Howler-strewn ad for grammar class at Charles’s pet project

OF THE many baubles in the Prince of Wales’s proverbial crown, few appear to give him greater pleasure than dumfries House, the magnificent Palladian property in ayrshire that he and a consortium saved in 2007, acquiring the site for £ 45 million from the 7th marquess of Bute. So it is entirely fitting that the house, now fully restored, is to become the setting this summer for an event run by N.m. Gwynne, old etonian author of the acclaimed books Gwynne’s latin and the best- selling Gwynne’s Grammar, which the Prince ( below) has described as ‘outstandingly useful, exactly what is needed’. The 75-year- old Gwynne will host a three- day ‘traditional teaching course’ in august for delegates paying £395-a-head to stay at one of the 2,000acre estate’s outlying buildings, dumfries House lodge, voted one of the ten most

luxurious bed and breakfasts in the world since opening in 2012. Unfortunately, the page on the Dumfries House website extolling the course’s virtues falls some way short of Gwynne’s punctilious standards.

It manages to offer two variations in spelling of his Christian name (‘Nevile’ and ‘Neville’) and omits an essential full stop at the end of the concluding sentence listing his professional accomplishments.

‘Ah, no!’ yelps Gwynne, whose parents chose to call him ‘Nevile’ rather than the more usual ‘Neville’.

‘That’s been changed since I last approved it. I did actually check it.’

His pain intensifies when told of the appearance of the phrase ‘country house accommodations’ — an American usage that has no place in ‘Gwynne’s Grammar’, Part Three of which addresses itself to ‘ The Formation of Plurals’.

‘ That was not me,’ he says, explaining that he read through only his biographical details.

The three- day course, billed as exploring ‘why education today can benefit from the education of yesterday’, comes complete with butler service. Let’s hope the butlers at least manage to mind their Ps and Qs. Charles’s controversial former valet Michael Fawcett, who has been put in charge of the Dumfries House Trust, was paid a staggering £248,000 in the past year.