When troubles overwhelm the Queen, she has a habit of switching off and going for a walk with her dogs. Sometimes she will even feed them under the table at lunchtime to avoid a disconcerting question. Prince Philip calls this displacement activity ‘her dog mechanism’. It is the equivalent of the Queen Mother’s games of cards and everyone in the family has experienced it. It took the Duke of York three weeks to fight his way past the dogs to tell his mother that his marriage was in trouble. The meeting was brief and painful. Andrew muttered words like ‘mutual incompatibility’ and Sarah apologised for her behaviour, which she agreed had been a long way short of what was both expected and required. The floodgates were bursting, yet the Queen still clung to the delusion that time would heal the breach. Sarah wrote of that moment: ‘She asked me to reconsider, to be strong, to go forward.’ According to the duchess: ‘The Queen looked sadder than I have ever seen her.’

The Queen might have been sad, but Prince Philip was not. He was, according to a member of the household, ‘incandescent’ with anger. There was an element of personal animosity in this. There had been several occasions when Sarah had come to Andrew’s defence when he was being berated by his father for some perceived weakness or other and, as the Queen has noted, Philip is not a man who likes to be contradicted. However, it was her public deportment rather than any private disagreements which most annoyed the prince. An outsider himself who had to learn to adapt to the exigencies of royal life, he was able to take an objective view of its requirements and regarded his daughter-in-law’s behaviour as selfish and reprehensible. He kept up the refrain: ‘If she wants out she can get out.’ He felt he same about Diana but wisely held back from expressing his views in public.

On 19 March 1992, a statement from the Palace broke with normal protocol and expressed the Queen’s personal unhappiness over the matter.

‘In view of the media speculation which the Queen finds especially undesirable during the general election campaign, Her Majesty is issuing the following statement: “Last week, lawyers acting for the Duchess of York initiated discussions about a formal separation for the Duke and Duchess. These discussions are not yet completed and nothing will be said until they are. The Queen hopes that the media will spare the Duke and Duchess of York and their children any intrusion.” ’