The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor

by Penny Junor

  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.’

  TEN

  Camilla and the Future

  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 mentioned my book as a footnote in his own book three years later. He called it ‘a sensitive account of a working partnership which judged that the marriage was, in those terms, “actually very healthy” – a conclusion which, pre-Morton, did not seem so far from the truth as it would do with the benefit of hindsight’. What incensed Diana was the suggestion that, ten years into her marriage, she was happy with this situation; and she set out to tell the world what her life was really like.

  Morton used to play squash with a doctor friend of Diana’s, James Colthurst, and he acted as a go-between. The full truth of Diana’s participation only came out after her death. She had spoken into a tape recorder at Kensington Palace during the summer and autumn of 1991 and Colthurst had delivered the tapes to Morton. The result was explosive: eighteen thousand words on tape and a publishing phenomenon. Diana: Her True Story, which ultimately led to the break-up of the marriage, rocked the monarchy to its foundations. It talked about Diana’s troubled childhood, her feelings of abandonment when her mother left, her bulimia, her husband’s indifference towards her, his obsession with his mistress. The authority of the text was bolstered by on-the-record quotes from some of Diana’s closest friends like James Gilbey (of Squidgygate fame) and old flatmate Carolyn Bartholomew. It talked about the Prince’s shortcomings as a father and the loneliness and isolation Diana had felt for so many years, trapped in a loveless marriage within a hostile court, made worse by a cold and disapproving Royal Family. The book was serialized in the Sunday Times. ‘Diana Driven To Five Suicide Bids By “Uncaring” Charles’ screamed the banner headline, while the Palace went into meltdown. So many incidents revealed in the serialization, such as those occasions on which the Princess had self-harmed, happened at Sandringham; plans ov
er who took the children where were discussed in the privacy of their office. Morton’s sources were good; suspiciously good. And it wasn’t the first time that stories had inexplicably been leaked.

  Robert Fellowes, treading difficult ground, not for the first or last time, as both Diana’s brother-in-law and the Queen’s Private Secretary, asked Diana if she had had anything to do with the book. Diana swore she hadn’t and Fellowes believed her. The Duke of Edinburgh also challenged her and again she denied it; lying, as it turned out in both cases. The chairman of the Press Complaints Commission therefore duly issued a statement condemning the serialization, and was left feeling very foolish and exceedingly angry when Diana went straight round to Carolyn Bartholomew’s house (having telephoned the newspapers to ensure photographers would be waiting) and in a public show of approval embraced her on the doorstep.

  During Ascot Week, very shortly afterwards, while Morton’s book started vanishing from the shelves, the Queen, the Duke, Charles and Diana all sat down together at Windsor to discuss the situation and to see what could be salvaged from the marriage. This was the first time there had ever been a discussion of this kind. Parents of any couple having difficulties in their marriage would be naturally reticent about intervening, uncertain as to whether help would be welcome. But this wasn’t any couple. The breakdown of this marriage had huge implications for the monarchy and yet both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had held back and chosen not to get involved. Andrew Morton was the first person to discover that the Princess had been suffering from bulimia, and the detail in his book was obviously unparalleled, but plenty had already been written about the state of the marriage; it was no secret that Charles and Diana were leading separate lives, seeing separate friends and that the marriage was in trouble. Calling a conference now was too late. Diana had gone public, and, intoxicated with the power she had over the husband who had cheated on her, she announced that she wanted a trial separation.

  The Queen and Duke were sympathetic but were firmly against the idea of separation, and urged them both for the sake of the boys as well as Crown and country to try and find a way of making the marriage work. They all agreed to meet again the next day to talk further, but Diana didn’t show up.

  Two months later the Sun published a transcript of an amorous late-night telephone conversation allegedly between Diana and James Gilbey. Dubbed ‘Squidgygate’ because of the way Gilbey repeatedly referred to her as Squidgy or Squidge, it reinforced Morton’s message. Between endearments, she railed against the Prince and his ‘fucking family’ and said, ‘I’m going to do something dramatic because I can’t stand the confines of this marriage.’

  By Christmas her wish had come true. It had taken one final disastrous tour to Korea, and a botched weekend Charles had planned to have with the children at Sandringham, for the Prince finally to snap and agree there was no purpose in carrying on; the marriage was over and all hope that he and Diana might still be friends was also over. On 9 December 1992 the Prime Minister, John Major, announced their separation in the House of Commons. Julia Cleverdon, chief executive of Business in the Community, was with the Prince of Wales that day. She had worked closely with him for nearly ten years and in all that time, despite innumerable crises, she had never seen him so utterly miserable.

  Diana took the moral high ground. She seemed oblivious of the fact that she too had been unfaithful during their marriage. In fact, she had been the first to do so, and had had not just one lover but a succession. Charles had been unfaithful with one woman. The problem was that it was Camilla Parker Bowles, the same woman he had admitted to having been in love with before he and Diana ever met. In yet another example of the Prince’s unfortunate compulsion to tell the absolute truth he had gone out of his way to explain this to Diana, to reassure her that now that he was engaged to be married there was, and would be, no other woman in his life. And when Diana asked him point-blank if he still loved Camilla, he didn’t say, as anyone with an ounce of common sense would have said, ‘No. You’re the one I love. She and every other woman I’ve ever known is history.’ He said ‘Yes’ and went on to explain that Camilla was very special to him, but then so were a number of other women.

