The duchess, p.34
The Duchess, page 34
There will also be a question mark over where she and Charles will officially live. For the last few hundred years, the sovereign has lived at Buckingham Palace when he or she is in London, but it’s not a home and none of the present incumbents like it. The Queen and Prince Philip were forced to give up Clarence House and move across the park when her father died, but she was very young and had a forceful Prime Minister in Winston Churchill, and was not in a position to protest. Charles, approaching seventy, is not likely to be such a pushover. He and Camilla are very happy at Clarence House and have made the private quarters a real home. Of course the house that is most like a normal home to them, that has no offices and no public rooms – and where they are at their best and most normal – is Birkhall. They love it there and the children love coming to stay. But as King, Charles will have to play host to more than friends and family. Might he have to forfeit Birkhall and use Balmoral Castle? There is also the Castle of Mey that he inherited from his grandmother.
And what about Highgrove, where he created his garden? It is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, which will no longer be his. The Duchy provides an income for the heir to the throne, so when Charles becomes King, the estate and the title will go to Prince William, who will also become Prince of Wales. But will he and Kate want to use his childhood home? At the moment they are based at Kensington Palace, with George and Charlotte, and have the newly refurbished Anmer Hall, a gift from the Queen, at Sandringham. He may or may not want to use Highgrove. Then there is Windsor Castle, which the Queen is so fond of, and of course Sandringham itself.
That is a lot of property for a modern, scaled-down, cost-conscious monarchy and I am sure there are great minds wrangling with the matter as I write – although Charles has never been known for his frugality. The Queen herself gave the greatest indication yet of how the future might look at the end of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. She appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with just five others. The generations of extended family that normally fill the space were nowhere to be seen. It was the Queen, Charles, Camilla, William, Catherine and Harry – the Duke of Edinburgh was in hospital. A secure line of succession and no freeloaders.
‘The Prince will be the best prepared King the country’s ever had,’ says Julia Cleverdon. ‘He knows more about what goes on in the highways and byways and climate change and inner cities and everything else, he could not have worked harder at it – but Duty is the hound at his heels. In the end it comes back to his parents. Camilla’s very good at the light touch and the funny joke. She lightens it all for him.
‘The Prince is incredibly happy and contented and amused since Camilla came back into his life,’ observes a friend, ‘and I think she’s very happy. They seem to be very keen on each other, they love each other, they’ve come to a contented happiness in their late sixties. Why not?’
The bonus is that this relationship is about more than a love affair, or two people being happy. Camilla has proved to be extraordinarily good at the job. No one is more surprised about that than she is, but friends say she is proud of being the Duchess of Cornwall. It’s not just her people skills – the easy, open, friendly manner and sense of merriment – nor her ability to scrub up well, work a room, unveil plaques and glad-hand the public. She has put her stamp on issues that no one else was prepared to touch, doing it in such a way that it’s the issues that get the attention and not herself. She is not on an ego trip, she’s not seeking self-aggrandisement, she’s not wanting to overshadow Charles’s achievements. Within her pillars of interest – literacy, rape, sexual violence, domestic abuse, health – she is making a very real difference to many people’s lives. In a small way, my own included. I was diagnosed with osteoporosis in 2016 thanks to one of the DEXA scanners put into NHS hospitals by the NOS. Without her commitment to the charity, the receptions she’s held, the stars she’s attracted, the profile she’s given it and the donations for research and treatment that have followed, I may not have known I had the disease until I broke my spine – or lost eight inches in height like her mother.
She is utterly committed to the causes she’s attached herself to, and she and her team are constantly looking for ways of joining up the dots, making a visit or a reception go further. Thinking laterally, connecting people and ideas. She has no doubt watched and learnt from Charles, who has worked tirelessly with a far wider portfolio his entire life. She admires what he has done and their views on many of the important issues are very similar. But she has one advantage over him. The Prince has not lived in the real world as she has. His approach is inevitably second-hand and based on theory and ideals. And although he has two children, there is only so far he could draw on that experience and be taken seriously. Camilla is quite obviously a hands-on mother and grandmother and can therefore relate to parents and grandparents in a more credible way.
One of the biggest problems with the charitable or third sector, as anyone who works in it will say, is the proliferation of small charities operating in the same field, competing with one another for recognition and for ever-diminishing funds. ‘Somehow or other we have to work together,’ says Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust. ‘By ourselves we can’t crack it. The answer is collaboration, but by and large, everything predicates against that. What Clarence House, and what the Duchess is doing by adopting a group of charities in the same space, is convening and helping collaboration. And it’s done subtly, through curiosity and through suggestion, but actually, that is the thing that makes us bigger than the sum of our parts. And it may be offering a footprint for how the third sector can increase its impact in the future.’
