Lord Fellowes, who has died aged 82, was private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II from 1990 to 1999 – eight of the the most difficult and traumatic years of her reign; during that time the Royal family endured three divorces, two of which were messily battled out in the press, a major fire at Windsor Castle, and the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
The fact that the Queen never put a foot wrong in public in those years – and that by the time she died in 2022 even the most virulent republican conceded that it was impossible to imagine any other figure who could have carried the burdens of the Head of State so effectively – surely owed much to Robert Fellowes’s calm good sense, loyalty and decency during the cumulative misfortunes of the 1990s.
The Daily Telegraph’s obituary of the Queen noted that “as a woman she was self-effacing, asking little for herself on a personal level. Duty was her watchword.” The same could also be said of Fellowes. He developed a natural rapport with his employer – born of shared interests and a similar temperament – including a deep concern with the less fortunate that led him, after his retirement, to take up the cudgels in the cause of prison reform.
Though wholly devoted to the Queen, Fellowes was never servile or pompous; unlike so many who acquire royal connections, his access to the Royal family never went to his head. No damaging gossip ever passed his lips, though he was not stuffy or tight-lipped, sharing with the Queen a dry, self-deprecating wit.
Fellowes gave the Queen honest opinions – and reassurance at the same time. He took her seriously and was prepared to argue with her. She knew where she stood with him. As Ben Pimlott observed in 1999: “When you talk to people who know or have worked with Fellowes, old-fashioned phrases crop up, painting a picture: straight bat, feet on the ground, down to earth, absolutely square, incredibly moral, seriously religious, no side, collegiate, terrific team player. He was well-read and interested in ideas.”
Fellowes’s decency and personal kindness won him many friends and the admiration of the Queen, and he was sustained by a close and happy marriage to Lady Jane Spencer, second child of the 8th Earl Spencer and Mrs Shand Kydd.
He commanded the affection and respect of Whitehall and became personal friends with many ministers and senior civil servants. His understanding of the way government works and the constitutional niceties of the monarch’s role was described by one senior civil servant as “remarkable”.
Yet only Sir Alexander Hardinge, private secretary to Edward VIII during the abdication crisis, had had to cope with anything like the pressure Fellowes endured. Hardinge’s trials, however, were short-lived. As the marriages of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew came to grief, Fellowes had to endure a constant war of attrition in which detractors in the press and unnamed sources “close to” Kensington and St James’s Palaces sometimes cast him as the villain of the piece.
His handling of such delicate matters was inevitably complicated by the fact that he was related to their wives. His wife Jane was an elder sister of the Princess of Wales. The duch*ess of York, Sarah Ferguson, was his first cousin once removed (his mother, the former Jane Ferguson, was an aunt of Sarah’s father, Major Ronald Ferguson).
Fellowes would have been the first to admit that he sometimes made mistakes. When Andrew Morton serialised his blockbuster account of the Wales’s disastrous marriage, Fellowes, who always looked for the best in people, chose to believe the Princess of Wales when she assured him that she had not co-operated with Morton.
Fellowes passed on her denial to Lord McGregor, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, who subsequently launched a furious attack on the press for “dabbling in people’s souls”. When the Princess’s true involvement was revealed, Fellowes was mortified and felt duty-bound to offer his resignation to the Queen. The offer was turned down flat.
Robert Fellowes was born on December 11 1941 into a family with a tradition of royal service. His father, Sir William “Billy” Fellowes, KCVO, was George VI’s agent at Sandringham.
Robert was educated at Eton, where he excelled at cricket, later playing at minor county level for Norfolk. After a short-service commission with the Scots Guards he took a job with the City discount house of Allen, Harvey and Ross.
He had been a director of the firm for five years when, in 1975, he was approached to join the staff at Buckingham Palace. At the time his firm was struggling to survive the financial crash of the early 1970s and he turned the offer down on the grounds that it would be improper to leave at such a difficult time. Two years later, with his firm restored to financial health, he agreed.
Over his 20 years in Buckingham Palace, Fellowes was credited with being a civilising influence on the Royal household. It was, for example, Fellowes who persuaded the Queen to have her portrait painted by Lucian Freud, and Freud to agree to paint a portrait of the Queen. It is unclear who was the more honoured by this arrangement: the artist had previously turned down requests to paint the Pope, the Princess of Wales and Lord Lloyd-Webber’s wife, Madeleine (he also painted a small portrait of Fellowes).
Nor was Fellowes averse to reform, though he did not believe in revolution or dramatic, showy gestures. During his time in office the Queen began to pay income tax; the civil list was slashed; Buckingham Palace opened to the public, and the monarchy embarked on a review of its role in a new “Way Ahead Group”. Fellowes was pivotal in bringing all this about.
Throughout his time as private secretary he remained level-headed and calm. As bitter blows were exchanged he retained his sense of humour and his unflustered good sense.
Visitors to his home in Norfolk, where he enjoyed the company of a variety of errant Jack Russells, would be entertained with a fund of amusing and illuminating anecdotes and glimpses of royal life which somehow never crossed the invisible line into indiscretion, and often ended in some self-deprecating twist. The Fellowes household was always full of companionable laughter.
Golf provided his relaxation. He was a member of the Royal West Norfolk Golf Club at Brancaster and often took golfing holidays elsewhere. In 1994, when the American ambassador Ray Seitz went to join him for a golfing weekend in Cornwall, he was surprised to find Fellowes holed up not in the smart links hotel but in a cheap-and-cheerful bed and breakfast nearby.
Fellowes was notably well-read and, though not a published writer himself, was justifiably proud of being a member of the LiterarySociety, which meets monthly at the Garrick and has been described in the The Daily Telegraph as “Britain’s most distinguished and discreet literary dining club”.
Fellowes was appointed LVO in 1983, CB in 1987, KCVO in 1989, KCB in 1991, GCVO in 1996 and GCB in 1998. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1990 and raised to the peerage after his retirement as private secretary in 1999, taking his place on the cross benches of the House of Lords.
He returned to the City as vice-chairman and subsequently chairman of Barclays Private Banking. He was also a non-executive Director of South African Breweries. At the same time, to the surprise of some who did not know him well, he began a new chapter of his life as a passionate advocate of prison reform.
In February 1999, shortly after he left royal service, someone took Fellowes to see inside Brixton prison. It was an epiphany. As he told the Telegraph’s Mary Riddell in 2008 (only the second interview he had given in his 66 years), the sight of young men locked in cramped and fetid cells left him deeply shocked.
In 2001 he took over from Lord Hurd as chairman of the Prison Reform Trust, serving for the next seven years. He once admitted that some of his friends considered him “a frightful pinko”, but that did not stop him campaigning for prisoners to be given the vote, in line with European law, on the grounds that “if prisoners had the vote, MPs would pay more attention to their grievances and conditions.” He also opposed Labour government plans to build huge “super-jails”, on the grounds that “many prisoners in these very large jails would be out of reach of their families, their only anchor in life.”
In the House of Lords Fellowes served on the Lords’ Constitution Committee. He also served on the committee, chaired by Lord Hurd, which published a review into the future development of the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a member of the advisory body of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He also served for many years as secretary and registrar of the Order of Merit.
Robert Fellowes married Lady Jane Spencer in 1978. She survives him with their two daughters and a son.
Lord Fellowes, born December 11 1941, died July 29 2024
