‘She has an ability to connect with people across society’
During his years in the royal entourage, the Telegraph’s Associate Editor has often had cause to be grateful for the good-humoured nature of Queen Camilla
I can remember exactly what the Queen Consort said the first time we met. I had just started on the royal beat for The Telegraph and we had not at that point been formally introduced, so Camilla’s longserving aide Amanda MacManus took me aside to meet her boss.
“Hello Gordon,” the then Duchess of Cornwall said with a smile. “I’ve read your bits!”
It may not have been the most profound of statements, but it set the tone for a conversation during which I inevitably warmed to her. I’m not ashamed to admit I was flattered by the idea that the future Queen both knew who I was and had bothered to read my work, and of course that would have been her intention, because that is how she operates.
It was not disingenuous though. There is nothing fake about her interest in people, even those who work in an industry that put her through hell year after year when she was the “other woman” in the King’s marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Over the following years she would ask about my children as they grew up, remembering unprompted their trials and tribulations. I am not claiming to know her well or to have been in some sort of inner circle, and that is the whole point: even for someone like me, who only came across her in work settings and only fleetingly at that, she bothered to maintain an interest. The same is true of everyone else who has any sort of regular contact with her, and many can tell stories about the time they got a handwritten letter or card from her when she found out there had been a birth or death in the family.
“Everyone in the country has an opinion about her,” says one former courtier, “but people who have met her all have the same opinion, and it is a really positive one.”
I had the then Duchess to thank for helping to salvage my first, unscheduled, meeting with the King. On a visit to Morocco the royal couple popped into a tiny gift shop where Camilla wanted to pick up some souvenirs for her grandchildren, and as the designated royal rota reporter for that part of their day I went in with them, encouraged by their staff. Inevitably, in a space that only had room for about six people at a pinch, I found myself face to face with Charles, who sized me up for a moment and then asked, with a hint of suspicion, who I was. To my relief the Duchess vouched for me, saying: “Darling, haven’t you met Gordon? He works for The Telegraph.” The then Prince of Wales softened, and shook my hand.
Much is made of the fact that the Queen Consort only became a
member of the Royal family at the age of 57, meaning she can relate to members of the public in a way that no one who is born royal can match. And while that is entirely true, it is not a given. There are plenty of upper crust or wealthy people who are far less “normal” than she is, and plenty of husbands and wives who have turned their back on their past when they make a leap up the social ladder.
“I’m not going to call it the common touch,” says a friend, “because that would be patronising, it’s more that she has an ability to connect with people across the whole of society – the intelligentsia, the literati, the countryside people, everyone.”
Part of the reason people take to her is that she refuses to take herself too seriously, and that is one of the keys to understanding who she really is.
If she is at a lavish banquet, she will respect her hosts and their traditions, she will make entertaining company, and she will wear as many jewels as the occasion demands, but there will be a knowing smile or the hint of an eye roll if she sees one of her staff across the room, as if to say “Here I am in my glad rags again!”
As her biographer Penny Junor observed in her book The Duchess, as a young woman “she wanted nothing more than to be an upper-class country wife with children and horses and an enjoyable social life”. Until she was in her 40s, that was effectively what she was, through her marriage to aristocratic cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles. Becoming Queen is to her a by-product of her love for her second husband, rather than the reason for it.
As her son Tom Parker Bowles told The News Agents podcast recently: “I don’t care what anyone says – this wasn’t any sort of endgame. She married the person she loved and this is what happened.”
Few 57-year-olds, after all, would want to swap a life of relative relaxation for one of lifelong duties, no matter how fabulous the house or the trappings that came with it.
“It’s important to bear in mind that she married one of the hardest-working members of the Royal family,” says someone who knows her well. “This is someone who came to it late in life and to adapt yourself to doing day-in, day-out public duties is a considerable challenge. To have embraced all that in the way that she did is a fantastic achievement.”
She idolised her father Bruce Shand, who spent two years in a German prison camp in the Second
World War, and admired the Churchillian “Keep Buggering On” spirit he embodied. “She really respects that generation who dealt with real hardship and just got on with it and didn’t complain,” said the same source.
Physically, she demonstrated it when she refused to let a broken toe get in the way of her public appearances in the weeks surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s death last year. Emotionally, she showed it in her response to the vilification and humiliation she endured in the 1990s, when she was blamed for the end of Charles’s supposedly fairytale marriage to Diana and ended up a virtual prisoner in her own home when the “Camillagate” tape of an intimate phone conversation with Charles fell into the hands of a newspaper.
While the King has been known to snap at journalists and photographers (though rarely, if ever, since his second marriage), the Queen Consort has never lost her temper with the media, even when she might have every right to, particularly if they startled her horse by appearing from nowhere when she was out riding.