The other surprise is that Camilla has turned out to be a genuine asset to the Royal Family. She has given Charles support and encouragement – and belief in himself – that he’s never had before, and that has made him much more likeable and therefore much more popular. And popularity is vital in a modern-day monarch. He’s no longer angst-ridden and tortured; he’s relaxed, he’s humorous, he’s teasing and he looks happy – and that comes through in the flesh and in the photographs of them together, and those of him with his sons. He’s a Prince the public wants to engage with again. And she has made that happen, without in any way treading on his toes. Her pride in him and his achievements, which shines through in those photographs, has made people look again at him and appreciate him.
For so many years the Prince’s extraordinary and in many ways visionary work has been buried by his scandalous private life. A television documentary to mark forty years of the Prince’s Trust, presented by the cheeky Geordie pair Ant and Dec, went a long way to putting that right. And Camilla put her feelings into words. She described the energy that Prince Charles has and how hard he works for the charity. ‘I think I’m really proud to be married to somebody who, forty years ago, aged twenty-seven, had the vision to put it together – I mean it was an incredible idea for somebody – he was very young then – to think of it and to think of these very disadvantaged young people who had literally been to hell and back and to find a way to give them a second chance in life.’
There are no longer calls, as there once were, for Prince William to leapfrog his father when the Queen dies. The debate is focused on Camilla’s title, not on the Prince of Wales’s moral authority to reign. I have no doubt William will be an excellent King when his time comes but it must be allowed to come naturally. Picking and choosing which member of the family we want next would set a dangerous precedent. The integrity of the British monarchy is based on heredity. Besides, William, at thirty-five, cannot hold a candle to his father in terms of preparation and experience – and he has young children. They need him during these early years of their childhood, lest they become casualties, like Charles, of parents consumed by duty too soon in life, and history repeats itself. And beautiful as Catherine may be, she doesn’t yet have the maturity, the depth of experience of life, love, loss, pain and survival that gives Camilla such understanding and credibility.
Her family still worry for her. They worry that she hasn’t properly processed the grief of her brother’s death and that she is still living on her nerves. She and Charles have become joint presidents of the Elephant Family and have secured £20 million to preserve a hundred elephant corridors across India by 2025. She is furthering Mark’s dream, but she can’t talk about him. Some in her family feel that there is a side of her that’s trying to hold everything together, because she fears that if she allows the smallest chink in the armour, the entire suit will shatter.
‘I think she’s quite a brave person,’ says Catherine Goodman, ‘and you can’t be brave without being frightened. But I think she’s played it straight, and she’s played it the only way she knows how to play it. And there’s something within the British sensibility, you know, they kind of respect that in some ways. They may not have liked the story about what had happened in the past, but it’s water under the bridge, and I think people instinctively know she’s doing her best.’
By whatever title she is known, Camilla will no doubt carry on doing her best. She will be the strength behind the crown and do her husband proud, and I suspect history will be a kinder judge of their story than their contemporaries have been.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I am indebted to the authors and publishers of the following works that I have consulted and in some cases quoted from:
Brandreth, Gyles, Charles & Camilla, Arrow Books, 2006
Dimbleby, Jonathan, The Prince of Wales, Little, Brown, 1994
Donaldson, Frances, Edward VIII, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986
Ferguson, Josephine, The Stuffed Stoat, Melrose Books, 2009
Goldsmith, Annabel, Annabel: An Unconventional Life – The Memoirs of Lady Annabel Goldsmith, Phoenix/Orion, 2005
Gowing, Elizabeth, The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife, Elbow Publishing, 2015
Hartman, Robert, Our Queen, Hutchinson, 2011
Hibbert, Christopher, Queen Victoria, HarperCollins, 2000
Holden, Anthony, Charles: Prince of Wales, Pan, 1980
Keppel, Sonia, Edwardian Daughter, Arrow Books, 1958
Morton, Andrew, Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words, Michael O’Mara Books, 1997
Shand, Bruce, Previous Engagements, Michael Russell, 1990
Shand, Mark, Travels on my Elephant, Eland, 2012
Shawcross, William, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, Pan, 2010
Souhami, Diana, Mrs Keppel And Her Daughter, Flamingo, 1997
Wilson, A.N., Betjeman, Arrow Books, 2007
Extracts on page 16 from Wilson, A.N., Betjeman
Extracts on pages 16–18 from Shand, Bruce, Previous Engagements
Extracts on pages 21 and 23 from Souhami, Diana, Mrs Keppel and her Daughter
Extracts on pages 22–3 and 24–8 from Keppel, Sonia, Edwardian Daughter
Extracts on pages 38–9 from Ferguson, Josephine, The Stuffed Stoat
