How Michael Fagan's Infamous Palace Break-In Was First Revealed to the World
It's about 6 p.m. on Sunday, July 11, 1982 and journalist Ashley Walton has an important phone call to make. As an experienced reporter and the Daily Express’s Royal Correspondent since 1979, he is no stranger to working on big stories. But, even so, he recalls that on this occasion, his “pulse was racing” as he picked up the phone to dial the number of the Queen’s press secretary, Michael Shea.
Walton had been tasked by his editor with calling the palace to tell them that the Daily Express was about to reveal one of the biggest royal scoops in history: Michael Fagan’s Buckingham Palace break-in. The incident, where Fagan scaled the walls of the palace on July 9, 1982 and made it right to the Queen’s bedside, is still talked about as the most notable royal security breach in modern history. And the moment is now in the spotlight once again due to its portrayal in the fourth season of the Netflix drama The Crown.
It was Daily Express reporter Norman Luck, who passed away in March 2012, who wrote the story after receiving the details from one of his sources. “He never said where they came from,” notes Walton, recalling that his first instinct when hearing the information was to think it couldn’t possibly be true. But it was. And once the paper had confirmed the information, Walton contacted the royal press secretary to find out what he had to say.
“I rang the palace at about 6 o' clock,” says Walton, adding that Shea “said to me something like ‘What is it now?’...So I said, ‘Well we’ve got the broken ashtray, man in the Queen’s bedroom, we have everything.’ There was total silence on the end of the line, absolute total silence apart from an intake of air, which I could hear. And I said, ‘Michael are you still there?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’—I remember it really plainly, because you are dealing with a man who never, ever gave you anything. And I said, ‘Do you want to comment on this?’ He said, ‘I can only tell you Ashley, I’ve got absolutely nothing to say.’”
Confident that their story was correct, the paper ran a front page the following day, Monday, July 12, 1982, with the headline "Intruder at The Queen’s Bedside." The article, written by Norman Luck, Percy Hoskins, and John Warden, told the “astonishing” story of how an intruder in Buckingham Palace “sat for 10 minutes on the Queen’s bed talking to her.” The account documented that the Queen “calmly kept the intruder talking. Then she called a footman who helped to take the man away.”
It continued:
“Eventually the man asked for a cigarette. The Queen pointed out that she did not have any in the bedroom but would arrange for some to be brought for him. Having gained the intruder’s confidence, the Queen opened the door of her bedroom and summoned a footman who was on duty in the corridor. On the pretext of bringing cigarettes, the footman entered the bedroom, and the man was detained.”
The following day, the newspaper ran another front page with the headline “Broken Glass and Blood on Queen’s Bed.” This piece revealed how the intruder was “clutching a broken glass ashtray in his hand.” It continued, “Blood from his gashed hand dripped on to the bedclothes while the Queen talked to him, calming him down, for 10 minutes.”
Unsurprisingly, the story ran and ran, with every news outlet clamoring to get the best details. Reports told how Fagan had scaled a palace wall and drainpipe and that police heard an alarm go off when he got inside via the Stamp Room, but they switched it off because they thought that it was a false alarm. Details of how the Queen’s footman was out walking the corgis in the gardens at the time of the incident were published, alongside the fallout in Parliament over the security breach.
“It was a huge deal at the time,” says Joe Little, Managing Editor of Majesty Magazine. “Shock was the first emotion and then outrage that something like that could happen.” He added: “It took quite a while for the story to come out in its fullness.”
Indeed, following his arrest July 9 at the palace, Michael Fagan appeared in court on Saturday, July 10, 1982. He faced charges of stealing half a bottle of wine during another palace break-in one month earlier, on June 7. It was announced shortly afterwards that Fagan would not be charged with trespassing, which at the time was a civil wrong, not a criminal offense.
He appeared before a jury at the Old Bailey in September 1982, on trial for stealing the wine on June 7. During the hearing, he recounted his time inside the palace that night, where, according to the Guardian’s report of the court appearance, he “found his way to room 108, where the public's gifts for the baby expected by the Princess of Wales were being stored, shuffled through some papers, found a bottle of wine in the cabinet and sat down to have a drink.” The jury took 14 minutes to find him not guilty.
However, Fagan found himself before the courts again in October that year when he was sent to Park Lane mental health hospital in Liverpool for unrelated charges of stealing a car. He was released three months later in January 1983.
The story of his time in the palace has continued to fascinate, and Fagan has given several interviews about it, even many years later, elements of which contradict reports at the time. In a 2012 interview with the Independent on Sunday, he described the Queen’s nightdress as being “one of those Liberty prints,” but also claimed that he didn't talk to the monarch; rather, “she went past me and ran out of the room.” In another interview with The Sun in 2020, Fagan said that the Queen used a phone to call security and got out of bed when no-one came.
In keeping with the initial "no comment" stance, the palace has never confirmed any of the accounts. However, it is the story as it was first revealed that continues to be told today.
Ashley Walton said that press secretary Michael Shea did eventually have one more piece of information for him on the impact. He recalls, “Some weeks later when all the fuss had died down he said to me ‘You completely ruined my Sunday night. I don’t think I ever went to bed afterwards.’”
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