Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles – the explosive biography, as seen in the Daily Mail. Tom Bower
Britain) bewildered Janvrin’s critics. He replied that changing the culture was essential to prepare for a modern monarchy.
Charles disagreed. Conjuring an air of change was merely colourful spin, in his opinion, and ignored the House of Windsor’s instinct for self-preservation. Ever since the Saxe-Coburgs had reinvented themselves as the Windsors in 1917 to avoid the fate of the Tsar of Russia, the Kaisers of Germany and Austria and the downfall of other minor European monarchs, the queen had separated herself from Britain’s aristocracy. Unimpressed by titles, the royal family was aware of the country’s hereditary families only if they were genuine friends or were criticised by the media. The natural order, with the monarch at the head of a pyramid supported by the landed nobility, had vanished.
The gentry’s loss of power was of no interest to St James’s Palace. After a decade of gossip and misbehaviour, Charles’s household yearned for a period free of notoriety. His officials’ expectations were frustrated by the prince’s feudal exercise of power, a different kind of misbehaviour.
Some long-term employees who had been granted a home were obliged to receive a visit from Charles as a reminder of their place in the scheme of things; others were invited for dinner, or to a garden party at Highgrove. Lesser mortals received gifts. The prince dispensed presents, graded by his opinion of their importance, to paid and unpaid employees: whisky glasses engraved with his motif, or designer salt and pepper grinders. A typed letter signed by Charles was welcome, but the greatest trophy was a handwritten message in black ink. The universal fear was his expression of displeasure, signalled by the absence of a ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. Finely calibrated blanking – like a Mafia don’s kiss of death – was an overt threat to the courtier’s job, income, school fees and self-respect. After dismissal, there was nothing. Being cut off without even a much-prized Christmas card to acknowledge the relationship was ‘so hurtful’, repeated all the casualties. Charles had made himself clear that they were no longer useful. Loyalty was always a one-way street.
Preferring to live at Highgrove to enjoy his garden and to be near Camilla, Charles summoned people to drive the two hours from London for even the briefest meeting, and would regularly keep them waiting. Yet few refused. The outstanding garden, more than thirty-five years in the making, had been designed by a succession of experts. Molly Salisbury, Rosemary Verey, Miriam Rothschild, Julian and Isabel Bannerman, one after another, were enlisted to fill the landscape with trees, hedges, wildflowers, fountains, rare breeds of farm animals and architectural features, all blended into a romantic safe haven. In return, the heir to the throne offered conditional gratitude. Professional gardeners were divided about the extent of Charles’s own contribution.
Roy Strong was summoned to advise on the cultivation of hedges. He spent days with his own gardener perfecting his ideas. At the end, he submitted his employee’s bill for £1,000 – and was never asked to return, or even thanked. Strong had personally inscribed a copy of his book on gardening to Charles, but it was left in a waiting room rather than included in the prince’s library. ‘He’s shocked by the sight of an invoice,’ Strong noted. ‘So he likes people who don’t charge for their services.’ Inevitably, none of those advisers was individually thanked after Charles received the Victoria Medal of Honour from the Royal Horticultural Society, presented by the queen for his services to gardening, in 2009.
‘Grace and favour’ took on a new meaning. To make up a floragim (a book of paintings of Highgrove’s flowers), Charles recruited over twenty artists to paint two or three flowers each, for free. Similarly, he approached Jonathan Heale, a woodcut artist, for some of his work, which he expected to be donated as a gift. One of the few artists known to have rebuffed similar demands was Lucian Freud. Would Freud swap one of his oils – which sold for millions of pounds – for one of Charles’s watercolours? ‘I don’t want one of your rotten paintings,’ Freud replied.
Strong, despite the rebuffs, narrated a BBC TV documentary about Highgrove. He intended to report that Charles had followed fashion by asking Molly Salisbury to build a ‘potager’ – a vegetable garden, but his draft commentary was returned from Charles’s office with the rebuke, ‘His Royal Highness never follows fashion.’ Strong removed the comment. Charles, clearly, stood ‘above fashion and is always right’. Thereafter, Strong stepped back: ‘I stayed on the edge with Charles. It was less dangerous.’
In the same spirit, in 1998 Charles called Tim Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s media adviser, to ask whether he could borrow Elizabeth Buchanan, employed by Bell to develop relationships with Conservative politicians and bankers, for three days a week. ‘You can’t turn down a royal summons,’ said Bell, knowing that Charles would not pay Buchanan’s salary. Buchanan went to work at the royal home.
Charles had chosen an utterly devoted woman. ‘Elizabeth curtsied lower than anyone thought possible,’ one household member noticed, ‘and then for longer than necessary. She worked all the hours God gave and then some God hadn’t thought about.’ Dubbed ‘the virgin queen’ by her fellow staff, she understood the ritual, the pattern and the access Charles expected. He would sit for hours, and sometimes for a whole day, dressed in eccentric clothes in an armour stone garden surrounded by trees and wildflowers, while Buchanan, ‘blinded by devotion’, pandered to his requirements. On occasions when Charles, in the midst of a meal, took exception to the conversation – especially criticism of his opinions – and stormed out, she was summoned by Michael Fawcett to smooth things over with the guests and to placate the prince. When Charles, near the end of a seemingly pleasant dinner, abruptly headed to his study to spend hours handwriting letters late into the night, it was Buchanan who made excuses to his guests. Tim Bell was unsurprised when she became a full-time employee. Her salary did not reflect her new position as an assistant private secretary, but the media man quietly bridged the gap.
5
In mid-1998, Mark Bolland and Fiona Shackleton were lunching at the Ivy restaurant off St Martin’s Lane when both their mobile phones rang. The Highgrove switchboard connected the prince. ‘I’ve got a terrible problem,’ said Charles. ‘I’ve had a delegation of the staff led by Bernie and Tony and they say that everyone will resign unless Michael Fawcett goes.’
The mutiny among Charles’s staff at Highgrove had been brewing for weeks. Fawcett had been imposing unreasonable demands, especially on five of the staff serving under him: a valet, two sub-valets, an equerry’s assistant and a chauffeur. The result was a revolt by a group of people noted for exaggerating the smallest inconveniences out of all proportion. However, on this occasion Fawcett’s behaviour would seem to have been insufferable. Fearful of losing all his employees, Charles had instantly surrendered to the delegation and agreed that Fawcett should resign, despite his seventeen years’ service. Then, immediately regretting his decision, he had telephoned Bolland and Shackleton. Both were joyful at the news. Later that afternoon, on Stephen Lamport’s orders, Bolland drove to Highgrove. ‘Make sure he’s fired,’ were Lamport’s parting words. In unison, the prince’s closest advisers ‘went into overdrive to make sure Fawcett left before Charles changed his mind’. The thirty-five-year-old, they agreed, was a hated bully. Regardless of Fawcett’s usefulness, no one could understand why Charles had chosen to live alongside such a seemingly unpleasant man.
Bolland entered the prince’s study to be ‘greeted by the sight of Charles and Fawcett crying together’. Amid their tears, Charles told Fawcett that he would have to go, but that provision would be made for him to continue working for him privately. An announcement was made that Fawcett’s departure was ‘entirely amicable’. Commentators, misled by spokesmen, mistakenly reported that Fawcett was the casualty of a ‘war’ within St James’s Palace between the old guard and the modernisers.
The backlash began soon after. Led by Patty Palmer-Tomkinson, Charles’s friends urged him to recall Fawcett.
‘Poor Michael,’ said Palmer-Tomkinson.
‘It’s not my fault,’ replied Charles. ‘They made me do it.’
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