When David Neville left the army in 1985 after thirty years’ service, he wondered what he was going to do with the rest of his life, as he was still of working age.  A friend told him about the Queen’s Messengers, who travelled the world carrying diplomatic bags.  He decided to apply and was interviewed by a board of five people (including two from MI5 and MI6) in the Cabinet Office.

The job took him all over the world, wherever there was a British Embassy, including Ulan Bator, to reach which he had to spend two days on a train and where the outside temperature was minus 52 degrees.

He was in Peking at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, where he saw streets running with blood and bodies lying all over the square.

He was caught up in hurricane Gilbert in Jamaica in 1988 and spent two days closeted in his hotel room on the seventeenth floor.  It was pitch black outside and he was actually able to see the eye of the storm.

Apart from two trips, he never knew what was in the diplomatic bag.  Once it was some bones that had been found in the USSR and were suspected of being those of Tsar Nicholas Romanov.  They were to undergo a DNA test in the UK to see whether they matched the DNA of Prince Philip, who is descended from the Romanovs.

The other time was on a trip to Mexico when he carried letters of sympathy from the Queen and Margaret Thatcher to the President after the 1985 earthquake.

Every time he flew he had two seats on the plane – one for himself and one for his bag.  He wore a tie that had on it a crown and a silver greyhound.

In answer to a question from the floor he replied that he was never armed and never threatened.

He made 78 journeys in total during his time as a Queen’s Messenger.  He showed us a pile of about twenty or more special passports, which bore the words Queen’s Messenger on the front.