  For a man who is so sensitive and really quite clever at times, it was utterly crass. Diana was insanely jealous of her and it had nothing whatever to do with having a wobbly background and insecure childhood. Find me a young girl who is not jealous of her boyfriend or husband’s ex-lovers. Even if they have never met their predecessors they are jealous – jealous of the idea, jealous of the memories they have of each other; irrational, stupid, deeply destructive, I don’t deny, but true.

  An old family friend, who had also married a man much older than herself, tried to calm Diana. Yes, he’d had girlfriends and some quite serious, but he was thirty-two, that was to be expected. The thing to hang on to, she said, was the fact that it was none of them that he had married – the one he wanted to marry was her.

  There was just one glaring difference here between Diana’s situation and that of any other girl on the eve of her wedding; and Diana was no fool, she knew. Charles was Prince of Wales, he couldn’t marry them; he certainly couldn’t marry Mrs Parker Bowles – she was already married. As she said to Andrew Morton, ‘He’d found the virgin, the sacrificial lamb.’

  And so she became obsessed. A suspicious, insecure girl by nature she imagined an affair where none existed, she imagined him on the telephone to Camilla all the time, discussing his marriage, discussing her. The suspicion and the jealousy ate away at her. She had found a bracelet on Michael Colborne’s desk, with GF engraved on it, that Charles had given to Camilla over lunch two days before the wedding. The GF stood for Girl Friday, his nickname for Camilla. It was with a collection of similar presents for other women who had been kind to him during his days as a bachelor. Diana simply saw it as a token of love and went berserk. Camilla gave Charles a pair of cufflinks and those were the ones he chose to wear on his honeymoon. Proof seemed to be everywhere. He might have stopped seeing her, she reasoned, but that didn’t mean he had stopped loving her. She told Morton that Charles and Camilla had slept together at Buckingham Palace two nights before the wedding. It was fantasy. The Queen had hosted a dinner and ball that night and Charles was up until the early hours with guests; Camilla was long gone; and on the following night he spent most of it talking to his mother’s lady-in waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, who he had known since the age of twelve. All sorts of wild ideas thrashed around inside Diana’s head and no amount of reassurance from her husband helped. She couldn’t exorcize the conviction that her husband loved someone else.

  The Prince of Wales was utterly humiliated by Diana: Her True Story. It painted the blackest portrait; it not only called him a cold and faithless husband and a bad father, but it also questioned his fitness to be king. So much of it was demonstrably untrue and so many stories were a distortion of the truth. People who were witnesses to the events remembered them in essence, but they had a twist to them which always put the Prince in a bad light. He was adamant, nevertheless, that there should be no retaliation and instructed his friends to say nothing.

  Charles has never publicly criticized Diana. Whenever I have pointed this out to people they say, ‘Ah, but he got his friends to do it for him.’ This is untrue. Some of his friends did feel that the injustice meted out to him by Morton’s book was intolerable and I, for one, was encouraged by several of them to try to redress the balance, but they were not thanked for their trouble and neither was I. I had been planning to make the television documentary that Jonathan Dimbleby finally made, to mark the Prince’s twenty-five years as Prince of Wales. I had had discussions with Christopher Martin, the producer of the Prince’s previous films – one on his views about architecture, the other about conservation called The Earth in Balance. Christopher and I had been to a private lunch at Highgrove to discuss it with him. Suddenly I was dropped from the project and discovered very much later the reason why. I had defended him
too vigorously in the media.

  What Morton’s book had done, as none other had done before it, was point the finger at Camilla Parker Bowles as the principal cause of Diana’s unhappiness. Diana had seriously considered calling off the wedding two days before she walked down the aisle, he said, because of Prince Charles’s ‘continuing friendship with Camilla Parker Bowles, the wife of a member of the Queen’s household’. Today the name Camilla Parker Bowles is almost as well known as that of the Prince of Wales, but until 1992 she was scarcely known outside her own circle of friends – and neither was her relationship with the Prince.

  Morton’s book changed all that. It didn’t convince everyone that Charles and Camilla were having an affair. Some thought there was a chance that he had got it wrong, that it was just more tabloid tittle-tattle; but a substantial number of people did believe that what was written in Diana: Her True Story was true, and overnight Camilla’s peaceful existence in the heart of the countryside was shattered. The press set up camp outside her house and followed her wherever she went. She wasn’t safe even in her own garden; photographers were waiting with their long lenses. Hate mail began to arrive accusing her of breaking up the royal marriage. For someone with no experience of being the object of such hatred it was extremely unnerving. It also put her husband in a difficult situation, and wasn’t easy for her two children, Tom and Laura (then both in their teens), or for her elderly parents. But Morton was as nothing compared with what followed in relatively quick succession: the Camillagate tapes, the Dimbleby documentary and Panorama. The first two put an end to Camilla’s twenty-one-year marriage; the third brought the Prince’s marriage to an end.