Charles: the whole story is so awful that very few would believe it
‘A GREEK TRAGEDY’: HIS BREAK-UP FROM
THE letter was heartbreaking in its simplicity.
Tormented by the very public breakdown of his marriage to Princess Diana, a sombre Prince Charles picked up his fountain pen and poured his emotions on to the page. ‘No one can really understand what it all means until it happens to you, which is why it all keeps getting worse and worse. One day I will tell you the whole story. It is a kind of Greek tragedy and would certainly make a very good play!’
For a man forced to maintain a stiff upper lip in public, it was a rare release of privately held anguish to a loyal and trusted friend, one who truly understood how it felt to be vilified on the world stage. The letter, dated June 21, 1992, was addressed to ‘My Dear Nancy’, better known as former US First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Today, the MoS can reveal the astonishing personal letters between Prince Charles and the Reagans, which formed the backbone of a friendship spanning four decades that ended only last year with the death of Mrs Reagan at the age of 94.
At a time when Princes William and Harry have chosen to campaign for mental-health issues – and this week spoke openly for the first time about their mother’s death 20 years ago – the never-before-seen letters from their father to his trusted friends across the Atlantic take on a particular poignancy by showing how Charles, too, suffered emotional turmoil and sought private solace and reassurance.
The extraordinary letters also reveal for the first time how Charles was:
Distraught at his ‘Greek tragedy’ of a marriage: ‘It is so awful... very few people would believe it.’
Disgusted at cruel claims about the First Lady: ‘We live in an increasingly uncivilised world. I know exactly the methods these dreadful people employ to create the maximum amount of controversy… so as to make the maximum amount of money.’
Heartbroken over the death of the Queen Mother: ‘I have dreaded her eventual departure… she leaves an enormous chasm in my life.’
Besotted by Nancy’s charm, telling a friend: ‘I wanted to kiss her.’
Plagued by fears of a rash of criticism on his 10th wedding anniversary: ‘There are a whole series of ghastly books coming out… you can imagine what they will contain.’
The letters vary in both tone and content and are written in the prince’s trademark black ink on crested notepaper from various homes, including Highgrove, Sandringham, Birkhall – his hunting lodge in the grounds of Balmoral – and the British Embassy in Washington.
One is even written at 35,000ft as the prince flies home from a whirlwind tour of the US. He captions it in the left-hand corner ‘Airborne between Washington and the UK’.
There is even a small idiosyncrasy, a princely form of shorthand, in which a dot above a short horizontal line stands for the word ‘in’.
His emotions veer from elation and pride – a clearly besotted Charles describes how Diana dazzled on the dance floor during a White House gala in 1985 – to gutwrenching grief and despair on the death of his grandmother, the Queen Mother.
The letters were part of Mrs Reagan’s private collection, which, on her death in March 2016, were handed over to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, California.
For years they have languished in boxes stored at secret warehouses throughout the Los Angeles area and have only now come to light as archivists working for the library meticulously catalogue thousands of items of correspondence received by Mrs Reagan, who was a prolific letter writer.
They are being made public thanks to the late president and his wife’s insistence that their papers should be available as an historical archive.
The full extent of Charles’ friendship with Nancy has been known to very few.
Joanne Drake, Ronald Reagan’s former chief of staff and now the chief administrative officer of his
Queen Mother’s death ‘left an enormous chasm’ It is a kind of Greek tragedy and would certainly make a very good play Tormented by the public breakdown of his marriage, Prince Charles pours out his heart in a letter written from his Highgrove ‘sanctuary’ on June 21, 1992, days after Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story portrays him as a cruel and callous husband.