Lord Fellowes, who has died aged 82, was the private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II during the 1990s, the most turbulent years of her long reign. Appointed in 1990, after more than a decade as first assistant private secretary and then deputy, he was by the Queen’s side during a series of royal mishaps and catastrophes, from the fire at Windsor Castle in what she referred to as the “annus horribilis” of 1992 to the highly public divorces of three of her four children, Anne, Charles and Andrew, “squidgygate”, toe-sucking and the rest and, most traumatic of all, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. This last struck home particularly deeply as he was married to Diana’s older sister Jane.
Although part of the traditional recruitment pathway for senior royal courtiers – family connections, Eton, the City and the Guards, “quite a gilded cage,” as he admitted – the tall, bespectacled Fellowes was by no means a stuffed shirt, being both approachable (even to the Guardian), courteous, unassuming and cool-headed. Not only was he central to steering the Queen through the crises as her closest professional adviser, but he was also gently innovative.
