The clear implication of the newspaper article was that Prince Charles had complained about his wife to friends who had decided to take action on his behalf. While her husband protested his innocence, it cast a shadow over her birthday, which she celebrated quietly with her sister Jane and their children. It marked a significant private corrosion of the relations between the royal couple.
The resulting adverse publicity forced a temporary public rapprochement upon the couple. Prince Charles altered his diary so that he could appear with his wife at various public engagements, including a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as deciding to spend at least part of their 10th wedding anniversary together to placate the media. It was highly contrived and lasted only a matter of weeks before the truce was breached. Their total separation, epitomized by the presence of the hostile ‘Highgrove Set’, was virtually formalized. But Charles’s friends were not the only reason why she loathed her country home. She referred to her trips to their Gloucestershire home as ‘a return to prison’ and rarely invited her family or friends. As James Gilbey said: ‘She dislikes Highgrove. She feels that Camilla lives just down the road and regardless of any effort she puts into the house, she never feels it is her home.’
Diana took some small satisfaction when a Sunday newspaper accurately detailed Camilla’s comings and goings, even reporting on the unmarked Ford estate car the Prince used to drive the 12 miles to Middlewick House. This was further authenticated by a former policeman at Highgrove, Andrew Jacques, who sold his story to a national newspaper. ‘Mrs Parker Bowles certainly figures larger in the Prince’s life at Highgrove than Princess Di,’ he claimed, a view endorsed by many of Diana’s friends.
So who was the woman who excited Diana’s feelings? From the moment photographs of Camilla fluttered from Prince Charles’s diary during their honeymoon, the Princess of Wales harboured every kind of suspicion, resentment and jealousy about the woman Charles loved and lost during his bachelor days. Camilla is from sturdy county stock with numerous roots in the aristocracy. She is the daughter of the late Major Bruce Shand, a well-to-do wine merchant, Master of Foxhounds and Vice Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex. Her brother, who died in 2014, was the adventurer and author Mark Shand, who was once an escort of Bianca Jagger and model Marie Helvin, before he married Clio Goldsmith, the niece of the grocery millionaire, the late James Goldsmith. Camilla is related to Lady Elspeth Howe, wife of the late Lord Howe, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the millionaire builder, the late Lord Ashcombe. Her great-grandmother was Alice Keppel who for many years was the mistress of Edward VII. She was married to a serving Army officer and once said that her job was to ‘curtsy first and then leap into bed’.
In his bachelor days Andrew Parker Bowles, who is related to the Earls of Derby and Cadogan and the Duke of Marlborough, was a dashing and popular escort among society debutantes. Before his marriage at the Guards Chapel in July 1973, the charming cavalry officer was a companion for Princess Anne and Sir Winston Churchill’s granddaughter Charlotte. A former brigadier, he was holder of the improbable title ‘Silver Stick in Waiting to the Queen’ and it was in this capacity that he organized the celebration parade along the Mall to mark the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday.
Charles first met Camilla in 1972 while he was serving in the Navy and she was dating his polo friend Andrew Parker Bowles, then a captain in the Household Cavalry. He was immediately smitten by this vivacious, attractive young woman who shared his passion for hunting and polo. According to the Prince’s biographer, Penny Junor, he fell deeply in love with Camilla. ‘She was in love with him and would have married him at the drop of a hat. Alas, he never asked her. He dithered and hedged his bets, and could not resist the charms of other women, until Camilla gave up on him. It was only when she was irretrievably gone that the Prince realized what he had lost.’
Diana frequently discussed her concerns about Camilla with James Gilbey. He provided a sympathetic ear as Diana poured out her feelings of anger and anguish about Camilla. He said that she was unable to put out of her mind the one-time relationship Camilla enjoyed with Prince Charles. ‘As a result their marriage is a charade. The whole prospect of Camilla drives her spare. I can understand it. I mean what the hell is that woman doing in her house? This is what she sees as the gross injustice of the thing.’
Gilbey, a motor-trade executive, knew Diana from the age of 17 but became much closer to her when they met at a party hosted by Julia Samuel. They talked long into the night about their respective love lives – he about a failed romance, she about her fading marriage. One of their loving late-night telephone conversations from this time was later to be made embarrassingly public. The so-called Squidgygate tapes revealed that Gilbey and the Princess were more than friends. However, in the summer of 1989 she was concerned about winning her husband back and forcing him to make a break with ‘the Highgrove Set’. He recalled: ‘There was enormous pride at stake. Her sense of rejection, by her husband and the royal system, was apparent.’
