The Private Prince

The Private Prince

BY NEWSWEEK STAFF ON 3/10/96 AT 7: 00 PM EST

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IHAD MY FIRST CONVERSATION with the Prince of Wales in the early summer of 1992. We met at Highgrove, his country house in Gloucestershire, to discuss whether he would cooperate in a television documentary to coincide with the 25th anniversary of his investiture. He was diffident and charming but failed to disguise a profound suspicion of anyone in the media. I felt no less cautious. I had worked in radio and television for more than 20 years, reporting from the world's trouble spots, making controversial documentaries and " grilling" political leaders. I had no intention of squandering any reputation by participating in a cozy stitch-up designed by the establishment to boost the image of the heir to the throne. I was mildly a royalist but I was not, nor am I, a zealot for the cause.

As it was, it became clear over subsequent meetings that the prince was prepared to give me irresistible access. Certainly enough to make a two-hour documentary and, subsequently, to write a 250, 000-word biography. For more than two years I watched him in close-up at home and at work. I traveled with him on the royal yacht, the royal train and the royal flight, accompanying him to numerous functions in Britain and on official visits to the United States, Mexico, Poland and the gulf states. I sat in on private meetings with presidents and prime ministers; with luminaries from commerce and industry; with actors, musicians and artists; with the sick and the old; with the young and the unemployed.

Unprecedentedly, he authorized past and present members of his staff as well as his lifelong friends to talk openly to me. His grandmother the Queen Mother and his father, Prince Philip, spoke freely about his childhood and upbringing. Even more remarkably I had unfettered access both to his voluminous diaries and his vast correspondence (he writes upwards of a thousand letters a year).

Thus, at a time when the heir to the throne was under savage scrutiny by the British tabloid press (whose prurient distortions and concoctions were inexplicably treated by the rest of the world's media as if they were tablets from Mount Sinai), I had a unique vantage point from which to judge the real character behind the diffident exterior I had first encountered at Highgrove.

The prince was born in 1948 in an age when the monarchy was politely questioned by a handful of republicans, gently mocked by the chattering classes (who did not forbear, however, to accept the baubles bestowed on them in the sovereign's name), patronized by the old aristocracy (who were born with the baubles and were prone to regard the Windsors as foreign parvenus) but revered by the postwar British public and treated with deference by the popular press.

In contrast with his younger sister, Princess Anne, Prince Charles was a shy and timid child. Although the queen bathed him and read him bedtime stories, her duties as sovereign and her long visits overseas meant that the prince spent most of his childhood with his nanny and his governess--which, incidentally, was not at all uncommon among the British " upper classes" of those days. The prince was diligent but lacked the intellectual curiosity that was, in adulthood, to provoke much controversy.

In the same British tradition he was sent away to a boarding school when he was 9. When he was 13 he went on to Gordonstoun, the Scottish school that had a well-earned reputation for spartan, if not philistine, values. His letters from school record the loneliness of the young teenager--homesick, ill at ease with his peers and (though he never complained to his teachers) mercilessly teased and bullied by his fellow pupils. " I simply dread going to bed as I get hit all night long, " he wrote in one such letter. In another: " It's absolute hell here and I wish I could come home. " That he was introverted and that his ears protruded were probably enough in itself; that he was the future King of England made him an irresistible target.

Contrary to press reports that he has been " whingeing" about his school or his parents, the prince is convinced that Gordonstoun was good for him--and that his father, who made the decision, acted from the best motives. Although it is true that Prince Philip was often tough on his son and, in the opinion of family friends, overly aggressive toward him, the prince himself insists that his father was an affectionate parent at the heart of what he remembers as a happy childhood. It is my view, as my biography makes clear, that distance has lent enchantment to the prince's perspective. But that is my view, not his.

By the time he left Gordonstoun the complexity of the prince's character was beginning to emerge. Still insecure and shy, he had nonetheless discovered the pleasures of public performance. A competent cellist, he played in the school orchestra. Discovering a passion for Shakespeare, he was given the title role in " Macbeth, " a part that he played, according to his teacher, with unusual insight and maturity. In his last year he was appointed head prefect and--though he wrote with characteristic self-deprecation to his beloved great-uncle Lord Mountbatten, " I don't know that I'm doing my job very well. . . . I'm not very good at organizing people" --he rose to the challenge.

By no means an intellectual, his academic progress was good enough to secure him a place at Cambridge University on merit. Lacking an athlete's physique, he kept himself--as he still does--leanly fit. Overcoming an early fear of horses, he played polo with reckless enthusiasm and followed hounds with a similar disregard for his own survival. He was a good marksman, and though he was to tire of shooting pheasants, he went stalking in the mountains around Balmoral whenever possible, more deeply at home in this natural world than anywhere else. He had been the first heir to the throne to be schooled outside the confines of a palace, and he now became the first member of the royal family to sit for a degree. He was hugely relieved when the news came that he had secured a respectable second-class honors degree. His self-esteem, always fragile, received a substantial boost.

