How the Royal outcast refused to be cancelled

The Royal Family has a knack of ruining the lives of the women who marry into it: just think of Diana, Fergie and Meghan.

But few have had a rougher ride than Camilla, who last month became the most senior female member in a dynasty that has spent decades trying to cancel her.

While there is right and wrong on both sides, you end this biography by veteran Royal commentator Angela Levin convinced that our new Queen Consort is one of the best things to happen to the Windsors in recent years.

For a start she has no airs and graces. Being Royal is simply the price she accepts for being with the man she fell in love with when she was 24 (Prince Charles was 22). Although she would rather be at home with the horses or reading a good book, Camilla has learnt to keep smiling, and never make the mistake of overshadowing her husband.

Levin claims that, at her most paranoid, Diana would make anonymous late-night calls to Camilla, telling her: ‘I’ve sent someone to kill you. They’re outside in the garden. Look out of the window, can you see them?’ It gets worse. At one time, she says Prince Andrew and Diana got together to try to push Prince Charles aside so Andrew could become Regent to the teenage Prince William. In effect, Prince Andrew would have ruled the UK.

Other Royals have behaved no better.

Levin even goes so far as to claim Princess Anne insisted that ‘Camilla will never be a true queen’, while Prince William remains adamant that Camilla is not his stepmother, nor is she step-granny to George, Charlotte and Louis.

It is lucky that our Queen Consort is a remarkably forgiving woman. While her Royal relatives are caught up in plots worthy of Game Of Thrones or Succession, it is Camilla, the former outcast, who has shown the most class.

Her ability to rise above it all, never complaining and never explaining,

comes closest to the standards of public service set by the late Queen.