Extracts on pages 59, 78, 80, 89–90 and 112 from Morton, Andrew, Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words
Extract on pages 65–6 from Holden, Anthony, Charles: Prince of Wales
Extracts on pages 71, 76, 102 and 107 from Dimbleby, Jonathan, The Prince of Wales
PICTURE SECTION
Bruce and Rosalind Shand on their wedding day in 1946. They were a golden couple. (© Keystone / Stringer, Getty Images)
Camilla (holding the lead rein) and her younger sister, Annabel. Their childhood was idyllic in every way. (Private collection)
Camilla aged 11 (left) on an outing to Newcastle with the Shawcross family in 1959. William Shawcross, 12, on the right, was very smitten. His sister Joanna is behind him and Annabel Shand is at the back. (Courtesy of William Shawcross)
Alice Keppel, Camilla’s great-grandmother, who was the long-term mistress of King Edward VII, Prince Charles’s great-great grandfather. (© 916 collection / Alamy Stock Photo)
Camilla in her late teens painted by the society portrait artist, Molly Bishop. The resemblance to her great-grandmother is striking. Two strong, confident women. (Private collection)
At a debutante party in the late 1960s, remonstrating, as she often did, with her boyfriend, Andrew Parker Bowles. (Private collection)
Lucia Santa Cruz, the Chilean ambassador’s daughter, who introduced Camilla to Prince Charles and jokingly warned them to be careful. (Private collection)
Unlike her sister, Annabel Shand was a reluctant debutante. (Private collection)
Camilla courted Andrew Parker Bowles on and off for seven years and she got to know his family and friends well. With his cousin, David Bowes-Lyon, and a friend. (Private collection)
And below with his nephew, Charles Paravicini. (Private collection)
Her Pekinese, Chang, was a relative of Dame Ann Parker Bowles’s dogs. Camilla was mad about the dog but less so about the woman who became her mother-in-law. (Private collection)
Camilla has always had a terror of flying. Today, she combats it by the technique known as ‘tapping’. (Private collection)
November 1972, with Andrew at a shooting party in what was then Czechoslovakia. She was in the midst of a fling with Prince Charles – furious that Andrew was dating Princess Anne. (Private collection)
Hugh Pitman, Prince Charles and Andrew Parker Bowles on the same team at the Guards Polo Club in Windsor. Twenty-five years later, Andrew married Hugh’s ex-wife, Rose. (Private collection)
Andrew Parker Bowles (number 2) with the Army polo team in Kenya in 1971, alongside a young Prince Charles. It is not surprising which of the two Camilla’s heart was set on. (Private collection)
She may have been seeing Charles but it was Andrew she was in love with. (Private collection)
(Private collection)
Camilla on her wedding day with her beloved father, Bruce. Prince Charles was in the Caribbean, his heart broken by her decision to marry Andrew. (© Frank Barratt / Stringer, Getty Images)
It was a lavish society wedding. Back row: Andrew, Camilla and best man Simon Parker Bowles (Andrew’s brother). Adults seated from left: Derek Parker Bowles, Dame Ann Parker Bowles, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Anne, Rosalind Shand, Bruce Shand. Bridesmaids and pageboys were the couple’s godchildren. (Private collection)
Early in their marriage at the Queen Mother’s home at the Castle of Mey. Second from left is Lady Diana Spencer’s grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, an old friend of the Queen Mother. (Private collection)
Laura Parker Bowles presenting a bouquet to the Queen Mother at her 90th birthday parade with her parents, and, right, Tom King, Secretary of State for Defence. (Private collection)
In the late 1970s, when Charles and Camilla were having an affair. With them is Lady Sarah Keswick who was and has remained a close friend of them both. (Tim Graham / Contributor, Getty Images)
Camilla liked Diana and thought she was perfect for Charles. (© PA Archive/PA Images)
With the two men in her life at the Guards polo club. Andrew knew what was going on but there was never any animosity between him and Charles, nor rows with Camilla. Once the Prince started dating Diana, the affair ended. (Hulton Deutsch / Contributor, Getty Images)
The famous balcony kiss that set the seal on the fairytale wedding. (Anwar Hussein / Contributor, Getty Images)
Diana and Charles setting off for their honeymoon, escorted by a familiar face – Andrew Parker Bowles, left, commander of the Household Cavalry. (© PA Archive/PA Images)
The Princess of Wales took the world by storm. At the White House, she memorably took to the floor for 15 minutes with John Travolta. (© Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo)
But by the early Nineties, the pretence that Charles and Diana were happy was over. (© Tim Graham / Contributor, Getty Images)
The Parker Bowles family in 1984 at Buckingham Palace, the day Andrew received his OBE. At that time, Camilla’s life was all about her children and her family. The Prince was no longer a part of it. (© Evening Standard)
Camilla with her siblings and all the cousins. They were her life-support system. Back row: Andrew, Annabel Elliot, Ben Elliot, Simon Elliot. Front row and seated: Alice Elliot, Katie Elliot, Mark Shand, Camilla, Laura and Tom Parker Bowles. (Private collection)
Hunting was a useful distraction for dealing with life’s disappointments. (© Barry Batchelor/PA Archive/PA Images)
