Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

SIXTEEN

Annus Horribilis

OF ALL ELIZABETH II’S PRIME MINISTERS, JOHN MAJOR HAD THE most unusual background, as exotic as it was humble. His father had sought his fortune in the United States, working in the steel mills of Pittsburgh before making a career as a circus trapeze artist and performer on the vaudeville circuit in America and Britain. After the death of his first wife, he married a young dancer and built a business selling novelty garden ornaments. John was their fourth child, born when his father was sixty-four and had suffered financial reversals.

The family moved to the Brixton slums, and John had to leave school at sixteen to help support his parents. He worked in a variety of odd jobs until he took up banking, where he found success. Attracted to politics, he rose from his local council to Parliament and entered the Thatcher cabinet in 1987. He was known for his steady hand, mastery of policy detail, quiet determination, and shrewd judgment.

When he became prime minister, Major focused on conciliating the bitterly divided factions of the Tory party. After five months in office, he scrapped the hated poll tax and replaced it with a newly crafted property tax based on the value of a residence as well as the number of its occupants. He built on the economic gains of the Thatcher years and successfully negotiated advantageous terms in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty that kept Britain in the strengthened European Union (formerly the European Economic Community) without ceding independence on issues such as workers’ wages, health and safety, or abolishing the pound for the continent’s proposed single currency.

In the presence of her courtiers, the Queen treated the amiable Major just as she did his brisk predecessor. “I couldn’t pin down a difference between the two,” said one of her senior advisers. Major was “totally relaxed and cheerful” before his audiences. “Afterward when he was with the private secretaries, the conversation was almost always about cricket.”

Shortly after assuming power, the new prime minister led Britain into a coalition with the United States and thirty other nations to free Kuwait from Iraqi forces that had invaded the previous August. Britain was a key player in the successful air bombardment of Iraq that began on January 17, 1991, followed by a ground campaign that swept to victory on February 28. Major gave the Queen regular briefings, and as the ground assault began on Sunday the 24th, she made the first wartime broadcast of her reign, reassuring the nation that she was praying for victory.

A cease-fire ended the occupation of Kuwait, although it did not remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power. Still, the war was hailed as a significant success for Major as well as for Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush. The two leaders bonded tightly as allies and “had a lot in common,” wrote Ray Seitz, Bush’s ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

Three months later, Bush welcomed the Queen to Washington for her third state visit. The patrician Bushes and royal Windsors established an easy camaraderie from the start. As near contemporaries, the forty-first president and the Duke of Edinburgh had both seen action in the Pacific during World War II. The two families shared similar Anglo-Saxon traditions and values, and they counted the Queen’s hosts in Kentucky, Will and Sarah Farish, as good friends. “The Queen is rather formal,” Bush recalled. “But I never found her reserve stand-offish. It’s hard to explain really, but she is very, very easy to be with. Conversation comes easily.”

Elizabeth II’s arrival in Washington on Tuesday, May 14, came when gratitude for Britain’s assistance in the Gulf War was running high. Bush rolled out an imposing welcome on the South Lawn with military bands, fife and drum corps, and twenty-one-gun salute fired by howitzers on the Ellipse. But after his effusive remarks welcoming her as “freedom’s friend,” neither he nor his aides remembered to pull out a step for the five-foot-four-inch Queen to use behind the podium intended for the six-foot-two-inch president. As she made her reply, the cluster of microphones covered most of her face, and television viewers could glimpse only her eyeglasses beneath a broad-brimmed purple and white striped hat.

At a small luncheon in the private quarters of the White House with Bush family members, the British and American ambassadors, and the Farishes, “we had a good laugh” about the hat incident, recalled Bush. “Her humor made it all seem fine.” It was also the first time the sixty-five-year-old Queen met the president’s eldest son, forty-four-year-old George W. Bush, the future forty-third president, who was then running the Texas Rangers baseball team. “The first thing I noticed was the twinkle in her eye, which I took as a sign of an easy spirit,” he recalled. “Much to my delight, she certainly didn’t give off the vibe that ‘I’m better than you.’ ”

He told Elizabeth II that his cowboy boots were custom-made and usually were printed with “Texas Rangers.” “Is that on those boots?” she inquired. “No, Ma’am,” young Bush joked. “God Save the Queen.” She was most amused and impishly asked, “Are you the black sheep in the family?” “I guess so,” he said. “All families have them,” the Queen replied helpfully. “Who’s yours?” asked Bush. “Don’t answer that!” interjected his mother. The Queen took the first lady’s cue and escaped the conversation gracefully.

