The Crown made Charles’s schooldays at Gordonstoun seem like Colditz in kilts — the reality was very different...

As revealed in a new book by INGRID SEWARD, who says the boys DID have hot showers and central heating — and that the king told her it was the making of him

IT’S WIDELY thought that King Charles hated every moment of his five years at Gordonstoun — once nicknamed Colditz in kilts for its Spartan regime. Anyone watching the second season of The Crown is left with the impression that as a pupil there he was bullied, then frozen to the marrow (with ice-cold showers, no central heating and windows left open in winter).

As we shall see, however, this is a fictional embellishment of what really took place while Charles was there from 1962-67. Indeed, in some respects, Gordonstoun would prove the making of him.

THE first few years of Charles’s upbringing were redolent of the Victorian era. Indeed, had the clock been set back a century, it’s doubtful he would have noticed much difference.

In 1948, after a month spent in a round wicker basket in his mother’s dressing room, he was removed to the nursery. Princess Elizabeth had caught measles and been sent to Sandringham alone to recuperate.

From then on, throughout his formative early years, Charles was cared for by two Scottishborn women: nanny Helen Lightbody and nursery maid, Mabel Anderson, two workingclass women who were more influential in his daily life than either of his parents.

While teaching Charles impeccable manners, they provided him with cuddles and a cocoon of security. They also insisted that, even as a baby, he should be treated with the respect due a future king.

The nursery footman, John Gibson, recalled that ‘Nana’ Lightbody obliged him to refer to him as His Royal Highness at all times: ‘There would have been real trouble if I had arrived at the nursery door with a tray and said: “Here’s Charles’s breakfast” or even “Here is Prince Charles’s breakfast.” I had to remember to say: “I have brought His Royal Highness’s breakfast.”’

When Charles was just seven, Helen Lightbody was abruptly ‘retired’ — apparently because her long-standing disagreement with Prince Philip over how Charles should be raised (Philip thought she was spoiling Charles) came to a head. The little prince was distraught.

He never forgot her, keeping in touch all her life, and inviting her to his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969 and to his 21st birthday celebrations. When she died in 1987, he sent an ornate wreath to her funeral with a handwritten personal message.

Fortunately for Charles, Nanny Anderson, who’d been hired in her early 20s, was there for the duration. Now in her late 90s, she lives on the Windsor estate in a grace-and-favour apartment which Charles paid workers to decorate to her taste.

AS A LITTLE boy, he had an unfailing routine. He’d be taken to see his mother every morning at nine, and engagements permitting, she’d come to nursery in the evenings. But that was about the extent of it; mother and son lived largely separate lives.

The queen’s former private secretary, the late Martin Charteris, commented: ‘The queen is not good at showing affection. She’d always be doing her duty.’

She had really very little to do with Charles, he said. ‘He’d have an hour after tea with Mummy when she was in the country, but somehow even those contacts were lacking in warmth.

‘His father would be rather grumpy, about almost anything. And neither of them was there very much.’ By the standards of the 1950s, Charles was extremely privileged. He had his own pony; he’d flown in a private plane from Scotland to London and he had his own carriage in the Royal Train. But his parents remained distant.

They kissed him goodnight but seldom hugged him. For months on end, they would disappear on far-flung royal tours.

Over-protected, he wasn’t encouraged to make friends with other boys. It was no wonder Charles formed deep relationships with the nannies and later with his governess Miss Peebles, known as ‘Mipsy’: they were the most important women in his childhood.

AGED eight, Charles was sent to Cheam School, his father’s old prep school, in Hampshire. The queen recalled her son shuddering with terror on the way there.

For several nights, he cried himself to sleep — quietly, into his pillow, hopeful that no one would hear him. The memory still hurt, Charles said many years later, adding that this had been one of the unhappiest times in his life.

He’d never had to fend for himself, never learned to fight his corner, never travelled on a bus or been into a shop, and knew nothing of money except that his mother’s head was on the coins.

On top of that, he was uncoordinated and overweight, which may have contributed to his lack of success at games.

The maths master at Cheam, David Munir, who’d been delegated to keep an eye on him, recalled seeing Charles standing apart, bewildered and frightened. Beset by shyness, he had to be forced to try to make any friends at all.

In desperate need of comfort and safety, he’d run to the nursery whenever he returned from school — before even greeting his parents. He never confided the extent of his unhappiness to them.

At school, recalled Princess Anne: ‘He would write to Mipsy every day. He was heartbroken. He used to cry into his letters and say: “I miss you.” ’

The governess was equally distressed by the absence of the little boy she’d come to love. They corresponded until she died.

Her death, in 1968, left Charles inconsolable. She had passed away in her Buckingham Palace apartment, and her body hadn’t been found until more than 48 hours later by a footman.

IT WAS his father who decided Charles should go on to Gordonstoun in Moray, Scotland, where Philip had been a founder pupil. He felt his son would benefit from its focus on both physical and academic disciplines.

Another benefit was that it would be less accessible to photographers and reporters than Eton. At that point, Charles hated being the centre of attention; he just wanted to be like everyone else — though, of course, that was impossible.

After Prince Philip deposited Charles at his new school, instead of driving away like the other parents, he joined the headmaster for lunch. He was then chauffeured to Lossiemouth, where he got into a plane. Piloting it himself, he dipped low over the school, giving his son a farewell tilt of the wings as he flew off. Charles was mortified.

Gordonstoun was not as tough as most reports have suggested. Charles’s house, Windmill Lodge, had central heating. The cold showers of the 1960s were never more than a quick run-through and were always preceded by much longer, hotter ones. The early morning run was no more than a 45-yard jog up the road.

But it was still tough enough. My late husband, Ross Benson, a former pupil who was in the same class and house as the prince, recalled: ‘The “torture”, as we knew it, would take place every morning at 7.20am unless there was a thick frost on the ground.

‘Prince Charles would come out with the rest of us dressed in white shorts and plimsolls, stumbling and half asleep. Within minutes,