The King long ago stopped attending informal drinks receptions with members of the media that were once a regular feature of his foreign tours (he complained of Chatham House rules being broken) but the Queen Consort, perhaps surprisingly, has always been happy to kick back and share a glass of wine with reporters, partly because they are such a good source of gossip.
She is canny enough to know that one of the quickest ways of winning over journalists is to show them trust by speaking candidly in their company and allowing her personality to do the rest.
One of the reasons she feels confident enough to do this is that there is no hint of pretence about her. She does not need to put on an act tailored to any particular audience.
“There is no on/off switch with her,” said a former courtier. “The person you see out and about is the same person you talk to in private. She loves stories, she is very funny, she loves a bit of gossip and she is fascinated by people she meets. She never complains or says anything negative about them.”
Unlike the King, who has little spare time for watching television (though he never missed an episode of Poldark), the Queen Consort has no qualms about flopping onto the sofa with the remote control.
Staples include period dramas, adaptations of novels, prime-time favourites Strictly Come Dancing and The Great British Bake Off but also gritty crime dramas like Grace
and The Killing.
She makes no secret of her lifelong love of The Archers, and has always been a bookworm. Two years ago she launched what is now The Queen’s Reading Room, a sort of online reading group featuring some of Her Majesty’s favourite books. They include such varied works as Dracula; The Far Pavilions; Girl, Woman, Other; Atonement, and
Mrs Harris Goes To Paris.
If books are her mental sanctuary, Ray Mill House in Wiltshire is her physical one. The home she has owned since 1994 is hugely important to her, as it allows her to decompress from royal life and entertain family and friends away from the inevitable formality that comes with the King’s presence. Her family, including her five grandchildren, are her “anchor in reality”, as one friend put it. She can potter in her garden, take her Jack Russells Beth and Bluebell for long walks, cook on the Aga and have a TV dinner with a glass of red wine. If the King goes to Highgrove for the weekend, the Queen Consort will usually spend at least one night at Ray Mill. Sometimes she even lets her husband join her there.
It would be wrong, however, to suggest that Camilla, who will be 76 in July, loathes the idea of servants attending to her needs. She appreciates the enormous privileges her position brings, not least her involvement in the royal racing stables and the annual joy of Royal Ascot.
“She genuinely was slightly in awe of the Queen for her knowledge of horses and her ability to know which was the right horse for the right occasion,” said one source, “but she totally shared her passion for racing. She is the one who will take centre stage at Royal Ascot and it is really important for Royal Ascot that they have someone with a passion for horses.”
She also cherishes her connection with the Armed Forces, and in particular her position as Colonel-in-Chief of The Rifles, a role she took over from Prince Philip in the year before his death. As the daughter of a military man and a former Army wife, she is well able to empathise with soldiers and in particular with their families when they go to war.
As in the case of the Army, the Queen Consort has chosen to associate herself with good causes that mean something personally to her.
When she first became Duchess of Cornwall she gave a speech on osteoporosis, which claimed the lives of her mother, Rosalind, and her grandmother, Sonia. She has been president of the National Osteoporosis Society since 2001 and has chosen to focus on animal welfare, literacy and domestic abuse as her other core campaigns.
“Those are the things that she cares about and she has very much been the author of her current reputation,” said a royal source, “She has been very clear about the things she has wanted to do.”
Those who have worked with her point out that she shows incredible loyalty to her staff, keeping them on for decades, forgiving their mistakes and staying in touch with them after they leave.
Amanda MacManus was the prime example, being asked back only days after she resigned in 1998 for inadvertently leaking the fact that the then Mrs Parker Bowles had met Prince William for the first
‘She will surprise people more than the King will. She has got a lot of potential still to come’
time. She stayed by Camilla’s side for another 23 years.
Her assistants are kept busy: the Queen Consort writes around 2,000 letters each year, not because she can’t cope with email or text but because, says one well-placed source: “She gets the power of something dropping on the doormat with her name and her stationary and her envelope and more importantly her attention and time.” Her Christmas card list is also “incredibly important” to her.
The Queen Consort is unlikely to be relishing her big moment at Westminster Abbey (she was so nervous on the day she married the King that her sister Annabel threatened to put on her wedding outfit if she didn’t get out of bed) but she will, as ever, simply get on with it. Nor will she allow her status as Queen to go to waste. She is aware that for many people “the Queen” will always be Elizabeth II, but having attained the highest status it is possible for her to have achieved, she has plenty of personal goals for the causes closest to her heart.
As one ex-courtier said: “She is only just getting started. She will surprise people more than the King will. She has got a lot of potential that is still to come and it will be a huge asset to this country.”