On His Royal Highness’s Secret Service …
THE name’s Charles, Prince Charles. Licensed to rule. Well, one day.
The heir to the throne seems to be channelling his inner James Bond in a photoshoot released today.
Needing only a Walther pistol and holster to complete the 007 look, he adorns the cover of GQ magazine.
The picture shows Charles with hand in pocket as he strolls in the gardens of Clarence House wearing a dinner jacket that he previously described as ‘snazzy’.
He has a red flower in his lapel and a dandyish black-and-white-checked handkerchief in his breast pocket.
Living up to his nickname of ‘One-Take Charlie’, the result of a lifetime of posing for the cameras, the Prince of Wales completed the photoshoot – to mark his 70th birthday in November – in minutes.
On Wednesday night the magazine gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award for his services to philanthropy, particularly his creation of the Prince’s Trust. In a series of conversations with GQ editor Dylan Jones, Charles discusses his stance on the environment and global warming.
‘You are accused of being controversial just because you are trying to draw attention to things that aren’t necessarily part of the conventional viewpoint,’ the prince says. ‘That’s not always a bad thing, but it’s odd because I have always believed that living on a finite planet means we have to recognise that this puts certain constraints and limits on our human ambition.
‘That is why it matters so much that the way we operate has to be in tune with the way nature and the universe works and not the way we think it ought to work, which is what we have been doing.’
The prince bemoans the ‘throwaway society’ and speaks of his fears about artificial intelligence and the ‘ crazy’ desire to ‘become part human, part machine’.
Charles also boasts of his passion for not following trends – a theme he raised as he collected his GQ award this week when he joked: ‘I’m like a stopped clock – fashionable once every 25 years.’
The full feature is in the October issue of GQ, available today on newsstands and by digital download.
Prince Philip asked an Oscar-winning actress for advice during a lunch at Buckingham Palace – because he wanted to know how to fix his DVD player.
Cate Blanchett tells of her awkward conversation with the 97-year- old royal on tomorrow’s Jonathan Ross Show on ITV1.
Miss Blanchett, 49, said: ‘I sat next to him and he said to me, “I hear you are an actor”. I said “Yeah, that’s right”. And he said, “Well I was given a DVD player for Christmas and I can’t work out if I put the green wire [in the back].’