At that time she was under pressure from her own family and the royal family to try and make a new start. Diana even agreed that another baby might provide a solution to the problem. However, her olive branch was met with the negative indifference which then characterized their relations. At times the waves of anger, frustration, wounded pride and sense of rejection threatened to overwhelm her. When Prince Charles was convalescing from his broken right arm in 1990, he spent his days at Highgrove or Balmoral where Camilla Parker Bowles was a regular visitor. Diana stayed at Kensington Palace, unwanted, unloved and humiliated. She unburdened her feelings to Gilbey: ‘James, I’m just so fed up with it. If I let it get to me I will just upset myself more. So the thing to do is to involve myself in my work; get out and about. If I stop to think I’ll go mad.’
As a mutual friend, who watched the royal couple’s gradual estrangement, noted: ‘You can’t blame Diana for the anger she must feel given the fact that her husband appears to have this long-standing friendship with another woman. The marriage has deteriorated too much to want to win him back. It’s just too late.’
In the early 1990s, Diana’s renewed self-confidence and her changed priorities, combined with skilful counselling, blunted the anger she felt towards Camilla. As her marriage crumbled, she began to see Camilla as a less threatening figure and more of a useful means of keeping her husband out of her life. None the less, there were times when she still found her husband’s indifference deeply wounding. When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain, just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy in 1991 on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. During a rare, family summer holiday when the Prince and Princess and their children joined other guests on a Greek millionaire’s yacht Diana noted that her husband kept in touch with Camilla by telephone.
They would meet socially on occasion but there was no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. At social engagements they were at pains to avoid each other. Diana developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watched Charles when he looked in her direction or simply evaded her gaze. ‘It was a morbid game,’ said a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement.
In December 1991 all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who had died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in
tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles, who had only known the Romseys for a short time, was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Waleses’ deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective, Ken Wharfe, to help calm her.
The incident at the memorial service brought to the surface her resentment at her treatment by the royal system and the charade of life at Kensington Palace. Shortly afterwards she vented that anger and frustration when she spoke to a close friend. She made clear that her sense of duty impelled her to fulfil her obligations as the Princess of Wales yet her difficult private life led her seriously to consider leaving the royal family.
Amid the wreckage of their relationship there were still friends who felt that the rage and jealousy Diana felt towards her husband was a reflection of her innermost desire to win him back. Those observers were in a minority. Most were deeply pessimistic about the future. Oonagh Toffolo noted: ‘I had great hopes until a year ago, now I have no hope at all. It would need a miracle. It is a great pity that these two people with so much to give to the world can’t give it together.’
A similar conclusion had been reached by a friend, who had discussed Diana’s troubles with her at length. She said: ‘If he had done the work in the early days and had the proper concern for his wife, they would have so much more going for them. However, they have now reached a point of no return.’
The words ‘there is no hope’ were often repeated when friends talked about the Waleses’ life together. As one of her closest friends said: ‘She has conquered all the challenges presented to her within the profession and got her public life down to a fine art. But the central issue is that she is not fulfilled as a woman because she doesn’t have a relationship with her husband.’ The continual conflict and suspicion in their private life inevitably coloured their public work. Nominally the Prince and Princess were a partnership, in reality they acted independently, rather like the managing directors of rival companies. As one former member of the Wales Household said: ‘You very quickly learn to choose whose side you are on – his or hers. There is no middle course. There is a magic line that courtiers can cross once or twice. Cross it too often and you are out. That is not a basis for a stable career.’
Similar sentiments were expressed by the small army of executives who passed through Kensington Palace. In 1992 David Archibald, Prince Charles’s financial director, known as the comptroller, abruptly resigned. Staff in both offices felt that the main reason why he was leaving was the difficulty of working in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and jealousy between the two antagonistic offices. As ever the Prince of Wales, who has been described as ‘Britain’s worst boss’, blamed the departure on his wife. Archibald had good reason to throw in the towel. The rivalry between Charles and Diana ranged from the petty to the pathetic. The first sign of this in public was when both made important speeches, Charles about education, Diana about Aids, on the same day. One inevitably stole the thunder from the other and such behaviour was part of a continuing cycle. When the couple returned from a joint visit to Canada in 1991, the Princess wrote a number of thank-you letters to the various charities and government organizations who had arranged the trip. When they were passed to her husband to ‘top and tail’ with his own sentiments he went through each letter and crossed out every reference to ‘we’ and inserted ‘I’ before he was prepared to sign them.
This was not an unusual occurrence. In January 1992, when the Prince sent a bouquet of flowers to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was recovering from a heart condition, he ordered his private secretary Richard Aylard to make sure they were sent only from him, not jointly. It mattered little. Diana arranged a special meeting whereby she flew to the hospital in Rome to see the woman she so admired. Again, during a planning meeting for their joint visit to India in February 1992, it was felt that Diana should concentrate on promoting family planning issues. ‘I think we will change your profile from Aids to family planning,’ remarked a diplomat who was impressed by her performance in Pakistan. When Prince Charles was asked about the idea he complained that he wanted to spearhead that particular issue. For once Diana told staff to ignore ‘the spoiled boy’. As one of her closest friends said: ‘It’s time he started seeing her as an asset, not as a threat, and accepted her as an equal partner. At the moment her position within the organization is a very lonely one.’
