A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (26 page)

In that year it seemed the entire façade of royal respectability wobbled and threatened to come crashing down. In March, Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson announced their intention to
separate. A matter of weeks later the marriage of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, who had been apart since 1989, formally ended. Now the relationship of the Waleses was in terminal difficulties
and threatened to disintegrate at any moment. The hackneyed term ‘dysfunctional’ appeared with increasing, predictable frequency in press references to the Family. How could the
monarchy survive such a pounding from the media and the public? The Queen met with her eldest son and his wife and urged that they keep trying to reconcile, at least to buy time. Her firmness cowed
Diana.

At least with the Yorks there was no apparent animosity. Not only Andrew’s naval career but also his newly acquired passion for golf had meant they were too often apart, and Sarah sought
diversion. They did, however, remain united by affection for their daughters and a determination to be good
parents. Any hope of a reconciliation between them – or the
buying of time to spread the burden of bad publicity – was, however, spoiled when in August the
Daily Mirror
printed on its front page a picture of the Duchess having her toes sucked
by a man identifiable as her ‘financial advisor’, an American called John Bryan. Other images made it evident that she was topless and that her girls were nearby. The paper sold out
within hours. ‘Fergie is Finished!’ trumpeted the press. This seemed the single greatest humiliation suffered by any member of the Family within the reach of memory. ‘Financial
advisor’ became a term loaded with smirking innuendo. The Duchess, who was with the Family at Balmoral when the story broke, left there shortly afterwards.

Another tabloid, the
Sun
, published material that had been in its possession for some time. This was the script of a tape-recorded conversation between Diana and James Gilbey, a man with
whom she was obviously intimate. He addressed her numerous times by the pet-names ‘Squidge’, or ‘Squidgy’, and thus the affair was dubbed ‘Squidgygate’ by the
media . It seemed that the conversation had taken place on New Year’s Eve, 1989. Diana was deeply depressed. In the course of reciting her woes she was heard to say: ‘I’m going to
do something dramatic because I can’t stand the confines of this marriage.’ Despite this threat, she was not guilty of engineering an embarrassing revelation. It was found, on the
contrary, that the most likely source of the leak was a tap on her phone at Sandringham, and it is speculated that this was done by interests favourable to Prince Charles. The discovery that she,
too, seemed guilty of adultery cost her at least some of the moral high-ground she had occupied.

And then there were even more revelations. ‘Camillagate’ was the release in the tabloids of transcripts of a telephone conversation between Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles. Much of the
content of this dialogue was highly personal and its publication seemed, for the Prince, an all-but-insurmountable
humiliation. What was forgotten, amid the storm of public
revulsion, was that no one should have been listening in the first place. ‘I know a thing or two about espionage,’ said the thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, ‘and what is being
done to the Royal Family is espionage.’

The most vivid in the series of Royal misfortunes took place that winter. Around mid-morning on 20 November 1992 an electric light bulb, left on too close to a curtain, started a blaze in the
private chapel in Windsor Castle, and soon flames were visible on the roof of the Brunswick Tower. The fire lasted 24 hours, doing immense – but thankfully not irreparable – damage to
the buildings on the north side of the Castle’s Upper Ward. Because these rooms were being rewired, most of the treasures they contained had been removed. Thanks to the quick thinking of
staff, almost all the artefacts were saved. Among those who came to the rescue were Prince Andrew, who had been working in the Royal Archives, and the Lord Chamberlain, who personally climbed a
ladder to bring down the Lawrence portraits in the Waterloo Chamber. This event proved something of a national trauma. Television news showed a clutter of hosepipes, charred roof-timbers, and
soldiers carrying a gigantic, rolled-up carpet. It was much more of a personal tragedy for the Queen, who had driven straight from London on receiving word. She created the lasting image of the day
as, dressed in a hooded waterproof coat, she stood among the rubble, peering forlornly at the gutted St George’s Hall. This became a photographer’s dream – a single image that
summed up the situation and became a metaphor for the unhappiness of the monarch. It was understandably much used in reviews of that year. Of her five homes this is the one for which she has the
greatest affection. Its destruction set the seal on her misery and would prompt the most famous words she had spoken in public since the address on her 21st birthday.

The destruction could have been so much worse. As, in the photograph, she surveys the damaged hall, it is obvious that the
walls are still sound and have not even lost their
painted decoration. Had the flames travelled a short distance further and reached the Royal Library, the result would have been a major cultural disaster. As it was, significant casualties amounted
to two items: a Victorian sideboard thought to be by Pugin, and a huge painting by Sir William Beechey of George III reviewing troops. (Even this latter was not a complete loss to the nation, since
the National Army Museum has a very close copy of the canvas by Beechey’s son.) There had been no damage whatever to the parts of the Castle in which the Queen and her family live.
Nevertheless, it was tragedy enough. The stench of burnt wood hung over the quadrangle for days, and it was to take five years before the damage was repaired. One of her aides said: ‘I
don’t think I’ve seen her as emotionally affected by anything as by the Windsor fire.’

But even as clearing up and rebuilding began, her troubles were not over. It was immediately announced by the Secretary of State for National Heritage – before the extent of damage had
even been properly estimated – that the repairs to the Castle would be paid for from public funds. The Castle, which of course was not the Queen’s personal property but the
nation’s, had not been insured, and the cost was found to be £37 million. There was outrage that, during a savage recession, the world’s richest woman was to be subsidised to this
extent. ‘When the Castle stands it is theirs,’ fumed Janet Daley, one of many critical journalists, ‘but when it burns down it is ours.’