In this period he also discovered the earthy mysteries of the monarchy. He attended the state opening of Parliament, represented the queen abroad and began that round of public duties that even the most dutiful prince was bound at times to find irksome. He has often been frustrated by the gilded confines of his unchosen destiny. He could be peevish and his temper often flared at trifles, while self-awareness could sometimes lapse into self-pity.

Yet he inspired enduring loyalty. I have met former members of his staff who were irritated by what they saw as his whimsical enthusiasms, his lack of focus or his refusal to share their sense of his priorities. Yet their criticisms, though sharply expressed, were--without exception--cushioned by affection and respect. He may have been irritable or mercurial or disorganized but, in their eyes, he was also kind, gentle and unswervingly devoted to serving his country--if sometimes in ways they could not fathom.

After Cambridge the prince qualified as a jet pilot with the RAF before following in traditional royal footsteps by joining the navy, where he rose to be given command of a minesweeper. When his ship docked at the French port of Toulon, his fellow officers took him on a tour of the red-light district. In one bar he was accosted by a lady of the night. " Newspaper headlines flashed through sub-conscious, " he wrote: " Sailor Prince arrested in sleazy French bar--Admiralty probe. " There were other such moments about which he wrote with guileless delight. In Tonga he danced with " an amazon. . . . Apart from the fact that [it] was like dancing with several tractor inner tubes mounted on top of each other, she began to feel me all over with a wild look in her eye. . . " The official report at the end of his five-year stint recorded: " Prince Charles has shown a deep understanding for his sailors and their families and their problems and as a result the morale of his ship has been of an extremely high order. "

In 1976, at the age of 28 and after many months at sea, the prince left the navy. In the absence of any constitutional obligation -- except to wait for his mother to die--he now had to chisel out a public role that would usefully fill the decades that were likely to pass before he would inherit the throne.

Although he is genuinely modest, the prince is not filled with as much humility as he sometimes likes to suppose. He has learned to mask his certainties--as well as his insecurities--behind a veneer of self-deprecation. After the navy he had embarked on a whistle-stop quest to satisfy the spiritual yearnings that had begun to take shape at Cambridge. Egged on by more than one priest and, notably, the writer Laurens Van der Post, he plunged into metaphysics, leapfrogging from one great religion to another, exploring the ancient mystics and delving into Jung.

Over the past 20 years the prince has overcome his diffidence to emerge as a champion of unfashionable causes and to challenge a host of vested interests. As a result he has been persistently vilified, misrepresented and misunderstood. Yet in every case he has stimulated public debate and been in the forefront of changing attitudes on a wide range of significant issues. Fifteen years ago he became the first public figure in Britain openly to challenge the medical establishment, with a series of speeches and initiatives on the virtues of " alternative" medicine. He had already entered the environmental debate 10 years earlier, warning against " the effects of pollution in all its cancerous forms. " Soon afterward he laid into those modern methods of agriculture that maxi-mized production at the expense of the environment. Similarly--and with devastating effect--he earned the lasting hostility of the architectural establishment in a speech likening two of its most treasured projects to " a municipal fire station" and " a mon-strous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend. "

The popular media, which are comfortable only with two-dimensional caricatures, found the prince incomprehensible. Not so long ago he had been flying jet planes, captaining ships, skiing, diving and generally earning their nickname " Action Man. " Now he spoke about the human spirit, holism and ancient wisdoms. He even confessed that he talked to his plants. In their common view he was ripe for ridicule. Almost overnight " Action Man" became the " Loony Prince. " His observation in a speech to the British Medical Association that " the unorthodox individual is doomed to years of frustration, ridicule and failure" seemed in his own case to be horribly prescient.

He now presides over an umbrella of major charities, known collectively as the Prince's Trust, which operate according to values he has espoused for two decades. These charities work among the young and the unemployed in the most deprived areas of Britain's inner cities. Their approach is based on his unshakable faith in human potential: that even " the most unprepossessing characters, " as he calls them, can find their feet if they also discover that self-confidence that he so conspicuously lacked at their age.

None of this delivers the prince any plaudits, nor does he expect them. Juvenile lawlessness provokes sensational headlines, but he is only too aware that what is perhaps the most effective nongovernmental effort in Britain is too " boring" for a tabloid newspaper to report. On behalf of the Prince's Trust, as with almost every cause he pursues, he is relentless and impassioned, but mostly behind closed doors, in private correspondence or over the discreet drink that he well knows is often more effective than a public lambasting. He combines charm with a sudden ferocity that can startle even the most polished minister or civil servant.

The prince mixes all these initiatives with a wide range of official duties from which there is no escape. In 1993, for example, he officiated at 18 functions of state; attended 50 charitable events; presided or made speeches at 28 environmental and architectural engagements; attended 20 meetings of the Duchy of Cornwall, and made 6 city visits in Britain and 10 formal visits abroad. His meticulous preparation means that year in, year out, decade after decade, he has a work schedule that would tax the short-term figures who run great companies or departments of state.

