Michael Colborne had warned Diana that in four or five years with this sort of lifestyle she would change; she would become an absolute bitch. The Prince of Wales had known no other lifestyle and was perforce supremely selfish. It may be that he would have taken out of a marriage rather more than he put into it. Very few people have ever disagreed with him, still less said ‘No’ to him, or told him anything he didn’t want to hear. He has never had to consider anyone else’s plans or preferences – and still doesn’t. His staff work all hours and are expected to jump when they are called whatever the time of day with little apparent thought for their families.
Materially he was spoilt but emotionally he was needy. And though he longed for a home, a family and security, as she did, like Diana he had never known a normal one and therefore had no model to work from. His parents loved him – there is no doubt about that – and friends remember the Queen sitting him on her knee at teatime when Charles was a small boy and playing games with him but she didn’t spend the hours in the nursery that she did with the two younger boys because she was intimidated by Helen Lightbody, and any sort of overt affection stopped as he grew older. The Duke was and is a bully, and was equally sparing in his affection. He was rough with Charles, and, according to witnesses, frequently reduced the boy to tears. As a result Charles was frightened of his father and always desperate to please him, without ever apparently succeeding. Even now in his fifties, Charles is still eager to please his parents and earn their approval, and much of the time still feels he’s failing. Hard to feel anything else when your father repeatedly makes sarcastic and cutting comments either to you or about you.
The Queen and the Duke were appalled by The Prince of Wales, the book Jonathan Dimbleby wrote about the Prince in 1995 following the disastrous film, and hurt by the picture he drew of his childhood. The Prince had given Dimbleby unprecedented access – which turned out to be decidedly foolish – allowed him free rein with private letters, diaries and even official papers and had given him many hours of his time. One former courtier was utterly bemused that his advisers had ever let it happen:
They released Jonathan Dimbleby and the Prince of Wales on to the Scottish moor together at 9.30 and they came back breathless and excited at 4.30; and when you go for a very exhausting walk with anybody – if you went with Goebbels – after a time the blood circulates, the joints ease up, the breath gets short – you’d pour out your heart to anyone, even Goebbels. Dimbleby has huge maieutic charm. Alan Bennett uses that word in his book Telling Tales; it means mid-wifely. Jonathan Dimbleby’s charms are huge so the Prince of Wales gave him all that stuff about how unhappy when he was a boy – the Queen never spoke to him, the Duke of Edinburgh was beastly to him – and it very much upsets them.
Everyone was told this book would finally show what a marvellous person he was; and people were bored out of their wits by Business in the Community and the Prince’s Trust; they wanted to know about their private life. We’re interested in who they’re going to bed with, except we got rather bored by that because we couldn’t keep up with it.
Superficially the Prince of Wales is a carbon copy of his father; it is as though he has modelled himself on the older man. They walk and talk the same way, hold their hands behind their backs in the same way, they enjoy the same sports, share the same interests, and are both involved in charities with much the same agendas. But according to the Duke of Edinburgh there is a fundamental difference. ‘He is a romantic – and I’m a pragmatist. That means we do see things differently. And because I don’t see things as a romantic would, I’m unfeeling.’
If Charles and his parents had only been able to talk, the history of the last two decades might have been very different and thus also the future security of the monarchy. Prince Philip might have spoken to Charles about the need to make up his mind about Diana rather than sending him a letter which was open to misinterpretation. Charles may have discussed his fears that this marriage was going to be a mistake during the five months of his engagement, so that they could have devised a dignified way of calling the whole thing to a halt. And if all else had failed and they had gone down the aisle and given the public the fabulous fairy-tale wedding that so lit up the world, he might have asked his parents for help when things started to unravel at such terrifying speed. Instead, he said nothing and they said nothing. And, sure as hell, no one else was going to say anything, even though everyone in Kensington Palace and St James’s Palace could see the disaster unfolding before their very eyes.
Sadly, the marriage was never going to have been bliss for either of them, that was clear from the start. There were too many differences, too many unrequited needs, too much loneliness; but they could have kept up a façade for the sake of their sons and the monarchy and the millions of people who had wished them well on their wedding day, identified, empathized and invested such hope in their union. By the time any talking happened it was too late. The Princess had gone public, she was out of control – and scaring even herself – and on course for destruction.
As a former courtier says, ‘You might have thought the Prince could have found a way of dealing with Diana. Have said, “Let’s have a high-level conference over tea to see how we’re going to manage this.” But it’s part of his psychology that he can’t do that, it’s all part of not giving a PR answer, not telling the smallest of white lies, when he should.’
The Queen has long held the wish that the earth would open up and swallow her newest daughter-in-law. It is nothing personal – they scarcely met during all the years of controversy – and when they did know one another, in the days when Camilla was a regular guest at Balmoral, Sandringham and Windsor, she was very fond of her. Everyone was very fond of Camilla, particularly the Queen Mother. She was there in those days as the wife of Andrew Parker Bowles, who boasted the unlikely title of the Queen’s Silver-Stick-in-Waiting. It is a title from Tudor times – the incumbent kept close to the sovereign to protect him or her from danger and carried a staff of office, topped in silver. Camilla was easy, friendly, earthy and game for anything; she also loved horses and dogs – the perfect combination to endear anyone to the House of Windsor. But the Queen, like her former Private Secretary Robert Fellowes, believes that with few exceptions everything that has gone wrong for the monarchy in the last twenty years has been attributable to Mrs Parker Bowles. It is hard to disagree.
Whichever story you buy about the relationship – the Princess’s version, that there were three of them in the marriage, so it never stood a chance; or the Prince’s version, that he gave up Camilla before his engagement and there was no physical contact until more than six years later – Mrs Parker Bowles plays a central role. She was certainly the Prince’s lover before Diana appeared on the scene, and she was definitely in place again after 1987. He told us so. Whether activity in the intervening years was all in Diana’s imagination or not is largely immaterial. By 1992 the Princess of Wales was passionately jealous of her rival and wanted the world to know how unhappy she was about it. Her chosen method was through Andrew Morton, a charming, roguish former Daily Star journalist. He wrote a riveting book the like of which has never been seen before or since.
He once told me that he was able to write his book Diana: Her True Story in 1992 because of one I had written the previous year which had incensed Diana. That book was Charles and Diana: Portrait of a Marriage and in it I had said that the marriage was not a happy one for a multitude of reasons – something I had first mentioned in a biography of Charles four years earlier – and they were leading largely separate lives with separate friends, which was sad, but that it was a successful working partnership none the less. They both worked hard, both made a real difference in their charitable activities, were a terrific double act for the House of Windsor and were both excellent parents. Jonathan Dimbleby