When a Drunken Intruder Broke Into Queen Elizabeth's Chamber 42 Years Ago: "I Was Dumbstruck"

One of the most well-known instances of a security breach in British royal history is the bedroom break-in at Buckingham Palace. A drunk Michael Fagan went over the fence of the royal palace and made his way up a drainpipe and onto the roof, making history on July 9, 1982. After a while, he gained entry to Queen Elizabeth II's private chamber.

"They say she must have been frightened," Fagan told in an exclusive to The UK Sun in 2020. "I didn't frighten her too much, but I was quite shocked," he said, narrating how he saw the Queen fall asleep in her bed after opening the curtains. He added, “I was fixated on the Queen. I knew she liked helping people and thought she might help me. I wanted to speak to her, but never planned to end up in her bedroom.” 

He further said, "She used a phone on the bedside table to call security, but when nobody came, she got out of bed. Her nightie was one of those Liberty prints and it was down to her knees. She said, ‘Just one minute, I’ll get someone,’ swept past me and ran out of the room, her little bare feet running across the floor. It was the stamp room, where Queen’s grandfather’s priceless collection, one of the biggest in the world, is kept. The door was locked, so I climbed back out of the window.” Fagan triggered an alarm during his conquest, but the police thought it was a false alarm. “I have a head for heights so I climbed up a drainpipe, past some netting that keeps the pigeons off, and got onto a flat roof. I took off my sandals and socks before climbing in through another window. Two years later, the staff found my sandals and returned them to my mother,” he recalled his climb.

“I walked through a hall where a charlady was vacuuming. She looked at me and probably thought I was a builder or something, but she couldn’t have noticed my feet. I had no sandals on. I broke the ashtray, so I could have a piece of glass in my back pocket to cut through the pigeon netting on my way back out, but I cut myself. People have said I was going to cut my wrists in front of the Queen but that’s nonsense. I just kept on walking, following my feet. There are 700 rooms in the palace and I didn’t know where the Queen’s bedroom was. I knew I wanted to see her but it wasn’t my plan to go into her bedroom.”

Fagan claimed he would not have entered the Queen's chamber if there had been a name on it. “I pulled back the curtains and the woman in bed sat up and said in an accent like the finest glass, ‘What are you doing here?’ There’s the Queen in front of me. I was dumbstruck. I don’t know anyone else who wouldn’t be. I was sat there for about three minutes and the next thing this tall footman came into the room and, swear to God, said, ‘F*** me, you look like you could do with a drink’.” 

Because he had entered the castle through an open window, Fagan was never prosecuted with trespassing or breaking, and he believes that this was because officials did not want the Queen to testify in court. As per People, Fagan bragged about the 'weak' security in the palace during his trial, "I walked straight in," he said of the first incident a month prior, in which he claimed to have tried out several thrones. "I was surprised I wasn't captured straight away. I could have been a rapist or something. I knew I could break the security system because it was so weak," he concluded.