After lunch the president escorted the Queen onto the Truman Balcony to show her the view of the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial. The White House was being repainted, and twenty layers had been stripped off the facade, laying bare pale stone and raw wood. Visible on a nearby pilaster were scorch marks dating from 1814 when British troops had set fire to the presidential mansion. “I teased her that it was her folks who had done this,” the president recalled. “We talked about the fact that the burn marks were ‘enshrined.’ ”

That night at a state dinner for 130 the president kept up the jocular tone by complimenting the Queen on her intrepid walking, which “left even the Secret Service panting.… I’m glad my fibrillating heart was not taxed by a competitive walk.” The essence of their toasts reaffirmed the Anglo-American friendship recently strengthened by a wartime alliance. “No wonder I cannot feel a stranger here,” said the Queen. “The British have never felt America to be a foreign land.” She praised Bush for his conduct of the Gulf War “not with bombast and rhetoric but thoroughness and courage.”

The Queen jammed eighteen engagements into her three days in the nation’s capital, including the first address by a British monarch to a joint session of Congress. She opened her remarks by saying, “I do hope you can see me today from where you are,” prompting a burst of laughter and standing ovation. She also watched her first Major League Baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics. As with her other events, she had studied briefing papers on America’s national pastime. After greeting gum-chewing players lined up in the dugout, she received a full tutorial from Bush, a former varsity first baseman at Yale, as they sat together in the owner’s box.

The most diverting moment of her visit occurred in one of the city’s downtrodden neighborhoods, where Elizabeth II visited a 210-pound African American great-grandmother, sixty-seven-year-old Alice Frazier. The purpose was to see Frazier’s newly built home, which she had purchased under a private-public program for low-income first-time owners. As the Queen entered the house, Frazier vigorously shook her hand, said, “How are you doin’?,” then wrapped her arms around her guest and gave her an exuberant bear hug. Elizabeth II smiled gamely over Frazier’s shoulder as she stiffly leaned forward, arms held tightly at her waist until she was released. “It’s the American way,” Frazier said afterward. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

For their brief moments of respite, Elizabeth II and Philip retired to their five-room, two-bath suite in Blair House. They took their breakfast in the upstairs library, served by their page, but otherwise the Queen remained in her quarters while Philip busied himself by turning off lights, muttering, “What a waste, what a waste.” One morning Benedicte Valentiner, the Blair House general manager, was standing in the front hallway when the Queen came downstairs before her first engagement. “She was standing stock still,” Valentiner recalled. “It was as if she were looking inward, getting set. I admired that enormously. This was how she wound up her batteries. There was no chit chat, but standing absolutely still and waiting, resting in herself. It was a remarkable coping mechanism.”

On Friday the Queen and her nearly fifty-strong entourage plus four and a half tons of luggage—hers always marked with yellow labels imprinted “The Queen”—left on a chartered British Airways Concorde for official visits to six U.S. cities and another three-day vacation in Kentucky. They landed in Miami and spent ten hours touring the city before boarding Britannia to host a black-tie dinner for fifty dignitaries including the Reagans and the Fords.

It was a particularly welcome reunion with the Reagans, who remained affectionate friends of Elizabeth II and Philip. Just a year earlier, Ronald Reagan had heard about the death of Burmese and had written the Queen a letter of condolence. Her grateful two-page reply reported that while walking her dogs she had last seen the twenty-eight-year-old mare “grazing happily” in her field at Windsor. The next morning, Burmese had died of a heart attack after “a long life for a horse.”

Elizabeth II was in high spirits on Britannia as she caught up with the fortieth American president, who was complaining about the onerous costs of big government. “If you’ve got two-thirds of the fund paying for the bureaucrats,” Reagan said, “and you give only one-third to the needy people, something’s wrong there.” “Well you see all the democracies are bankrupt now,” the Queen replied emphatically, “because of the way that the services are being planned for people to grab.” As he decried the incentives for bureaucrats to spend rather than cut costs, she agreed: “Obviously, yes … I think the next generation are going to have a very difficult time.” Her spontaneous—and prescient—remarks not only reflected an affinity with the Reagan-Thatcher political philosophy, but she made them while a BBC crew was capturing their private conversation for a documentary about her.

After a quiet weekend on Britannia sailing through the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico, the royal party disembarked for a three-hour visit to Tampa where the Queen conferred an honorary knighthood on General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of coalition forces in the Gulf War. They flew by Concorde to Austin for a sweep through the Lone Star State—an overnight stop in Austin, two hours in San Antonio, seven hours in Dallas, and two nights and a day in Houston. “I am an amazing woman!” she exclaimed during a black-tie dinner in her honor at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts. “Yesterday I made four major Texas cities! I woke up in one, went to bed in another, and visited two cities in between!” One of the highlights of her time in Houston was a guided tour of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center. Once again she could indulge her fascination with astronauts, asking how they could see through the gold visors of their space suits and why food adhered to the plate rather than drifting away during space travel.

