Or perhaps the fact the Queen chose Latin, a dead language, to describe 1992 showed the very reason people were finding the monarchy less relevant. \u201cOne\u2019s Bum Year\u201d was how The <\/em>Sun<\/em> newspaper translated the words, with deliberate crudity.<\/p>\n You couldn\u2019t make up the saga of that year. Luckily for the media, they didn\u2019t have to. For the British newspapers locked into a vicious circulation war, it was fortunate, and perhaps even now for the producers of season five of The Crown<\/em><\/a>, due to debut shortly. But even a bald chronicle of events of 1992 shows how the blows kept coming, in a volley as relentless as the fusillade of gunfire on a Balmoral shooting day.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n January 1992 saw the Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, and his Duchess Sarah, telling the Queen their marriage was effectively at an end; characteristically, she asked them to wait before making any definite decision. But later that same month, the Daily Mail<\/em> published photographs of Fergie (as Sarah Ferguson was nicknamed by the tabloids) with American millionaire Steve Wyatt.<\/p>\n Things looked up briefly in early February as the country marked the 40th anniversary of the Queen\u2019s accession, the BBC\u2019s documentary Elizabeth R <\/em>attracted a record-breaking audience of around 18 million. In the programme, she memorably stated: \u201cI think as a human being one always has hope.\u201d But celebrations of the anniversary had been generally muted; plans for a commemorative fountain in Parliament Square were abandoned at the Queen\u2019s own request.<\/p>\n Soon afterwards, the Queen\u2019s statement about hope began to look almost ironic. In February, a visit by Prince Charles and Diana<\/a>, Princess of Wales, to India saw the princess photographed ostentatiously alone in front of that icon of romance, the Taj Mahal. In March it was announced the Duke and Duchess of York would indeed legally separate; in April Princess Anne\u2019s divorce from Captain Mark Phillips became final. These separations added up to a body blow for an institution that had, since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert<\/a>\u2019s days, presented itself as a family monarchy. The marriages of three out of four of the Queen\u2019s children had now, historically, gone down in flames.<\/p>\n More seriously, also in June came publication (and serialisation in the Sunday Times<\/em>) of biographer Andrew Morton\u2019s Diana: Her True Story<\/em>; a damning portrayal of what Diana saw as an unfeeling husband and an uncaring monarchy. The Queen and Prince Philip held a crisis meeting with the Waleses at Windsor and urged greater efforts, but those moves foundered on Diana\u2019s reluctance \u2013 and on mounting evidence that she had collaborated with Morton to tell her story.<\/p>\n August 1992 saw the Daily Mirror<\/em> publishing photographs of the Duchess of York by a swimming pool, having her toes sucked by her \u2018financial advisor\u2019 John Bryan. Caught accompanying her daughters on the annual royal holiday in Balmoral when the story broke, Fergie had to face the Queen\u2019s cold anger before fleeing south. Worse for the royals was shortly to come when, just a few days later, the Sun<\/em> published the \u2018Squidgygate\u2019 tapes \u2013 conversations between Diana (\u2018Squidgy\u2019) and her friend James Gilbey, in which she complained of the Windsors<\/a>: \u201cAfter all I\u2019ve done for this fucking family\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The three-year-old tapes emerged now in the context of a tabloid circulation war: The<\/em> Sun<\/em> were striking back at the Mirror<\/em> (which, in turn, would soon retaliate with the transcript of a deeply embarrassing conversation between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles<\/a>). But what\u2019s significant is the climate that permitted that to happen. Magazines abroad were even less restrained than the British press in their coverage; freelance paparazzi were using ever more extreme methods to try and entrap Diana, in particular, into an undignified reaction \u2013 the so-called lucrative \u2018loon shot\u2019.<\/p>\n There were more challenges on the world stage: a visit to Australia by the Queen and Prince Philip in February 1992 had seen a less enthusiastic reception than had greeted them on previous trips. A state visit to Germany in October \u2013 where the memory of RAF wartime bombings was still fresh \u2013 saw eggs lobbed at the Queen as she toured Dresden. When Charles and Diana visited Korea in November, the press dubbed them \u2018the Glums\u2019.<\/p>\n On the home front, the monarchy was facing tough questions; as far back as the spring, there had been gloomy discussions about the long-term future of the monarchy. There was talk about the Queen\u2019s exemption from paying tax, about the extensive royal family supported by the Civil List \u2013 and that was even before the Windsor fire.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On 20 November 1992, the Queen\u2019s 45th wedding anniversary, fire from a workman\u2019s light ripped through a hundred rooms of Windsor Castle: historic home of the monarchy, uninsurable and uninsured. When Elizabeth II arrived to view the damage, her devastation was plain to see. As always, she played down her feelings, but in a letter to her mother said the latter\u2019s support that day had made all the difference to her \u201csanity\u201d. The trauma was compounded when the press \u2013 and a public in the grip of a recession \u2013 rejected the Conservative<\/a> government\u2019s instinctive declaration that the nation would pay the multi-million pound repair bill.<\/p>\n Even newspapers from whom the royals might once have expected support joined the critical voices. The Mail<\/em> wrote that \u201cthe impression given is of an out-of-touch Government pandering to the wealthy insensitivity of an out-of-favour Royal Family.\u201d In The Times<\/em>, one columnist voiced the feelings of many: \u201cWhile the castle stands, it is theirs, but when it burns down, it is ours.\u201d<\/p>\n Calls for the Queen to pay repair bills on what (not altogether accurately) was seen as her own home were linked to suggestions that she should pay taxes. In fact, that question was one to which many in the Palace had already proved receptive. Talks with the Inland Revenue had begun in February. Now, some four months before any announcement had been expected, came news that the Queen and Prince Charles would indeed pay tax on their incomes from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. Elizabeth II would, moreover, take over financial responsibility for many of her family members formerly subsidised from public funds; and open the state rooms of Buckingham Palace<\/a> to the public to help with the Windsor repair costs.<\/p>\n It was only four days after the Windsor fire that the Queen appeared in London at a Guildhall lunch to mark her 40 years on the throne. In a voice husky from a heavy cold \u2013 made all the worse by the smoke at Windsor \u2013 she told her fellow guests that 1992 \u201cis not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis<\/em>.\u201d (The correspondent was later revealed to be her former assistant private secretary, Sir Edward Ford. The term is a riff on the \u2018annus mirabilis<\/em>\u2019, wonderful year. But in the 1990s the royal family weren\u2019t having many of those.)<\/p>\nWhat happened to the royal family in 1992?<\/h2>\n
All-out war?<\/h3>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/11\/GettyImages-1233282733-adac9bc.jpg?quality=90&resize=275%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The 1992 fire at Windsor Castle<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>T<\/strong>he Queen\u2019s Annus Horribilis<\/em> speech<\/h2>\n