He does sometimes become exasperated at the media's failure to take note of this. Three years ago, in a private memorandum, he wrote that " for the past fifteen years I have been entirely motivated by a desperate desire to put the " Great' back in Great Britain. Everything I have tried to do--all the projects, speeches, schemes, etc. -- have been with this end in mind. And none of it has worked, as you can see too obviously! " He went on to itemize his principles and priorities before ending wryly, referring to no one in particular, " No wonder they want to destroy me, or get rid of me. "

In fact, the tabloids have no urge to get rid of the prince. He is far too important to them in his allotted role in their soap opera as the heartless husband who cheated on his wife and then told the world about it on television. As many of the scriptwriters will readily confess, this is a hideous travesty. Yet it has now traveled round the world and back again so many times that truth will surely take a long time to catch up. For the record, these are the pertinent facts as I know them:

When he was a young man, the prince fell in love with Camilla Shand, but they were not betrothed. While he was away on a six-month tour of naval duty she married a young army officer, Andrew Parker Bowles. When the prince left the navy he was--in tabloid terms -- " the most eligible bachelor in the world. " He was under great public pressure to find a wife; indeed, he was repeatedly married off to almost every eligible young woman around. Then he met Diana Spencer. They were married amid huge national rejoicing in 1981. Within a few years their marriage began to founder. In the second half of the '80s, speculation about what was indeed by now a very unhappy relationship began to surface in the gossip columns. In 1992 Andrew Morton published " Diana: Her True Story, " which was based on interviews with friends of the princess. With what we now know to be the princess's approval, these friends blamed the palace in general and the prince in particular for a marriage that had clearly reached the point of no return. They portrayed the prince as a cold and faithless husband who was, for good measure, an incompetent father as well. They made it clear that, above all, it was the prince's persistent adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles that had wrecked the marriage.

The impact of Morton's book could hardly have been greater. The prince's reputation plummeted. Then, in December 1992, came the announcement that he and the princess were to separate and, soon afterward, the publication of the phone-tapped " Camillagate tapes. " As gossip ran wilder than ever and innuendo acquired the status of hard fact, self-righteous columnists denounced the heir to the throne, wondering aloud if he was fit to be king.

In making a two-hour documentary about the prince, it was clear to me it would be incredible to ignore these allegations. There are those who think he should have refused to answer my question about his alleged adultery. Yet had he done so, the speculation would have reached yet another crescendo and his reputation would have continued to be poisoned--particularly by the crucifying allegation that he had been unfaithful to his wife from the start.

I asked him, " Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage? " He answered, " Yes, absolutely. " I asked, " And you were? " He replied, " Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down, both of us having tried. "

Of the breakdown itself, he said that it was " awful and miserable. . . the last possible thing I ever wanted to happen. . . . It's not that I went into marriage, you know, with the intention of this happening, or in any way in a cynical frame of mind. " In three anguished minutes, the prince said all that he has ever said or, in my view, is likely to say about the breakdown of his marriage.

The prince had been on intimate terms with Camilla Parker Bowles before his marriage. But from the time of his engagement and for at least five years after his wedding he fully obeyed his marriage vows. The Prince and Princess of Wales are not the first couple to have each sought consolation with another for a failed marriage. As any counselor knows, it is ridic- ulous as well as cruel for sanctimonious outsiders to apportion blame for such mutual misery. And yet forests have been felled for the ignorant and the malicious to do just that.

The media interpreted the princess's recent TV interview as her revenge against the prince. But for what? The three minutes of deep regret that he expressed in the documentary? Or for my biography, which contained no revelations about her that had not already appeared in print, courtesy of her friends--and upon which, incidentally, she has now elaborated herself? The truth is that, above all else, the prince was desperate to ensure that whatever I might say about him, I should not use any information that I may have accumulated from other people that might cause more damage to his wife or hurt to his children.

Yet a significant number of the chattering classes, led by one or two senior commentators in radio, television and the serious press, have chosen to be as intellectually and ethically idle as their counterparts in the tabloid press, and as promiscuous with the facts--except, of course, they adopt a different, and more lofty, tone. Affecting to be above the fray, they recycle tabloid prejudices in classier language to deplore the public " War of the Waleses" --in which, had they bothered to examine the evidence, they would know he plays no part whatsoever. In so doing, they not only falsely implicate the heir to the throne, but they sustain the soap opera that they affect to despise. They also deepen the travails of a monarchy the survival of which they claim to cherish. It is not an edifying spectacle.

The prince knows that he has no choice but to endure this. For someone so acutely sensitive, he is remarkably stoical. Even when--the cruelest cut of all--he hears his wife assert publicly that, in effect, he is not fit to be king, he remains silent, insisting that his friends (among whom he does not number the mythical " friends" so frequently cited in the press) should behave likewise. He must know that the soap opera is far from over; that the divorce, when it takes place, will open yet another titillating chapter. For the foreseeable future his fate, or, as he would see it, his duty, is to persevere--in the hope that sanity and fairness will one day be restored, and in the knowledge that he will one day be king.

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