The prince just smiled purposely, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Polls mean nothing to me,’ he said, before looking me straight in the eye and adding, ‘You see, I’m in it for the long term.’
POSTSCRIPT – ‘I HAVEN’T GOT TIME’
‘When Dumfries House first came to my attention in 2007, my vision for this Palladian mansion and its contents was to restore them to their former glory. In doing so, I hoped that present and future generations would be able to visit and enjoy the different facets of life and times of a bygone era and to appreciate British craftsmanship at its best.’
LETTER FROM HRH THE PRINCE CHARLES, DUKE OF ROTHESAY
Prince Charles, known as the Duke of Rothesay when in Scotland, is proud of his Scottish ancestry. Claude George Bowes-Lyon, fourteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and father of the Queen Mother, was his great-grandfather. He died in 1944, aged eighty-nine, in Glamis Castle, Scotland, four years before Charles was born.
Charles’s Scottish titles, and the responsibility that comes with them, really matter to him. When on duty in Scotland he is often pictured wearing a traditional kilt with a matching tie and smart jacket, and will happily and publicly enjoy a dram of a local single-malt whisky, even when the cameras are present. He seems, those close to him say, to love every minute when he is north of the border, on and off duty.
The Prince’s full style when in Scotland is His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. Just as the Dukedom of Rothesay is held by the incumbent heir to the throne, so too is the Earldom of Carrick, a title applied to the ruler of Carrick; a district which is now in southern Ayrshire. It has been strongly associated with the Scottish crown since Robert the Bruce, who had inherited the earldom from his maternal kin, became King of Scots in 1306, reigning until his death in 1329. Since the fifteenth century the title has automatically been held by the heir apparent to the throne, hence Charles is the current earl. Why does this matter? Because it shows the prince’s personal passion for a United Kingdom and the monarchy’s ties with the Scottish nation. It is also key to who and what the prince is.
In September 2018, shortly before publication of this book, I was invited, along with other representatives of the British media, to the Dumfries House estate, situated near the old mining town and village of Cumnock and New Cumnock. It is a stunning part of the world, but the closure of mines and factories has had a devastating impact on the local community. Many, many jobs have been lost, leading to the area being called the worst place to live in the country. To say that, however, is to ignore the breathtaking landscape around New Cumnock, a village that is rightly proud of its association with Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns. There is even a statue of him in the main street, which is not surprising because his famous lyrical poem ‘Sweet Afton’ immortalised the Afton Water, which rises in the hills of New Cumnock and joins the River Nith at the heart of the village. There is a trail dedicated to Burns, too, and plaques, mainly donated by New Cumnock Burns Club, on several buildings in and around the village.
The Dumfries House story is certainly worth hearing, not least because it neatly encapsulates who and what the prince – Earl of Carrick – is all about. In 2007, the Palladian house, nestled in the Ayrshire countryside, was about to be sold off and with it much of the old furniture and antiques inside. The prince was saddened by this and saw an opportunity to save it and also support the community he serves. He acted quickly and decided to use his various charities to buy it, putting down £20 million of the £45 million needed, to start the process and save the house for the nation. Built in the 1750s, the house was designed by John and Robert Adam for the fifth Earl of Dumfries, and was sold to the nation – effectively, to the group headed by Prince Charles – in 2007.
Saving an old house is commendable, but what Charles has achieved in a decade has also helped save a community depressed by years of neglect after the closure of the coal mines. The pit closures in Ayrshire had a devastating effect: a loss of jobs, a failure of the local economy, and the slow, painful demise of the entire community.
Some question the importance of saving one stately home through his charitable foundation. Can it really make a difference? But the fact is that it has. Opening the grounds to people free of charge, employing local people to carry out the work to renovate the house and transform the grounds, building cottages for rent and hiring out the estate for weddings have certainly helped. The prince has gone further, however. Kitchens have been built to train the local people, many of whom had never even considered cooking as a career. The long-term unemployed have been trained in front-of-house hospitality; schoolchildren are regular visitors to the estate for lessons on how food is grown or produced. He has gone further, building a sports hall for locals to hire, creating accommodation for Scouts and Guides and for companies wanting a place for team-building. The profits from Dumfries House have paid for the renovation of the local town hall and for the rebuilding of New Cumnock’s outdoor swimming pool, only the third in Scotland, as well as stimulating the construction of new affordable housing. The impact on the grateful community has been positive and dramatic.
What impressed me after my visit there was how successful Prince Charles’s idea has been. He is rightly proud that his idea has given New Cumnock in particular, often voted one of the worst places to live in the UK, a lift. The renovation of the town hall, which doubles up as a cinema, as well as of the swimming pool, have made a huge difference to the village. Dumfries House is now the second biggest employer in the area: the 200 employees include the staff on the estate, the lifeguards at the new swimming pool, and the man working in the reception of perhaps the best village community hall I have ever seen. Before the money came from Dumfries House to renovate the hall, the local council was planning to knock it down. Even the prince’s wife, Camilla, was sceptical when she first visited the spooky old building. (It is even understood that an exorcism was held there before the renovation began.) Now it is returned to its former glory. It was only Charles’s vision and courage to take on a huge loan that have breathed new life into the house, the estate and the local community.
