.’

Prince Edward and then-Sophie Rhys-Jones announce their engagement in the gardens of St James’ Palace in 1999

Her friend Lord Ivar Mountbatten (second cousin to the King, who was also at Gordonstoun with ‘Ed’) insists that being a member of the Royal Family is a tougher job than many realise.

‘Everyone remembers meeting a royal. You have to be on your best behaviour; say the right thing. You can’t slip up because people will remember it. You have to be on your A-game. It’s a tough gig, but Sophie smashes it,’ he says.

He believes she has soared in confidence since the early days of her courting Edward (they publicised their relationship at Lord Mountbatten’s first wedding to ex-wife Penny in 1994).

The couple frequently holiday with Lord Mountbatten and his family (he is now married to husband James Coyle) in the Isles of Scilly. He remarks that they are a very down-to-earth couple.

‘They go for weekends to people’s houses – and not grand houses… ordinary… shared bathrooms. For many years, I would take the King’s cottage on the Scilly Isles. Ed and Sophie would join us. Literally just them and the kids, maybe a policeman, but very low-key.

‘I remember Ed once asked James, ‘Do you have a whites wash? I’m putting my laundry on and I can do yours, too.’

‘James later said his mother would be highly chuffed to know Prince Edward was doing his whites! But that’s what they are like as a couple. Just very, very normal.’

Lord Mountbatten says the Edinburghs – who enjoy country pursuits, walking, skiing and their three dogs – still ‘absolutely adore’ each other and are a ‘great partnership’. ‘And – I would say this –but I honestly think she gets more beautiful with age. She has grown into herself. I think as individuals you absorb confidence and radiate it,’ he says. Could he ever see ‘super Sophie’, as she is known by her fans, slowing down?

‘Sadly, they don’t have much choice in that regard, but fortunately she has a strong sense of duty,’ he replies, adding mischievously: ‘Well, she and Ed could say, ‘Bugger it, I’m off to California.’ But they would never do that. And their workload is only going north of what it is now.

‘Sometimes I think it’s a really thankless position to be in [a member of the Royal Family]. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, you don’t have the right of reply and just have to suck it [the criticism] all up, which can be difficult as there are some pretty miserable people out there.’

Mary Montagu-Scott agrees, adding that the couple are ‘peas in a pod’. ‘She understood what she was taking on. And she had the strength of character to do it. I don’t think it’s for everyone to live in the public eye like that. But she genuinely, really loved him so much.’

A senior royal aide adds that King Charles has long been ‘impressed’ by Sophie’s no-nonsense ‘diligence’, much in the mould of his sister, Princess Anne. ‘She really just does get on with it, without much fuss. That’s appreciated,’ they said. They also point out she has ‘picked up a lot of the slack’ in the past months, particularly abroad, following the King and Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses.

‘I think you will see that role grow,’ another aide predicts. Prince William is an admirer, too, and knows what an asset Sophie’s steady presence is, given the trials and tribulations of recent years.

I suspect he was genuinely grateful for the way she welcomed his sister-in-law, Meghan, when she was first introduced to the family by his now estranged brother, Prince Harry.

Ultimately, I am told, she was rebuffed, but Sophie has proved herself to be a peacekeeper – a skill the Royal Family will always have need for.

Maybe Waitrose will have to wait a little longer for its new checkout girl.