The Queen was genuinely, profoundly shocked by the apparent viciousness of these attacks. She had devoted 40 years of her life to selfless public service. She was an exemplary monarch even down
to the efforts she made – and which went largely unnoticed – to save taxpayers’ money. She did her job well, she knew it, and everyone told her so. Other than a few cranks, she
was greeted everywhere she went by smiling faces, and thus could have had no notion that she would be so unpopular. Neither had her Prime Minister,
John Major, who announced
the news in the Commons. It was bewildering and extremely hurtful even if, as was usual, she concealed her feelings. Members of her family had made themselves unpopular through their behaviour, but
she had not previously had the venom of the public turned on her like this. She has rightly prided herself on her ability to judge the public mood, to understand what her subjects think and want.
In the 1990s, however, there were two occasions on which her judgement let her down. The first was her expectation that the public would automatically be willing to pay for the rebuilding of her
home. The second was her response to the death of Diana.

Where she
had
read the national mood correctly was in the matter of income tax. Her exemption from this was causing increasing resentment, and she had known for some time that it was
necessary to change the way things were done. She was willing, but the matter had not yet been resolved when the fire began. The announcement within days that both she and Prince Charles would pay
the tax – though only on public income and not on investments – made it look as if she were frightened of the public.

Only four days after the fire, she made a speech at London’s Guildhall that set the seal on her misery. Memorably – and it was indeed her most notable utterance for a generation
– she used the phrase
annus horribilis
to describe the previous 12 months, though with characteristic humour she expressed this in understatement: ‘This is not a year on which I
will look back with undiluted pleasure,’ she said. She addressed, indirectly, those who attack the monarchy, from bar-room critics to the newspaper empire of the anti-monarchist Rupert
Murdoch, and asked for their indulgence. Like every speech the Queen has ever made, this was written beforehand and read from notes. She does not extemporise, even when speaking from the heart.
This was a speech without precedent, a plea for public sympathy.

She said:

This was unprecedented. Although she had sounded vulnerable before (‘I shall not be able to bear the burden . . .’), it was the first time she had pleaded for her people’s
compassion, and it was the nearest she had come to being emotional in any public statement. As John Major, who was present, was to comment: ‘It drew from people an understanding that, monarch
or not, here was someone who wasn’t isolated and insulated from the normal problems and vicissitudes of life.’ Although undoubtedly bloodied by the year’s events, she remained
unbowed. In public she continued to behave with characteristic stoicism. Her public duties continued and she smiled as graciously as ever.

The following autumn, while the Family was at Balmoral, Buckingham Palace opened to the public for the first time in its history. Since the dispute over Windsor Castle had
ended with Her Majesty receiving most of the bill, the ticket sales for one royal residence would now go to pay for the rebuilding of another. Only the ceremonial areas could be seen, for the Queen
had decided what would be on show, and there would be no question of any family rooms being open. Tickets were expensive, and so were the items in the souvenir shop, but
there
was no lack of customers either then or thereafter, and the necessary capital began to accumulate.

While this represented a change at home, there were far more significant things happening abroad. The collapse of the Communist Bloc at the end of the 1980s was the biggest change the world had
seen since 1945, necessitating a large-scale rethink of commercial, diplomatic and military relations with both allies and former adversaries. As a personification of the older democracies and of
Britain’s desire to sponsor political and economic development, the Queen was much in evidence. Once Germany had reunited, she visited Berlin and walked through the Brandenburg Gate before
laying a wreath at the monument to those killed while trying to cross the Wall. She went to Dresden, a city so heavily damaged by Allied bombing in the war that it was seen as symbol of both the
horrors of war and the possibility of reconciliation. Although protesters threw eggs, she presented the community with a replacement weathervane for its
Frauenkirche
– a destroyed and
rebuilt church. This had been paid for entirely through funds raised in Britain.

At home she received visitors from the Eastern Bloc – Lech Walesa from Poland and Václav Havel from Czechoslovakia. Not only their countries, but also both of these men in person,
had suffered as a result of Soviet control. They must have mused on the good fortune of the British Isles, to whom the narrow defensive ditch of the Channel had given centuries of protection
– a place free from outside interference for a thousand years, which greeted official visitors with costumed pomp and whose Head of State had presided over it for longer than any other in
Europe. One of these eastern visitors, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, invited Her Majesty – in the course of lunch at Buckingham Palace – to pay a state visit to Russia.

There are two such visits each year, and they take about two years to arrange. It was 1994 before the Royal Yacht dropped anchor in the Neva, the river on whose islands St Petersburg
was built. There are reasons for such a long period of preparation. An itinerary has to be worked out, an exercise that involves the Palace, the host government and the British
Embassy. It must be decided in minute detail what Her Majesty will see, the people she will meet and the places she will go. A typical visit would last for three days. It would involve, on arrival,
a drive through the capital to let Her Majesty and the populace see each other. There would be visits – extremely brief ones – to museums, factories or other institutions of which her
hosts were especially proud. There would be several receptions at which both the eminent and the socially ambitious would meet her for the duration of a brief handshake. There would be a gala
theatre performance and there would be a round of calls on hospitals, schools or similarly worthy establishments. In countries with a rich folk tradition, whether in Africa, Asia or Europe, there
would be displays of dancing and music. There would also be the returning of hospitality by the Queen, who would give a dinner at her Embassy, at a hotel or – as was commonplace –
aboard
Britannia
. For this event, absolutely everything needed – cutlery, crockery, glassware, tablecloths, menus, and so on – will be provided by the Palace. The waiting staff
and the chefs will also come from there. The amount of materials involved in such an operation is considerable, and therefore so is the detailed planning that must precede it.