For the fourth time, Philip declined the offer to see the legendary Kentucky bluegrass and instead flew home at the end of their nine-day working marathon. When Elizabeth II landed in Lexington for the weekend, Sarah Farish greeted her with a kiss on the cheek—a display of affection seen frequently in private among friends but rarely in public.

HER HECTIC DAYS in the United States were halcyon compared to what awaited her in London. The tabloids were working themselves into a speculative frenzy over the state of the Wales marriage as Charles and Diana approached their tenth wedding anniversary. Tabloid reporters knew that Charles had gone back to Camilla, and they were on the scent of Diana’s affair with James Hewitt as well. Andrew Morton of The Sun was the most brazen, writing that Diana felt “humiliated that her husband prefers to spend so much time with Camilla rather than with her.” Several weeks before the July 29 anniversary, the princess began secretly collaborating with Morton on a tell-all book through a series of interviews conducted by Dr. James Colthurst, a mutual friend who acted as an intermediary to give author and subject deniability.

Andrew and Fergie were misbehaving in their own way, living lavishly in a new fifty-room home called Sunninghill Park that the Queen had financed at an estimated cost of more than £3.5 million. Their second daughter, Princess Eugenie, was born in 1990. But motherhood couldn’t match the allure of nightclub hopping in London and expensive vacations in Morocco, the Swiss Alps, and the south of France while Andrew was at sea. The tabloids took particular note of her getaways with thirty-five-year-old Texas millionaire Steve Wyattt.

The atmosphere of decadence and frivolity created by the Queen’s children led the editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Neil, to write a sharply critical editorial that resonated throughout the media. The perception took hold that not only were public funds being wasted on unproductive members of the royal family, but that it was time for the Queen to pay taxes on her substantial private income.

In fact, the wheels were already turning quietly, albeit slowly, inside Buckingham Palace for the monarch to contribute her fair share. A prime mover was Robert Fellowes, who succeeded William Heseltine as private secretary in 1990 at age forty-nine. An Old Etonian and former officer in the Scots Guards, Fellowes was the most uniquely connected of all the Queen’s private secretaries. Not only was he a cousin of Fergie and brother-in-law of Diana, his father, Major Sir William “Billy” Fellowes, had been the Queen’s Land Agent at Sandringham for twenty-eight years. “This is the first time I have got a private secretary I held in my arms as a baby,” Elizabeth II said on making the appointment.

Fellowes was an eminently reliable counselor, having served the Queen in the private secretary’s office since 1977. He was scrupulously honest, abstemious in his habits (he rode a bicycle to work and carried his father’s battered leather briefcase), and completely loyal to the Queen. Yet behind his bespectacled reserve, he held surprisingly progressive views—to the extent that his friends in the men’s clubs in St. James’s regarded him as “a frightful pinko.” Even before the press began kicking up dust about taxes, Fellowes and his deputy, Robin Janvrin, had begun a discussion on the subject.

The Queen balked at first. She was worried about “exposing too much of the inner workings of the monarchy to the public gaze,” said one courtier. Of equal concern was her father’s insistence that immunity from taxation was a principle worth defending. But both Queen Victoria and King Edward VII had paid taxes on their incomes, and only under the reign of George V had that obligation been reduced and eventually eliminated.

After some study, Elizabeth II’s senior advisers concluded that an income tax would not be overly burdensome for the monarchy. When Fellowes presented their findings on her return to London from Sandringham early in 1992, he was prepared for stiff resistance, but she readily agreed to set up a working group of officials from the Palace and the government to prepare a detailed plan for her consideration. “She was not worried about how much she would pay,” recalled a courtier. The most persuasive argument was its symbolic importance—that “doing it could do the monarchy a lot of good.”

THE QUEEN WAS set to mark her fortieth year on the throne in 1992, an occasion that normally would call for celebration. But she chose to commemorate the anniversary in a subdued way, at least in part because the lives of her children were so unsettled. Andrew and Fergie had told the Queen at Christmas that they were considering a separation, and she asked them to postpone their decision for six months. Less than a month later the Daily Mail published photographs of Fergie and Steve Wyatt on vacation in Morocco. An infuriated Andrew called in the lawyers, and the Queen braced herself for the inevitable separation.