Consultation between the couple was invariably adversarial, taking place within an atmosphere of mutual recrimination. It was so unusual to have a calm discussion about problems that when the Prince approached Diana to consider a confidential report about staff abuses of the royal name, prepared by a senior courtier, the Princess, used to curt indifference, was genuinely surprised. There was concern that the royal name and royal notepaper were being used to acquire clothes discounts, theatre tickets and other perks. While the issue required delicate handling, the most surprising aspect of the episode was the liaison between the Prince and Princess.
While their normal working relations were pervaded by an atmosphere of intrigue and competitive resentment, Diana still felt a sense of responsibility towards her husband. When he returned to public duties in 1991, following a lengthy recuperation from his broken arm, he intended to make a bizarre ‘statement’ regarding the intense speculation surrounding his injury. He instructed his staff to find a false arm with a hook on the end so that he could appear in public like a real-life Captain Hook. Diana was consulted by senior courtiers who were worried that he would make a fool of himself. She suggested that a false arm should be obtained but then conveniently mislaid shortly before he was to attend a medical meeting in Harley Street, central London. While Charles was annoyed by the subterfuge, his staff were relieved that his dignity had been preserved thanks to Diana’s timely intervention.
It would be a mistake to assume that the contest between the Prince and Princess of Wales was fought on even terms. The Princess may have been the bigger attraction to the press and the public but inside the palace walls she was dependent upon revenues from the Duchy of Cornwall, controlled by her husband, to fund her private office while her junior status within the royal hierarchy meant that Prince Charles always had the final say. Everything from her attendance at his planning meetings, to the composition of joint overseas tours and the office structure, was ultimately decided by the Prince of Wales. When she suggested she start a ‘Princess of Wales Trust’ to raise money for her various charities he refused to countenance the idea, knowing that it would take away kudos and cash from his own Prince’s Trust charity.
During the Gulf crisis the Princess and her sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, independently came up with the idea of visiting British troops stationed in the Saudi Arabian theatre of operations. They planned to fly out together and were rather looking forward to driving round the desert in tanks and meeting the boys in khaki. However, the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, intervened. The scheme was shelved as it was thought that it would be more appropriate if a more senior royal represented the family. So Prince Charles flew to the Gulf while the Princess of Wales was assigned the supporting task of travelling to Germany to meet the wives and families of troops.
The constant needle and edge in their working relationship was matched by a cloak of secrecy the warring offices threw around their rival operations. Diana had to use all her guile to tease out information from her husband’s office before she flew to Pakistan on her first major solo overseas tour in 1991. She was due to stop over in Oman where Prince Charles was trying to woo the Sultan to win funding for an architectural college. Curious by nature, Diana wanted to know more but realized that a di
rect approach to Prince Charles or his senior advisers would receive a dusty response. Instead she penned a short memo to the Prince’s private secretary, Commander Richard Aylard, and innocently asked if there was anything in the way of briefing notes she needed for the short stopover in Oman. The result was that, as she was travelling on official Foreign Office business, the Prince was forced to reveal his hand.
In this milieu of sullen suspicion, secrecy was a necessary and constant companion. Caution was her watchword. There were plenty of eyes and ears as well as police video cameras to catch the sound of a voice raised in anger or the sight of an unfamiliar visitor. Tongues wag and stories circulate with electrifying efficiency. This was why, when she was learning about her bulimic condition, she hid books on the subject from prying eyes. She dared not bring home tapes from her astrology readings nor read the satirical magazine Private Eye with its wickedly accurate portrayal of her husband in case it attracted unfavourable comment. The telephone was her lifeline and she spent hours chatting to friends: ‘Sorry about the noise, I was trying to get my tiara on,’ she told one disconcerted friend.
She was a hostage to fortune, held captive by her public image, bound by the constitutional circumstance of her unique position as the Princess of Wales and a prisoner of her day-to-day life. Her friends referred to the acronym POW as meaning ‘prisoner of war’. Indeed the cloying claustrophobia of royal life merely served to exacerbate her genuine fear of confined spaces. This was brought home to her in 1991 when she went to the National Hospital for a body scan because her doctors feared she may have a cervical rib, a benign growth that often traps nerves below the shoulder blade. Like many patients, once she was inside the enclosed scanning machine, she felt very panicky and needed to be calmed down with a tranquillizer. It meant that an operation which should have lasted 15 minutes took two hours.
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