His close friends were divided. Some supported him for ‘pushing at the right pace’. Others, mindful of their relations with the queen and fearful of losing invitations to Sandringham and Balmoral, spoke loudly about the advantage of caution. This group included Nicholas Soames; Emilie van Cutsem’s husband Hugh; Charles Lansdowne, owner of Bowood House in Wiltshire near Ray Mill, Camilla’s home; Piers von Westenholz, an antique dealer; and Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson. One malicious critic told of Patty’s panic during a motorway journey. Charles had telephoned to say he was unsure whether he could be present at her daughter Santa’s wedding. Patty pleaded, and finally Charles and Camilla agreed to come, but arrived separately. In the background hovered Annabel Elliot, Camilla’s sister. The Elliots protected Camilla from Soames and the Palmer-Tomkinsons. Their vigilance, sniped some, stemmed from their fear of losing influence. Everyone seemed to have mixed motives, but few forgot Diana’s carping about the ‘brown-nosers’ around Charles, whom she called ‘oilers’.
Two nights later there was yet another birthday party, this time at Hampton Court. Camilla was there too. Early the next morning, Charles left for Sheffield to meet a group of disadvantaged young people. Such visits not only placated his critics but also reflected his genuine interest in the young. The following evening, nearly a thousand guests, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, arrived for Charles’s official birthday party at Buckingham Palace. Camilla was not among them.
‘Everyone here,’ said the queen, turning to her son during her speech, ‘has benefited from the breadth of your interests and from your vision, compassion and leadership.’ Listening alongside Blair was Peter Mandelson. Both must have appreciated Charles’s political talent in his endearing reply to ‘Mummy’, concealing his true feelings about the absence of his mistress.
Six weeks later Mandelson, newly appointed as minister for trade and industry, was forced to resign after failing to reveal a loan from Geoffrey Robinson, a Treasury minister, to help buy his house while Robinson was under formal investigation by his own department. As Mandelson sat tearfully in his ministerial office listening on the telephone to Blair’s fatal reprimand, Alastair Campbell, who was in the room with him, noticed a Christmas card from Charles occupying pride of place on his desk. Campbell dismissed the prince as an interfering, privileged fool, but Mandelson defended him, grateful for Bolland’s reassurance that his relationship with Charles would be unaffected by the scandal. Charles could not afford to cast aside a valuable if tainted supporter just as he was heading for another showdown with the media.
Thanks to Bolland’s introductions, the prince had established personal relations with several newspaper editors. After receiving invitations to the birthday party at Hampton Court, they published positive articles to ‘build him up’ and prove that the Camilla campaign had not been harmed by the queen’s boycott. Just two days after the party, several papers published photographs of Camilla on horseback, with her approval.
The next task was to begin repairing the damage caused by Penny Junor’s wholesale damnation of Diana, an assault Charles half-regretted. Although Junor had written that he remained in love with Diana and prayed for her every night, his denial of any involvement with the book had not convinced anyone. In mitigation, he pleaded that his reputation would be restored by the publication of his personal documents long after his death. When that did little to silence the criticism, he was persuaded to release copies of his handwritten letters to ‘a close relative’ to the Daily Mirror. Apparently composed during their fractious journey around Australia in 1983, the letters professed his love for Diana. He especially admired ‘her wonderful way of dealing with people. Her quick wit stands her in excellent stead, particularly when silly people ask what she has done with William or why hasn’t she brought him etc.’ He went on, ‘Diana has done wonderfully throughout this gruelling exercise and has won everyone’s heart – including some of the most hard-bitten Aussie “knockers”.’ He added, ‘I do sometimes worry so much about what I have landed her in at such an impressionable age. The intensity of interest must be terrifying for her.’
In another letter, written a year later, when the couple’s marriage was already under severe strain, Diana had confessed to the same ‘relative’: ‘I can’t stand being away from him.’ She wrote that Charles’s early return from a fishing trip was a ‘wonderful surprise’, and in yet another letter described a ‘marvellous’ time at Balmoral. Since that contradicted the recollection of her friends, who recalled her permanent misery in Scotland, some suspected that an unseen hand had fabricated all the letters as a way to promote Charles.
On the following day the Mirror published more excerpts from letters apparently written to the same ‘close relative’ by Charles in 1988 and 1989, three years after the marriage’s collapse. The prince admitted to depression and insecurity because his public work had little impact and his arguments were ignored. ‘Sometimes I am terrified by the expectations people have of me and of the immense responsibility thrust on me,’ he confided. ‘I sometimes feel that I am going to let people down, however hard I try … I sometimes wonder why we rush about so much or why I, in particular, feel I have to solve all the nation’s problems single-handed? It must be a basic weakness of character which advancing age may cure!’ That was Charles’s genuine voice. The doubts about the authenticity of the early letters arose only after Mark Bolland confessed honest ignorance about the identity of the ‘close relative’ who released them to James Whitaker, the Mirror’s royal correspondent. Whitaker, loyal to Charles, added a flourish about the lonely prince’s virtues: ‘Listening to Charles talking about his lack of self-esteem, one could easily cry for him … The important thing to understand about this tortured, complex man is that he does feel he has the cares of the world on his shoulders. He tries so hard to deliver, to do his duty as he thinks is right.’
The letters’ publication gave Charles confidence to use the media more aggressively. ‘Let’s risk the biscuit,’ he told Bolland after several newspapers published photographs of his visit with Camilla to a London theatre. The positive comments encouraged him once again to confront his mother over their relationship, only this time in public.
In the weeks after his birthday, they had not spoken. The atmosphere at Sandringham over Christmas must have been frosty. Now he wanted to stage a spectacular event to establish Camilla as his permanent partner. He needed a photograph that was neither snatched nor contrived. The ideal moment would occur on 29 January 1999, seventeen months after Diana’s death, when Annabel Elliot celebrated her fiftieth birthday at the Ritz hotel in Piccadilly.
‘The prince must come,’ she wailed. ‘It would be terrible if he didn’t.’
‘Let’s lance the boil,’ agreed Bolland, arguing that snatched photographs by the paparazzi were poor-quality and rewarded only the photographer. In what Bolland regarded as Charles’s ‘cunning and tough’ directives, it was agreed to transform the couple’s exit from the hotel into a historic milestone.
A tip to a Daily Mail diarist revealed Charles’s ruse. ‘Will they arrive or leave together?’ the diarist was prompted to ask in his column. Bolland then telephoned Arthur Edwards, the Sun’s royal photographer, to draw attention to the item. From there, reaction snowballed. The first of over two hundred photographers and TV crews staked out their positions opposite the Ritz three days before the event. They were allowed to block the pavement and the street to record a romance that according to legend had started twenty-seven years earlier. The royal command overrode any official opposition from the police or Westminster council. On the night, anxious newspaper editors delayed printing their main editions while journalists called Bolland – dining with the editor of the Sunday Times in a City restaurant – for reassurance that the ‘historic’