Charles and Camilla chatted freely when at the house with me and the select group of UK media representatives in a friendly, off-the-record get-together ahead of the prince’s seventieth birthday. They were in good spirits and excellent hosts. Later we all attended a black-tie dinner attended by supporters of his project. I sat next to Michael Fawcett, who has done so much to make the Dumfries House project a success. Michael, so often derided in the media, told me over dinner that the one thing out of all the stories written about him that still irks him is the claim that when he was Charles’s valet many years ago, he squeezed toothpaste on the prince’s toothbrush. ‘It is just not true,’ he said. I believed him. He also said when I asked him what stands out for him about the prince, ‘His sense of humour.’ I couldn’t help but agree.
After dinner I spoke to the prince again and asked him what he would like for his birthday from the British media. ‘Well, not a garden gnome’ he joked. (This was because the UK royal photographers had commissioned a gnome with a long telephoto lens for his sixtieth birthday.) He thought about it for a second or two, and said he would like two park benches for Dumfries House made by students in the workshops on the estate – the inscriptions he would leave to us. Sadly, my colleagues from the national press did not want to contribute, but fortunately I managed to secure the funding for the benches.
My few days at Dumfries House were an illuminating experience. It was chance to join the dots and finally appreciate what the prince is all about; how his vision is becoming a living, working reality. Here was an old estate with a fine house set to be demolished by the local council. It was saved by his vision, tenacity and courage to invest. The result, eleven years on, is a project in which the positive effects permeate into many places in desperate need of help
.
Of course, Cumnock, New Cumnock and the surrounding area still need more jobs, more shops, more investment and businesses to employ more people, including the local apprentices trained by Charles’s charity, the Prince’s Trust. Of course there are also many places where the housing is poor. But without Charles’s intervention in saving Dumfries House I dread to think what the area would be like today.
One of the first people I met when I turned up a day early for the media get-together at The Lodge of Dumfries House was Rodney Cook, of the Hearst Foundation, the philanthropic organisation founded to reflect the concerns of the American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. Rodney, from Atlanta, Georgia, told me he was there to see the prince about a panelled room from Gwydir Castle in North Wales. William Randolph Hearst had acquired all the room’s panelling about a century ago and shipped it to America, and Rodney was there to discuss with the prince how it could be returned to the original castle to restore it to its former glory.
Rodney is the son of civil rights leader Rodney Mims Cook, a close friend of Dr Martin Luther King. Together the two men worked with the leadership of the black community to help keep Atlanta peaceful during the volatile 1960s and 1970s, when there was so much death and destruction.
It just so happened that, on his deathbed at the age of eighty-nine, Rodney’s father had charged his son to rebuild Atlanta’s Mims Park, a peace park in the city centre established by his family in the nineteenth century. Later, a school had been built on the original park, which by around 1917 had grown greatly, almost taking over the area. The local community, like that in Cumnock and New Cumnock after the closure of the mines, languished over time.
In 2009, Atlanta’s Democrat mayor, Shirley Franklin, asked Rodney to meet with the Prince of Wales at Poundbury, Charles’s experimental new town on the outskirts of Dorchester in Dorset. After the meeting he became the first American trustee of the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Architecture.
During their exchanges the prince recalled the original Mims Park, and then asked Mayor Franklin to allow his protégé Rodney to rebuild the park, noting that the peace narrative and distinctive beauty of the design would rehabilitate thousands of acres well beyond the organic centre of the park.
Now, years later, the $60,000,000 development is under way and will be half completed by December 2018, the other half and the buildings by the following year.
On 27 August 2018 Dr King’s daughter Bernice wrote to Rodney: ‘I would like to sincerely thank you for honoring my parents in developing Cook Park. My mother and father had an indelible impact not only on our great country, but also on the world and I am delighted to see that your park is honoring their legacy in such a powerful way’
To a considerable extent, all of this happened because of the Prince of Wales. His influence is considerable; he inspires others to do their best to reach the pinnacle by connecting people, tapping into those he knows can do certain things, and letting them run with it.
Rodney told me at Dumfries House, ‘His Royal Highness completely changed my life, and now my city of 6,500,000 people will see his influence for the better for centuries. I can never thank him enough.’