In an effort to blunt the negative publicity and refocus attention on the purpose of the monarchy, Elizabeth II had allowed the BBC to follow her around in 1991 for a documentary intended to show how she went about her work. The resulting film, E II R, aired on her Accession Day, February 6, 1992. It turned out to be the high point of her worst year on the throne in the most tumultuous decade of her life.

The admiring portrait included a voice-over of her own reflections that she had recorded at the conclusion of the filming—not an interview per se, but an unusual personal statement similar to little noticed remarks she had made in previous films about racing and the Commonwealth. “Most people have a job and then they go home, and in this existence the job and the life go on together, because you can’t really divide it up,” she mused. “You have to sort of work out in your own mind the hard work, and then what you enjoy in retrospect from it.” She said she was accustomed to living “very much by tradition and by continuity,” adding rather forlornly, “I think this is what the younger members find difficult, the regimented side of it.” Most pointedly, she observed that hers was a “job for life,” putting to rest rumors floated by friends of the Prince of Wales that she would abdicate on her Accession Day.

The press greeted the film respectfully, praising its depiction of the Queen as a model of duty, sensibility, understatement, and wisdom. But even a well-crafted reminder of her worthy conduct couldn’t compete with the multiplying distractions of her family’s troubles, not to mention what one tabloid called “the dynamic sexiness of Princess Diana or the glorious naffness of Fergie.”

DIANA HAD REACHED a new and perilous stage in her relationship with the media—from realizing that she was a magnet for attention, to craving the attention, to seeking the attention, and now to using it as a weapon against Charles. In February, during their tour of India, she took aim with deadly accuracy by posing for photographers in “wistful solitude,” as the Daily Mail put it, in front of the romantic Taj Mahal. Her unspoken message was that “the marriage was indeed on the rocks,” wrote Charles’s biographer Jonathan Dimbleby.

Andrew and Fergie officially announced their separation in March, the divorce of Anne and Mark Phillips became final on April 23, and Fergie moved out of Sunninghill Park in May. But no one was prepared for the seismic events in June—a festive season that would ordinarily have been filled with tributes to the Queen’s milestone year.

On the 7th, The Sunday Times published the first of two excerpts from Andrew Morton’s explosive book, Diana: Her True Story. It was filled with vivid details about Diana’s severe emotional problems, but far more dangerous was its indictment of Charles as a cold and unfaithful husband (with chapter and verse about his affair with Camilla) and an uncaring father, and its depiction of the royal family as remote and strange. When asked several times by her brother-in-law Robert Fellowes if she had cooperated with the book, Diana lied and denied any role. Despite persistent rumors that she had been involved, Fellowes chose to take Diana at her word and sanctioned a condemnation by the Press Complaints Commission.

He was with the Queen on a state visit to Paris later that week when it became clear that Diana had deceived him. He immediately offered his resignation for embarrassing the press commission, but the Queen insisted that he remain in his job. Known for his integrity and lack of guile, Fellowes was astonished and angered by Diana’s dishonest behavior, which severely damaged their relationship and distanced the princess from her sister Jane Fellowes as well.

The Queen proceeded with her program in Paris even as she was fielding media queries behind closed doors from her forty-eight-year-old press secretary, Charles Anson. “Not once was there the slightest hint of annoyance,” recalled Anson, an unflappable and urbane veteran of two decades in the diplomatic service. “The doors would open and the Queen would walk out into the public gaze as if she didn’t have a care in the world.” She was, in fact, distressed. In consultations with Fellowes and her other advisers, she emphasized that despite Diana’s betrayal, she wanted to try to keep the marriage together, if only for the sake of William and Harry and to avoid any constitutional repercussions that might result for a divorced heir to the throne.

The second Sunday Times excerpt landed on June 14 when the Queen was back at Windsor, and the book came out two days later, on the first day of Royal Ascot. That Tuesday afternoon Charles and Diana met with his parents at the castle. It was an emotional encounter, according to Diana, who spoke about it with her butler, Paul Burrell, as well as Morton’s collaborator, James Colthurst. The possibility of separation and divorce was discussed, but according to Burrell’s account, the Queen and Philip told the couple that they should stay together and “learn to compromise, be less selfish, and try to work through their difficulties for the sake of the monarchy, their children, the country and its people.”

Charles and his mother said little during the meeting, while Diana tearfully unloaded on her husband and Camilla, and Philip vented the family’s distress about the Morton book. For the first time since the Morton crisis began, Diana lied directly to her in-laws and her husband, reiterating that she had not helped the author. “Mama despaired as she listened to me,” Diana told Burrell. “All I seemed to be doing was relaying to her my anguish.”

