Tutor’s intimate record of life with the Royals
A YOUNG boy enjoys a day out with his mum, aunt and grandma – but the touching black and white photograph is no ordinary family memento.
The picture is part of a previously unseen treasure trove of pictures, children’s artwork and heartfelt letters that lift the lid on daily Royal life.
The collection, assembled by Prince Charles’ former tutor Michael Farebrother, gives an intimate but deep insight into the Windsors – including the Queen’s love for her favourite horse, Betsy, and her grief at losing her father King George-VI.
There are personal letters sent from palaces, as well as 22 informal photos and some endearing artwork by Charles and the then Princess Anne.
It is estimated the rich archive, spanning 40 years, will sell for up to £80,000 at auction next month.
As a Grenadier Guard, Mr Farebrother patrolled Windsor Castle in the Second World War, later becoming young Charles’ private tutor.
In an early letter from the Queen, she tells him of her feelings of “emptiness and loneliness” and “unbearable” sorrow at the death of her father in February 1952.
But she stoically declared “I have a job to do” just days after ascending the throne. The Queen wrote that the king’s death was “so much worse” for her mother and younger sister Margaret.
When Lord Louis Mountbatten – uncle of her husband Prince Philip – was murdered by the IRA at Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, Ireland in August 1979, she wrote to express her doubts that the Troubles in Northern Ireland would ever be resolved.
In a rare instance of royalty discussing politics, the Queen added: “One can only pray that he will not have died in vain and that some good may come of this terrible act of blowing up a family on holiday and will shock people into doing something about Ireland – if only their opinions were not so entrenched.”
Mr Farebrother saw wartime action in Italy then after leaving the Army worked as a teacher and in 1956 was made head at St Peter’s, Seaford, East Sussex. He kept the Royal items in a red clothbound album, dying at Seaford in 1987 aged 67.
The collection is being sold by a close relative via Gorringe’s Auctioneers of Lewes, East Sussex.
Several of the black and white photos show eight-year-old Prince Charles playing around in the grounds of Windsor Castle, while one comic shot has him dwarfed by an oversized coat, wearing a black bowler and carrying an umbrella.
His mother is shown patting her adored Betsy and in a letter to Mr Farebrother, dated February 10 1957, the Queen thanks him for sending a photo taken at Sandringham of the horse – which she accepts jokingly looked more like a camel.
She wrote: “I am only sorry that the camera proves that my dear Betsy is much more like a camel than a horse, which is what I am always
being told and never believe!” The Queen went on to thank him for tutoring Charles at her Norfolk residence over the Christmas holidays of 1956: “It made all the difference to him and he so obviously enjoyed you being there.”
Mr Farebrother wrote to his father the previous New Year with the Royals saw him dance with the Queen Mother before “Princess Margaret puts on a rock ‘n’ roll record and the children caper”.
Four items relate to when he taught Charles, including a drawing by him of an English landscape – and handwriting practice that involved the prince filling in gaps of events such as “William I 1066”.
In 1982 the Prince of Wales wrote to Mr Farebrother on the death of Lt Col Herbert ‘H’ Jones, who was awarded the Victoria Cross in the Falklands War – Mr Farebrother taught him, and his sons, at Seaford. Prince Charles said: “The very least I could do was write to [his widow] Sara – I only wish I could do more” before signing off “with warmest wishes and happy memories of those far-off tutoring days!”
In another letter, Prince Charles recalled from his days at London’s Hill House School from 1956 to 1958 “the gym mistress who had large thighs and shouted ‘Commence!’ very loudly”.
Philip Taylor, of Gorringes, called the collection “a unique and historically significant album of candid correspondence, hitherto unpublished photographs, and ephemera”.
The album will be sold on December 7.