Joe Biden offered his personal recollections of Queen Elizabeth as “decent, honorable and all about service,” while he said that he consoled King Charles by telling him that “she’s going to be with him every step of the way — every minute, every moment.”
Biden gave remarks after signing the official condolence book at Lancaster House in London, one of a series of appearances he made with First Lady Jill Biden in advance of the funeral for the Queen on Monday.
“We’ve had an opportunity to meet with an awful lot of consequential people, but I can say that the ones who stand out in your mind are those whose relationship and interaction with you are consistent with their reputation,” Biden said. “When the Queen had us to the castle for tea and, we were joking, crumpets, she kept offering me more; I kept eating everything she put in front of me, but she was the same in person … as her image: decent, honorable, and all about service.”
A reporter asked Biden why he thought that the Queen reminded him of his mother.
“Just because of the way she touched when she leaned over,” Biden said. “She had that look like, ‘Are you okay? Anything I can do for you? What do you need?’ And then also, ‘Make sure you do what you’re supposed to do.’”
Biden added, “What she gave is a sense of, maybe above all, the notion of service. We all owe something. There’s something within our capacity to do that can make things, not just the world better, but your neighborhood better, your household better, your workplace better.”
“That’s what she communicated to me, anyway, and it was an honor to meet her.”
The Bidens earlier visited Westminster Hall to pay their respects to the Queen, and later attended a reception at Buckingham Palace.