With the lines of communication now open, the Queen asked Diana and Charles to return for a second meeting the following day. Not only did Diana refuse to come, she packed up and left Windsor Castle, prompting Philip to write her a two-page letter expressing his disappointment while offering some suggestions for dealing with her troubled marriage. It was the first of five thoughtful letters he wrote from June through September “in a friendly attempt to resolve a number of family issues,” each followed by a lengthy reply from Diana.

Acting in his role as head of the family, Philip tried to persuade his daughter-in-law to recognize her own faults as well as those of her husband, even as he praised her for the good work she had done. To promote compromise, he emphasized what she and Charles had in common, and he cited his own experience in giving up his independent career when his wife became Queen. In an effort to provide perspective, he wrote that being the wife of the heir to the throne “involved much more than simply being a hero with the British people.”

Although Diana described her father-in-law’s words as “stinging,” “wounding,” and “irate,” Philip’s private secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, said later in sworn testimony that there was “not a single derogatory term within the correspondence.” Diana’s replies began “dearest Pa” and ended with “fondest love.” She told him she was “particularly touched” by his guidance, thanked him for being “heartfelt and honest,” and expressed admiration “for the marvelous way in which you have tried to come to terms with this intensely difficult family problem.” When Philip wrote that he was eager to “do my utmost to help you and Charles to the best of my ability” while conceding “I have no talents as a marriage counselor!!!” she responded, “You are very modest about your marriage guidance skills and I disagree with you! This last letter of yours showed great understanding and tact.” Implicit in Philip’s entreaties was the Queen’s support, which Diana acknowledged at one point by sending “much love to you both.”

In the end, Philip’s advice failed to move her, according to a friend who saw the letters, because “he never touched Diana’s heart. He couldn’t, because he argued in terms of duty and not love.”

The entire royal family had swung over to Charles’s side now that they understood the full scale of Diana’s treachery. Before the Morton book, Charles had been unable to talk to his parents about his troubles. “I think it took a long time to accept that the faults were not more his than hers,” said Patricia Brabourne. “The Queen could see through Diana’s manipulation, but in personal situations it was difficult to really know the truth. There were two sides to the story and you had to work out how to put them together.” Charles welcomed his parents’ newfound sympathy; Philip even sent his son a long letter referring to his “saint-like fortitude.”

Andrew, who among the siblings had been closest to Diana, moved into his older brother’s corner, along with Anne, whose relationship with Diana had always been cool, and Edward, who had kept his sister-in-law at arm’s length. The one family member with whom Diana had enjoyed the greatest kinship was Princess Margaret, who shared her love of ballet and quick sense of humor. Margaret had shown compassion for Diana’s vulnerability, and Diana could relate to the sadness of Margaret’s star-crossed love life. But Margaret viewed the Morton book as an attack on her sister, and never had another kind word for Diana.

The Queen confided her unhappiness to members of her close circle while trying “to keep a calm view,” said one of her relatives. Over dinner with John and Patricia Brabourne, she said, “Can you imagine having two daughters-in-law like this?” “It was nonplussing,” Patricia Brabourne recalled. “You don’t know how to behave when someone is making such a mess. You want to help them mend, but how to do it?”

George Carey, who by then had been Archbishop of Canterbury for over a year, gathered intelligence from two ladies-in-waiting, Susan Hussey and Richenda Elton, the wife of the 2nd Baron Elton. “If I wanted help in understanding I would talk to them,” he said. “I would never worry about the Queen’s mood, which was constant. I would say to them, ‘What is on her mind?’ and they would tell me directly.”

The archbishop conveyed to Elizabeth II his sense that the estrangement between Charles and Diana was too deep for anyone to make a difference. “The personalities were so different,” said Carey. “The Queen understood that. She could offer support and put them into her prayers.” She was also concerned about the possibility of Charles marrying Camilla. “There was a moment when we were talking very candidly about divorce,” said Carey. “I remember her sighing and saying, ‘History is repeating itself.’ I saw despair. What she was talking about was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She thought Charles was in danger of throwing everything out the window by rejecting Diana and forging another relationship. It was a very worrying moment, and my role was to reassure her.”

The Queen was fortunate to have a prime minister with a placid temperament in those tense times. John Major relied on her as a dispassionate and confidential sounding board, and she leaned on him equally to work through complicated family matters. Their Tuesday audiences “became almost mutual support sessions,” wrote royal biographer William Shawcross. “Major knew that the scandals were devastating for her.” Years later Major said, “People don’t realize quite how strong she is. I think the way she behaved in those years has saved the monarchy from far worse problems that otherwise they might have faced.”

