There could be more to The Queen‘s love of cucumber sandwiches and recycled fashions.
WATCH: THE QUEEN HAS USED THE SAME BAG FOR 50 YEARS
Is Elizabeth tightening her belt in other areas of her life to fund her $1.1 million-a-year obsession?
According to The Express, Queen Elizabeth spends just that each year to keep her horse business afloat, and royal finance expert, David McClure, calls it a “drain on the private purse.”
“The Queen is famously frugal but her one extravagance is horses,” he revealed to the publication.
“She’s a great lover of the turf.
“Now this is quite an expensive hobby, at one stage she had about a string of about 20 thoroughbred horses, she had three studs, she had stables.”
The 92-year-old British monarch first fell in love with the equine industry as a four-year-old, when she was gifted her own horse named Peggy by King George V.
In fact, she loves them so much, that she’s never missed a Royal Windsor Horse show since its inauguration in 1943!
Of running her own stables, McClure insists, “It was estimated, that I think in around about 2000, it was costing about £600,000 a year just to run that.
“I’m sure the stud probably breaks even but the normal sort of horse racing venture doesn’t so it probably is a drain on the private purse.”