Desperation over Diana CHARLES & CAMILLA’S WAR OF WORDS
THEIR BID TO WIN THE PUBLIC’S APPROVAL LED TO A BITTER BATTLE WITH THE PRINCESS
In an explosive new book, investigative journalist Tom Bower has dropped a series of bombshells about the next in line for the throne. Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles paints the royal in an unflattering light, describing him as a discontented future king who says his life is “utter hell”.
Amongst the allegations are claims of his over-the-top spending, over-staffing –
Tom believes he has 149 staff, including gardeners he orders out with a torch at night, “deployed to prowl through the undergrowth and handpick slugs from the leaves of plants” – and his unusual habits, including taking all but the kitchen sink when he travels.
On one occasion, Tom alleges the prince took his own mattress, toilet seat, toilet paper and two “landscapes of the Scottish Highlands” when visiting a friend in north-east England.
Tom, who has previously written unauthorised biographies of Tony Blair and Richard Branson, says he interviewed more than 120 people for his book. But like his previous books, this one is entirely unauthorised and Clarence House has stated that no comment will be issued on the allegations made within it.
Amongst the allegations, Tom asserts that Prince
Charles (69) and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (70), engaged in a orchestrated battle to paint Princess Diana as a scheming hysteric in the mid ‘90s.
Here, in this extract from the book, Tom describes the pair’s secret battle to win hearts and minds by launching a secret plot against the princess.
After her marriage broke down, Princess Diana used every weapon in her arsenal to vilify her husband’s mistress, an upper-middle-class housewife from W iltshire.
She briefed media contacts against her, famously confronted her at a high-society party and then went on television, eyes dramatically rimmed with kohl, to denounce her as a marriage-wrecking adulteress.
And how did Camilla
Parker Bowles react to this extraordinary barrage? She kept her head down, taking care to be neither seen nor heard in public. Yet behind the scenes, she was not only seething but preparing to launch a counter-attack.
Her friends, at least, were never in any doubt about what Camilla thought of her lover’s young wife. In the early days of the marriage, she’d dismissively called the princess “a mouse”. Later, she’d refer to her as “that mad cow”.
Indeed, Camilla’s true feelings about Diana could be gleaned simply by asking to use the guest lavatory at her home,
Ray Mill, in Wiltshire. While
Charles’ loo in nearby Highgrove featured cartoons of himself, her own was festooned with unflattering cartoons of his wife.
In the one and only confrontation between the two women, Diana’s anger was evenly matched by the older woman’s fury – but Camilla was better at hiding it.
Both she and her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, had been among the guests invited to a smart birthday party in 1989 at Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s house in Ham, near Richmond. Then Diana had arrived unexpectedly.
While the rest of the room fell suddenly silent, she challenged Camilla to leave Charles alone.
Anxious to avoid a public scene, Camilla controlled her emotions. Then, coolly, she took the princess to task for “unacceptable behaviour in a private house”.
In private, however, she let rip. Diana, she told friends, was poorly placed to complain. After all, Camilla herself had just one lover, while the princess was “working her way through the Life Guards”.
It was an astonishingly b****y remark, but Diana was equally adept at underhand thrusts. “Charles is obsessed by Camilla’s t**s and I haven’t got t**s as big as Camilla’s,” she told one journalist.
The princess was already well ahead in the battle for hearts and minds when her secretly recorded interview was shown on Panorama in 1995. “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” she said.
This devastating indictment effectively forced Camilla into seclusion for a year, while Charles doggedly continued with his scheduled appearances.
Soon after the Panorama programme, he visited a market in Croydon, South London, where he ate jellied eels and met locals in a pub. The media totally ignored his visit.
Yet, on the same day, spectators and journalists had besieged Diana at a Paris fashion show, and she’d ended up dominating the world’s headlines. Dejected, the prince ordered his private secretary to send him only cuttings with good news.
“Mama down the road,” he told a visitor, “reads newspapers; I don’t. It would drive me mad.”
Instead, he listened to Radio 4’s Today programme while on his exercise bike. Occasionally, enraged by an item, he’d throw an object at the radio. The set frequently had to be repaired.
Unlike Charles, however, Camilla was gearing up for a battle. Her lover’s approval ratings in the polls had crashed to less than 10%, and she knew the future looked bleak.
The way things were going, she feared, Charles risked buckling under the pressure – or even failing to inherit the crown.
So in 1996, she turned to Hilary Browne-Wilkinson, the solicitor who’d recently handled her divorce from Andrew
Parker Bowles, asking for advice on what could be done.
This led to a dinner at St James’s Palace with Charles, Hilary and her husband.
Camilla didn’t hold back. Diana, she told her guests, was a “wretched woman” who was creating havoc by refusing to adopt a dignified silence.
Her solicitor agreed, talking sympathetically about Camilla’s frustration at being cast as a selfseeking adulteress while Diana basked in popular esteem.
“I’m not this awful person,” Camilla complained. “I just wish someone would do something about it.”
It was Hilary who suggested hiring Mark Bolland, the well-connected 29-year-old director of the Press Complaints Commission, as a spin-doctor. Prodded by Camilla, the prince agreed. When the two men met, Mark was offered the post of assistant private secretary.
His sole purpose, Charles told him, would be to reverse Camilla’s image as his privileged, fox-hunting mistress, make her acceptable to the public and overcome the Queen’s hostility to them being together.
Later, Camilla took Mark aside to offer some friendly advice. “Never push Charles too hard,” she said. “Always remember his terrible childhood, and how he was bullied at school and by his parents.”
Mark took this advice on board. Although he’d later be blamed for underhand machinations, he never embarked on a project without consulting Charles and Camilla. In fact, much of what he did would be at their suggestion.
And it quickly became clear that Camilla was often the one pulling the strings. Just a few weeks into Mark’s new job, she was contacting him – as well as Hilary and Charles’ lawyer Fiona Shackleton – up to six times a day to discuss the next steps in their campaign to improve her image.
And when Charles called
Mark with instructions, it would often be immediately after he’d had an agitated exchange with Camilla.
“You know, Mark,” the prince would say, in what became a familiar routine, “I think people should be told about...”
At other times, he’d be fixated on the harm he felt his ex-wife had done to him and make derogatory remarks about her sanity.
Diana, he would say, was badly educated, without any
O or A levels, and lacked self-discipline; nor did she have
any interest in theatre, poetry, music or opera (in fact, she loved opera and ballet, and played the piano daily).
Yet despite all Charles and Camilla’s best efforts, her star remained undimmed. At the end of 1996, in a poll of 3000 people, Charles was voted the most hated royal, just above Camilla.
Media spin was not enough: something more had to be done. After some discussion, the prince decided to cooperate with Penny Junor, a journalist who was planning to write a book sympathetic to Camilla. Mark agreed to be the go-between on most issues, but excluding Diana.
And, to launch Camilla, she was to host a fundraiser on September 13, 1997, for the National Osteoporosis Society (her mother had suffered from the condition). And this would mark the start of a five-year campaign to transform her from adulteress into a suitable wife for the heir to the throne.
Invitations were duly sent to 1500 people, including pop stars and other celebrities. Everything seemed set. Then came news of Diana’s car crash in Paris.
Hours after Diana’s death, Robert Higdon – the chief executive of Charles’ charity foundation in America – called an acquaintance at Balmoral, where the royal family was staying.
“What shall we do?” he asked. “Nothing,” came the reply. “Our worries are over.”
‘“Never push Charles too hard,” she said. “Always remember his terrible childhood and how he was bullied”’