In July, the prime minister contacted George Carey to say that the couple would likely separate in the autumn and divorce was now a distinct possibility. The prime minister asked the archbishop to participate in “some preparatory work on constitutional matters” along with Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the Lord Chancellor; cabinet secretary Robin Butler; and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. Carey also met separately with Diana and Charles. “It was my pastoral duty to assist them to conclude their marriage with grace and understanding,” he wrote. In the process, he came to see “with some sorrow that Charles was more sinned against than sinning. There was a streak in Diana’s psychological make-up that would not allow her to give in.”

THE ANNUAL BALMORAL holiday brought no escape from the family turmoil, this time created by Fergie, who was there at Andrew’s invitation. On Thursday, August 20, the Daily Mirror ran a page-one exposé headlined “FERGIE’S STOLEN KISSES.” It featured ten pages of photographs showing the thirty-two-year-old Duchess of York lounging bare-breasted on the French Riviera with her two daughters and her “financial advisor,” a thirty-seven-year-old American named John Bryan. In one shot, Bryan was shown kissing Fergie’s toes, and in another they were embracing in front of two-year-old Eugenie.

At breakfast that morning, the royal family, their houseguests, and courtiers were confronted with the humiliating display. “It would be accurate to report that the porridge was getting cold,” Fergie wrote in her memoir. “Eyes wide and mouths ajar, the adults were flipping through the Daily Mirror and the rest of the tabloids.… I had been exposed for what I truly was. Worthless. Unfit. A national disgrace.” She immediately apologized to the Queen, who was “furious” over her daughter-in-law’s stunningly poor judgment. “Her anger wounded me to the core, the more because I knew she was justified,” Fergie recalled. After three more days of chilly stares from her estranged in-laws, the disgraced duchess returned to London. She did not see Balmoral again for sixteen years.

Philip never forgave Fergie for dishonoring the family. “I don’t see her because I don’t see much point,” he told author Gyles Brandreth. But the Queen, in her typically tolerant fashion, remained on good terms. During the Christmas holidays at Sandringham, she even arranged for Fergie to stay at nearby Wood Farm so her daughters could join her after celebrating with the rest of the family. “The Queen had an affection for her daughter-in-law, who often got things wrong,” said one of her senior advisers. “In a sense, though, Fergie was disarmingly guileless and you could see what she was doing up to a mile away.” Diana was another matter—secretive and scheming—and so was more difficult to forgive.

Four days after the Mirror scoop, the rival Sun dropped its own bombshell headlined “MY LIFE IS TORTURE.” The article quoted extensively from a surreptitiously recorded telephone conversation between Diana and thirty-three-year-old James Gilbey, an intimate friend who had also cooperated with the Morton book. The recording had been made at the end of December 1989 while Diana was staying at Sandringham. Their conversation was sprinkled with endearments (he repeatedly called her “Squidgy” and she referred to him as “darling”) and sexual innuendo. She revealed her duplicity when she proposed various cover stories for their assignations. Most damning were her bitter comments about Charles and his relatives. “Bloody hell,” she said, “after all I’ve done for this fucking family.”

The Palace declined to comment, while Elizabeth II strove to maintain her equilibrium. After Margaret left Scotland for a holiday in Italy, she wrote to the Queen that she “personally found great comfort in being with you” at such a difficult time and said she hoped her sister could find some solace in the beauty of the Highlands.

Diana didn’t flee Balmoral as Fergie had done. Instead, she turned, in the words of her private secretary Patrick Jephson, “alternately despairing, defiant, or lost in self-pity” and announced she would not accompany Charles on an official visit to Korea in November. Once again, the Queen intervened, this time with the help of Philip, and persuaded her to make the trip. It was a fig leaf at best. Back in London that autumn, both Charles and Diana consulted lawyers, but neither was able to take the difficult first step toward official separation.

The rush of sensational stories whipped up further attacks on the Queen for her exemption from taxes. Early in September, government officials began suggesting she might be ready to reverse the policy. That autumn the working group had nearly completed its review, with further details to be ironed out in the final proposal. David Airlie intended to present the plan to the Queen when he and his wife came to stay at Sandringham for a shooting weekend in early January—an approach he often used for difficult issues. That way, he could meet with Elizabeth II in a relaxed setting, “take time and talk round it and have Philip there,” said a senior adviser. Once she gave the go-ahead, officials reasoned, the announcement could be made in the spring of 1993.

