Nelson Mandela offered candid comments about world leaders

Anyone interested in learning more about Nelson Mandela might enjoy the video above.

It was taken as he was signing lithographs at his South African home in 2002, and includes many off-the-cuff comments about famous people.

At 12:30 of the video, he calls Queen Elizabeth "remarkable".

"In public, she's very stiff, but when I stayed in Buckingham Palace, she was a totally different person," Mandela said. "She serves tea herself. And she becomes really mothering."

He also revealed that his first meeting with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher lasted for three hours.

Mandela then went to meet then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

"He says, 'How is the Iron Lady?'," Mandela recalled. "I said she was warm and motherly. He says 'Warm and motherly? You must have met another lady.' "

Mandela also praised former French president Francois Mitterrand, who had stayed in his country to fight the Germans in the Second World War.

"And with that, he understood our position very well," Mandela said.

He added that British ambassadors often opposed treating Mandela with too much deference while he was imprisoned.

But Pakistan's prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his government would have nothing of it, rejecting Britain's high commissioner's appeal.

"They ignored him," he said. "They said 'No this is Pakistan. We'll give him the treatment that he deserves.' "