Philip felt differently about Anne. She was a similar sort of personality to him, and she had separated from Captain Mark Phillips in 1989 before they finally divorced in April 1992. By the end of the year, she had remarried Timothy Laurence, who had been the Queen’s equerry between 1986 and 1989. When a cache of her love letters from him was offered for sale to one of the Murdoch newspapers, Philip just shrugged and said let them get on with it. In the end the newspaper didn’t publish them. He was hopeful she would find happiness with her second husband, but to this day continues to worry about her.

It was not in the Queen’s nature to become a participant in other people’s troubles, especially those of her own children. She found it hard enough dealing with her own and, like her mother, preferred to overlook a problem rather than confront it, in the belief that if she ignored it long enough it would go away. But even more significant than the problems in the marriages of Princess Anne and Prince Andrew were the growing problems in the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, as this had a direct bearing on the future of the monarchy.

The Queen’s response was to listen to what those in the younger generation had to say, and by that stage she had much to listen to: Diana’s tearful accounts of the state of her marriage; Princess Anne’s horror over love letters addressed to her being stolen from Buckingham Palace and offered for sale; Prince Charles’s despair at Diana and his reunion with Camilla Parker Bowles. The Queen, aware of the broader picture, did just what she always did and counselled patience. She told Diana what she told her own children: ‘Just wait and see what happens.’

She was about to find out that things could get very much worse.

Chapter 10

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Throughout their seventy-year marriage, the Queen and Prince Philip have carried out their duties according to their own beliefs about how to uphold the institution of the monarchy. Together they have met nearly all the great leaders of the age, some good, some bad and some utterly deranged, and together they have visited most of the world’s countries. But nothing, including bereavement, death and disaster, could have prepared them for the troubles which overwhelmed the royal family in what she would term the Annus Horribilis of 1992. Early in her reign, the Queen had faced some challenging times as she struggled to cope with her new role as monarch, but these were small by comparison.