FATE INTERVENED ON Friday, November 20, the forty-fifth wedding anniversary of the Queen and Philip. She was going into an audience in the late morning when Andrew rang from Windsor to tell her that part of the castle was ablaze. A number of rooms were being rewired when a spotlight ignited a curtain in the Private Chapel, causing a fast-moving fire that spread from the Chester Tower to Brunswick Tower, destroying or damaging nine state rooms—including St. George’s Hall, the State Dining Room, Crimson Drawing Room, Green Drawing Room, Grand Reception Room, and Octagon Dining Room—and more than one hundred others. Because of the ongoing restoration work, much of the artwork had been removed from the rooms hit hardest. Andrew joined scores of volunteers including members of the Household Cavalry and the Dean of Windsor to rescue nearly all the remaining paintings, furniture, and other valuables threatened by the fire.

The Queen arrived at around 3 P.M. “It was the most shaken I ever saw her,” said one of her senior advisers. Windsor was the home that meant the most to Elizabeth II, and the conflagration seemed like cruel retribution for the misbehavior of her wayward family. Bundled in her macintosh, a rain hat, and wellies, her hands thrust into her pockets, she stood in the middle of the courtyard looking bereft as the fire roared, and the roof above the state apartments began to collapse. The image captured her ultimate solitude more tellingly than either of her Annigoni portraits.

She spent about an hour in the gray drizzle before going to the private apartments to help her staff move out precious possessions in case the fire spread further. After the firefighters brought the blaze under control, she and Andrew inspected the damage.

Though Philip was away at a conference in Argentina, he spoke with his wife at length on the phone. The Queen Mother invited her daughter to spend the weekend with her at Royal Lodge, an occasion for extended conversation and some soul searching. “It made all the difference to my sanity after that terrible day,” the Queen wrote to her mother the following week.

Heritage Secretary Peter Brooke announced that the estimated £20 million to £40 million cost for restoration would be borne by the government. It was entirely appropriate because royal residences cannot be commercially insured. Moreover, the expenses of running and restoring Windsor Castle—including those under way when the fire broke out—were customarily paid by the government. But to the astonishment of both the Queen and John Major, the Daily Mail led an angry populist crusade against this plan, fueled by cumulative resentment of the royal family’s younger generation. At a time of economic recession the cry went up for the Queen to pay for the restoration, and to start paying taxes as well.

In a matter of days, Palace officials scuttled their timetable and gained the Queen’s approval of their tax plan. She and Prince Charles would voluntarily pay tax on their private income from the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, respectively, starting in 1993. The Queen would also reimburse the government from her private funds for the £900,000 a year in Civil List payments to Andrew, Anne, Edward, and Margaret to cover their official expenses. To help finance the Windsor Castle restoration, she agreed to open the state rooms at Buckingham Palace to members of the public for an admission fee.

The impetus for the new Buckingham Palace policy came from Michael Peat, strongly supported by David Airlie, and had been debated for many months. At first the Queen felt it would be “lifting too much veil on the mystery of monarchy,” said a courtier. “Being invited to the Palace was a special privilege and being inside was a special privilege. Would tours cheapen it?” On the other hand, “She could see that it was a good thing for a more open monarchy, providing access to the royal collection, which after all belongs to the nation,” said another senior adviser. “Everyone could see the point of it, but the Queen was concerned about how to make it work without impinging on the working of the Palace and on security.” The Prince of Wales advocated the idea, but the Queen Mother, who took a dim view of change, was strongly opposed, as she had been in 1977 when the Queen first began offering public tours of Sandringham House.

Elizabeth II ultimately embraced a compromise to admit the public to the Palace during the months when she was in residence at Balmoral. The Queen Mother accepted the new policies, although she insisted to Woodrow Wyatt that her daughter “let Major persuade her” to pay taxes, adding that Margaret Thatcher “never would have suggested that or allowed it.” Major had actually been reluctant at first, and he was indignant about the uproar in the press over financing Windsor Castle, which he called a “very miserable and mealy-mouthed response. It just seemed so mean spirited and out of character for the British nation.”

Yet opening the Palace became “one of the central features of innovation of the Queen’s reign,” said one of her senior advisers. It also proved a revenue bonanza, not only financing three quarters of the £37 million tab for the castle restoration (with the rest from cost savings measures at all the palaces) but helping to cover the ongoing costs of upkeep.

