ROYAL SCANDALS

Queen Elizabeth II reached her 50th jubilee with her dignity intact, but her reign has been punctuated by a series of scandals that have beset her family and entourage. The Queen won a High Court order blocking a newspaper from revealing more details about the Royal Household after the Daily Mirror's Ryan Parry got a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace using a false reference.

His identity was revealed by the paper the same day US President George Bush arrived in the UK for a state visit. The Royal Household was granted an injunction and said it would sue both Mr Parry and the paper. The revelations in the Mirror put pressure on the government, Buckingham Palace and Scotland Yard, which spent £5m and put more than 5,000 police on the capital's streets for Mr Bush's visit.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said, "We sought this injunction in order to protect personal privacy and we are satisfied with the progress made this afternoon." A White House spokesman said that despite the security breach at the palace, "the White House still has confidence in British security". The Daily Mirror story included pictures by photographer Phil Harris from inside the palace of the bedroom used by Mr Bush and his wife, The Belgian Suite. There were also pictures of the Queen's breakfast table and the Duke of York's room.

Mr Parry wrote, "Had I been a terrorist intent on assassinating the Queen or American president George Bush, I could have done so with absolute ease. Indeed, this morning I would have been serving breakfast to key members of his government, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Such is the shocking incompetence at the heart of the biggest security operation ever in Britain."

In August 2003, Mr Parry responded to a job advertisement on a recruitment page of the Buckingham Palace official website. On his CV, he left out any mention of his journalistic career and included one fake reference and a real one, the newspaper claimed. Mirror editor Piers Morgan said, "To our surprise and then mounting horror we discovered that our man with no training, no experience at all, no real vetting was in very close proximity to the most important people in our country." He described the reference checking as "scandalous" and "shoddy".

Mr Morgan alleged that someone from the palace rang Mr Parry's local pub where he had given a name as a character reference. "That person had left and they shouted down the bar - 'Does anyone know Ryan Parry?' To which some man in the corner drinking, said, 'Oh, I know him, he's a good guy'." Mr Morgan said they had decided to pull Mr Parry out of the palace once the president arrived as "we did not want to genuinely compromise any ongoing security issues that might arise while the president is here." Mr Parry had previously gone undercover at Wimbledon tennis championships to reveal security flaws.

Mr Blunkett said he was "obviously concerned" about the alleged security flaw. However, he said he was "satisfied that the security and criminal records checks had been done robustly and correctly and that there was no risk from the reporter". He said that "there were wider issues to see if lessons should be learned about how checks are undertaken". The alleged security flaw will compound the embarrassment caused by comedian Aaron Barschak, who gatecrashed Prince William's 21st birthday party.

The following lists the more lurid and damaging episodes to the House of Windsor.

1955 - Elizabeth's sister Margaret, who has designs on a divorcee and former Battle of Britain hero, Peter Townsend, is forced to renounce marriage plans in the face of fierce opposition from her family, the Church of England and the government.

1978 - Princess Margaret divorces Anthony Armstrong-Jones two years after the publication of pictures showing her in a bathing costume with a man 17 years her junior.

1989 - Love letters addressed to Queen Elizabeth's daughter Princess Anne by a former equerry, Tim Laurence, cause a stir. Princess Anne's husband Mark Phillips is accused two years later of fathering a child by another woman. The couple divorce in 1992, the same year that...the marriages of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew burst into the press for all the wrong reasons.

Details of extra-marital liaisons emerge to haunt Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, as do revelations of Diana's bulimia and attempted suicides.

Meanwhile, Andrew and Sarah Ferguson separate after pictures show her in intimate company with another man.

1994 - Charles admits to cheating on Diana.

1994 - An 'authorised' biography of Prince Charles describes the coldness of Queen Elizabeth and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh towards their children. The book reveals that Charles was pressured by his father to marry Diana, whom he never loved.

1995 - In a special BBC interview, Diana admits to cheating on Charles with Life Guards officer James Hewitt.

1996 - Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson divorce.

1996 - Prince Charles and Diana divorce.

1997 - Diana is killed in a Paris car crash, along with companion Dodi Fayed, son of Egyptian-born businessman Mohamed Al Fayed, who alleges a conspiracy. The royal family comes under heavy fire for a cool reaction to the episode.

2001 - Less than a year after marrying Edward, Elizabeth's fourth child, Sophie Countess of Wessex is caught by a journalist disguised as an Arab sheikh making derogatory remarks about Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie.

A row breaks out about the queen's daughter-in-law using her royal connections to the benefit of her public relations business.

2002 - Queen Elizabeth's grandson Harry, the younger son of Charles and Diana, admits smoking cannabis and underage drinking.