SELECT BIBLIOGRPHY
Bagehot, Walter, The English Constitution, 1867
Bedell Smith, Sally, Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, 2017
Benson, Ross, Charles: The Untold Story, 1993
Berry, Wendy, The Housekeeper’s Diary, 1995
Bogdanor, Prof. Vernon, The Monarchy and the Constitution, 1995
Bower, Tom, Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles, 2018
Charles, HRH, Prince of Wales, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, 2010
Dimbleby, Jonathan, Prince of Wales: A Biography, 1994
Hamilton, Alan, The Real Charles, 1988
Holden, Anthony, Charles, Prince of Wales, 1979
Jephson, Patrick, Shadows of a Princess, 2000
Jobson, Robert, The New Royal Family, 2013
Junor, Penny, Charles: Victim or Villain?, 1998
———, Prince William: Born to be King: An intimate portrait, 2013
———, The Duchess: The Untold Story, 2018
Loades, David, Princes of Wales: Royal Heirs in Waiting, 2008
Mayer, Catherine, 2015, Charles: The Heart of a King, 2015
Wharfe, Ken, and Jobson, Robert, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, 2002; new edn 2016
———, Guarding Diana: Protecting the Princess Around the World, 2017
INDEX
(The initials HRH represent His Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales)
Abbas, Mahmoud 1
Abdullah, King of Jordan 1
Adams, Gerry 1, 2
Akufo-Addo, Nana 1
Al Jazeera 1
Albert, Prince 1, 2, 3, 4
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence 1
Alderton, Clive 1, 2
Alexandra, Princess 1
Alexandra, Princess, the Honourable Lady Ogilvy in Bridcut film, see Elizabeth at 1
Alice, Princess 1, 2
Anderson, Eric 1
Andrew, Prince, Duke of York 1, 2 Queen steps out with 1
and Remembrance Sunday 1
Andrews, Insp. Mark 1
Annan, Kofi 1
Anne, Princess Royal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in Bridcut film, see Elizabeth at 1
and Remembrance Sunday 1, 2
Any Questions 1
Argyll, Duke of 1
Australia 1, 2 HRH’s many visits to 1
referendum 1
Bagehot, Walter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Baldwin, Stanley 1
Balkans 1, 2
Ball, Peter 1
Balmoral 1, 2, 3, 4
Barr, Ross 1
Bashir, Martin 1, 2
Beck, Peter 1
Beckwith-Smith, Anne 1
Bedell Smith, Sally 1
Bee Gees 1
Beharry, Lance Sgt Johnson 1
Bellamy, David (Red Cross) 1
Benson, Ross 1
Bettles, Insp. Trevor 1
Bevan, Aneurin 1
Bight, Walter 1
Birthday Patronage Celebration 1, 2
Bishop, Julie 1, 2, 3
Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Bogdanor, Prof. Vernon Bernard 1
Bolland, Mark 1, 2
Bower, Tom 1
Brabourne, Lady 1
Brexit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Bridcut, John 1, 2, 3 (see also Elizabeth at 90)
Britannia, HMY 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Brown, Gordon 1
Brown, Harold 1
Brummell, Paul 1
Burbidge, Philip Kinghorn 1
Burrell, Paul 1, 2
Bush, George W. 1, 2, 3, 4
Business in the Community 1, 2, 3
Caernarfon Castle 1, 2, 3
Caerphilly Castle 1
Cairns, Alun 1
Cam Force One 1, 2
Cameron, David 1, 2
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 passim; 1
and Australia visit 1
busy engagement programmes 1
Dame Grand Cross, appointed 1
Diana blames, in Panorama 1
and energy usage 1
engagement of, to HRH 1
Gulf tour by 1
HRH talks of unfair portrayal of 1
HRH torn between Diana and 1, 2
HRH’s marriage to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
HRH’s stages of relationship with 1
on HRH’s workload 1
Ireland visit by 1, 2, 3
key Europe visits by 1
lies and myths concerning 1
and Lyrarakis family 1
and Meghan 1, 2
possible title for 1, 2
and public acceptance 1, 2
public work performed by 1
and Queen’s 90th birthday 1
and Remembrance Sunday 1, 2
and royal tra
vel, cost of 1
seen as one of a double act 1
and Wales festivities 1
and wine 1, 2
Campbell, Alastair 1
Carey, Lord 1, 2
Case, Simon 1
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge 1, 2, 3, 4 and birth of new prince 1, 2
marriage of 1
Catherine of Aragon 1, 2
Ceau sescu, Nicolae 1
Charles I 1
Charles: A Biography (Holden) 1
Charles, Prince of Wales: adultery of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
architecture criticism by 1, 2
attacked with a flower 1
and Australia, latest visit to 1
author’s one-to-one interview with 1 passim
birth of 1
birthday of, 70th 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Birthday Patronage Celebration of 1
and Brexit 1
in Bridcut film, see Elizabeth at 1
busts of 1
busy engagements programmes of 1, 2, 3
and call to skip a generation 1
Camilla’s marriage to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
charities supported by 1, 2, 3
Charles at Seventy Page 26