Four days after the fire, the Queen appeared at the Guildhall in the City of London for a luncheon hosted by the Lord Mayor to honor her forty years on the throne. She was suffering from a severe cold, with a temperature of 101 and a raw throat from the smoke she had inhaled. Wearing a dark green dress and matching hat with an upturned brim, she looked drawn, and her voice was raspy and thin as she began her remarks. Robert Fellowes had drafted the speech, but it bore the Queen’s touchingly personal imprint. “Nineteen ninety-two is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure,” she said. “In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis.’ ”

She went on to mildly rebuke “some contemporary commentators” by saying that the judgment of history offered an opportunity for “moderation and compassion—even of wisdom—that is sometimes lacking in the reactions of those whose task it is in life to offer instant opinions on all things great and small.” She acknowledged the value of criticism, noting that “no institution … should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t”—an oblique but unmistakable reference to her republican critics. “Scrutiny … can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humor and understanding,” she added. “This sort of questioning can also act, and it should do so, as an effective engine for change.”

The audience of dignitaries gave her a standing ovation. Even the Daily Mail praised her “intense and complex” remarks as an indication that she was open to some necessary reforms in the monarchy’s conduct. “Annus horribilis” became one of the memorable catch-phrases of the Queen’s long reign, although its author, former assistant private secretary Sir Edward Ford, admitted that as a classical scholar he should have more precisely said “annus horrendus,” meaning a horrid year. “Horribilis,” he later explained, meant “a year capable of scaring you.” In many respects that description was equally apt.

* * *

AT THE TIME of her Guildhall speech, the Queen knew that more bad news would soon be emerging about Charles and Diana. During their trip to Korea in early November, Diana had privately been “in a state of desperation, overcome by nausea and tears.” She seemed to be sleepwalking through her public appearances, her expression either bored or anguished, and Charles looked intensely uncomfortable. The tabloids pounced on the visible signs of strain, calling the royal couple “The Glums.”

Shortly after their return to England, Diana pushed Charles to the breaking point when she informed him at the last minute that she and their sons would not be attending his annual shooting party at Sandringham. At that moment, Charles decided that “he had no choice but to ask his wife for a legal separation.” The day after his mother’s “annus horribilis” speech, he met with Diana at Kensington Palace and told her of his decision.

On Wednesday, December 9, John Major stood before the House of Commons to announce that the heir to the throne and his wife would be separating. He hastened to add that they had “no plans to divorce and their constitutional positions are unaffected.… The succession to the Throne is unaffected by it … there is no reason why the Princess of Wales should not be crowned Queen in due course.” Major’s case was less than persuasive, since the notion of a bitterly estranged but still married royal couple going through a coronation together took the monarchy into hazardous territory. “With hindsight it was a mistake to have said that,” said cabinet secretary Robin Butler. “It was seen as softening the blow, showing that she was not being thrown into outer darkness.”

Some relief from the turmoil came the following Saturday when Princess Anne married Commander Timothy Laurence in Crathie Church at Balmoral on an overcast and frigid day. Anne wanted a religious wedding, but as a divorcée she could not be married in the Church of England, so she chose the more forgiving Church of Scotland. The arrangements were so hastily made that the Queen Mother had to leave her weekend house party at Royal Lodge in the morning and fly back to London to rejoin her guests for dinner.

The forty-two-year-old bride and her thirty-seven-year-old groom exchanged vows in a private half hour ceremony before a congregation of thirty guests that included her two children, three brothers, and her aunt as well as her parents and grandmother. Laurence wore his Royal Navy uniform, and Anne was dressed in a knee-length white suit. Instead of wearing a veil, she tucked a small bunch of white flowers in her hair. Her only attendant was her eleven-year-old daughter, Zara. Since Balmoral Castle was shuttered for the winter, the group repaired to Craigowan Lodge for a short reception after the ceremony. It was a far cry from the pageantry of Anne’s first wedding two decades earlier.

In her Christmas message, the Queen revisited her time of troubles, mainly to express her gratitude for the “prayers, understanding and sympathy” that had given her and her family “great support and encouragement.” Never one for self-pity, she sought to give her “sombre year” context by emphasizing those who put service to others above their difficult circumstances. She singled out Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, a former RAF pilot who had become an advocate for the disabled. His heroism and “supreme contempt for danger” during World War II had earned him the Victoria Cross, and the Queen had further honored him in 1981 with the Order of Merit.

She had seen him earlier in the year at an Order of Merit gathering not long before he died from a “long drawn-out terminal illness.” The encounter “did as much as anything in 1992 to help me put my own worries into perspective,” she said. “He made no reference to his own illness, but only to his hopes and plans to make life better for others.” He had “put Christ’s teaching to practical effect,” and his “shining example” could “inspire in the rest of us a belief in our own capacity to help others.” Drawing from Cheshire’s inspiration, she pledged—yet again—her “commitment to your service in the coming years.” With her characteristic resilience, she put the year behind her, turning to meet the “new challenges” of 1993 “with fresh hope” in her heart.