Often revered as an astute judge of character, Queen Elizabeth II told friends that she found Donald Trump “very rude,” and mused that he must have “some sort of arrangement” with his wife, Melania.

The stunning claims are made in a new biography of the late queen which is being serialized in the Daily Mail. It also says that the late monarch “particularly disliked” Trump’s habit of looking over her shoulder, as if “in search of others more interesting.”

Elizabeth hosted Trump twice during her reign, in 2018 and 2019.

The claims were made by the well-connected veteran journalist Craig Brown, in a new account of the queen’s life, heavily reliant on anecdotes, entitled A Voyage Around The Queen.

Brown, an upper class Old Etonian, was for many years a Parliamentary sketch writer and contributor to the celebrated British scandal-and-satire magazine Private Eye. Known as an insider in elite society, after Princess Margaret’s death he published a highly original kaleidoscopic biography of Princess Margaret, called Ma’am Darling, which, much like the new book on the queen, mixed well known anecdotes with original reporting.

Brown writes in his new biography that “a few weeks after President Trump’s visit” Elizabeth told a “lunch guest” that she had found him “very rude.”

The queen had apparently particularly objected to Trump “looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting.”

Brown writes that the queen “believed President Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?”

Trump has often spoken in reverential tones about Queen Elizabeth, whom he first met for tea at Windsor Castle in 2018 before a full-blown state visit the next year.

After his state visit he told Fox News: “We were laughing and having fun. And her people said she hasn’t had so much fun in 25 years. Then I got criticized for it because they said we were having too much fun.”

The Mail said Buckingham Palace had not commented on the claims.