In 1988, at Durham Cathedral, artist James Alder presented the Queen Mother with a signed limited edition print of the Northumbrian Quilt.

It showed the castles and cathedrals in the middle, but Her Majesty was more taken by the birds and the flowers in the margins.

"She was tickled to bits with it, and from that conversation arose her wish for the birds and flowers of her home, the Castle of Mey, to be recorded," Mr Alder recalls.

The Quilt, completed by the North-East's craftspeople to Mr Alder's designs, is now in Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle; yesterday Mr Alder's drawings of the wildlife of the Castle of Mey were published in a splendid volume by the University of Northumbria.

"I had 20 meetings with her, a lovely, lovely, dear old granny old lady, marvellous and ordinary, yet full of manners and knowledge," says Mr Alder, who was born on the banks of the Tyne, in Newcastle.

And then her daughter, the Queen, asked Mr Alder to record the wildlife of Balmoral.

"Wherever she was, Windsor, Buckingham Palace, Balmoral, I'd take the drawings to show her," he says.

"It was a lovely, easy relationship, full of knowledge, full of input."

The two collections were bound in leather and published at £1,000-a-volume. But now they are available through bookshops for £30.

Mr Alder, born in 1920, started drawing when very young. "My dad was a docker and he brought me prints of boats on the Tyne," he said.

"He wanted me to be a boy soldier, not an artist, but my mother brought me flowers to draw from Grainger Market, and there was some wildlife about - feral pigeons, gulls on the river."

He moved into drawing adverts - he designed the label for Sqezy, the first washing-up liquid in this country - but also wrote and illustrated a small Saturday newspaper column about wildlife in the Newcastle Chronicle.

It was syndicated, and Mr Alder's reputation grew until he was granted an audience with Royalty in the cathedral.

The Birds and Flowers of the Castle of Mey and Balmoral by James Alder (Northumbria University, £30), is available at Ottakar's Darlington, the Echo Bookshop on 0800 0150552, and the university on 0191-227-3700 or www.northumbria.ac. uk/bookshop