The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor (12 page)

Having watched the Royal Family from the sidelines all these years, I never cease to be amazed by their resilience. Crises have come and gone, crises that would have crippled most individuals, families, even institutions, but they simply keep going, keep on doing what they have always done, nine times out of ten not even acknowledging whatever has happened, and miraculously the crisis fades. It is a brilliant strategy for survival and probably the only one that could work for a family so remorselessly in the limelight from cradle to coffin. They have no alternative but to take the long view, and recognize that, long term, very little really matters. But after an intimate late-night telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla was taped, published in the British press and devoured by millions over their breakfast cornflakes, I did wonder how the Prince of Wales would recover from this one. The man wanted to be a Tampax. How do you hold up your head in public after everyone you meet knows that? He wanted to be a Tampax to be as close as he could to Camilla. It was a playful conversation any two people very much in love and missing one another might have had and, read in its entirety, the eleven-minute conversation was rather touching; but you would rather slit your throat than contemplate one solitary
soul overhearing you, let alone millions of people all over the world.

The tape was a compilation of several different conversations held over several months in 1989, but that was irrelevant. No one could deny that the voices were authentic; the Prince’s humiliation and embarrassment were total. He knows that it will come back to haunt him – it will be dredged up at his coronation and at other serious moments in his life – and serve to humiliate his parents, his sons and Camilla’s family, too. And yet the day the tapes were published he had an engagement in Liverpool and, instead of finding some excuse to cancel, as any ordinary person would, he stepped out of his car that morning to face the waiting crowds as though absolutely nothing had happened. The courage it took was immeasurable; he had no idea what kind of reception awaited him, but to the intense relief of everyone with him there were no sniggers, no shouts, no catcalls and no absence of people. Yet for all his cool, it was one of the worst days of his life, made worse by the damage he knew he had inflicted yet again on the monarchy.

There were lurid headlines and cartoons in the press, wide condemnation of Charles, questions about his fitness to be king, and, in the mounting fever of puritanical indignation, demands from Cabinet ministers that the Prince give up Mrs Parker Bowles.

The contents of her mailbag, meanwhile, took on an even more unpleasant tone and the press presence and pressure at her house became even worse. She became the butt of jokes up and down the country, her children at boarding school were teased and tormented and her husband stood publicly cuckolded.

It was at this point, with the documentary underway, that Jonathan Dimbleby and the Prince’s adviser, Richard Aylard,
discussed the question of the Prince’s adultery. With the Morton book published, two sets of tapes in the public arena and screeds written in the press, it was an issue that no film about the last twenty-five years could duck. Dimbleby would have to ask the question; what Aylard and the Prince had to decide was how best to reply? There were three options. The truth, a lie, or evasion. Aylard advised the first, which accorded with the Prince’s inclination. If he lied then sooner or later he would be caught out, argued the Private Secretary. The
News of the World
, he knew, already had both the Prince and Camilla watched and followed round the clock; it was only a matter of time before they were seen together or a disaffected servant sold his story. If he refused to answer the question on the grounds that it was a personal matter the surveillance would continue and the story would never go away until the media had evidence of an affair. After the ‘Camillagate’ tape, most people believed they were lovers, so why not be honest with the British public and admit the truth? The Prince wanted to tell the truth and Aylard encouraged him.

What they should both have foreseen was that the great British public was more interested in Diana’s truth. She had got hers in first and it had a far juicier ring to it. They heard the ‘Yes’, and completely ignored the rest of his sentence which came after an anguished pause, ‘the marriage having irretrievably broken down, us both having tried’, and concluded that Charles had been an adulterer from day one. When Aylard confirmed at a press conference the next day that the adultery to which the Prince had confessed had indeed been with Mrs Parker Bowles, her goose was finally cooked. Andrew Parker Bowles filed for divorce and, less than a year later, married his long-term girlfriend, Rosie Pitman. The public blamed Camilla for breaking up the royal family home, and the reputation of the monarchy was once again dragged through the mire.

But there was more to come. Diana nursed her wrath until it was nicely warm, then she invited the television journalist Martin Bashir into Kensington Palace, who interviewed her for
Panorama.
Sitting demurely with head bowed, and looking up through kohl-darkened eyes, stopping only to wipe the occasional tear that welled, she eviscerated her errant husband and his frigid family with the skill of a samurai. She wanted to be ‘Queen of people’s hearts’, she said. ‘Someone’s got to go out there and love people and show it.’ And why had her marriage failed? Simply this: ‘There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’

The Queen had seen and heard enough. She and her advisers, like the Prince of Wales and his, were taken entirely by surprise. Not even the Princess’s Private Secretary knew what she was about to spring on the world. The programme had been made in the greatest secrecy and the first the Press Office at Buckingham Palace heard of it was thirty minutes before news of her appearance was trailed on television, a week before it was broadcast. ‘John Birt [Director General of the BBC] didn’t judge it right,’ says one of those in the Press Office at the time.

His idea that if the Palace knew any earlier we would try and stop the programme was ridiculous; the publicity would have been horrendous. But to prepare a public line on something as controversial as the marriage in that little time was impossible. And of course the press rang and said, ‘Did she seek advice from the Queen and talk to her about this programme?’ That week was very tricky, particularly as the Princess kept phoning and saying ‘There’s nothing to worry about in this programme, I haven’t said anything against the Queen, I promise there’s nothing that’s going to cause you any problems.’ But by then I knew enough about her
condition to know that people with this level of anxiety can persuade themselves of anything to keep calm and the more in panic they are at the thought they’ve done the wrong thing, the more they go in the other direction, saying it’s all going to be fine, it’s just a little interview.

The Palace had no prior viewing and only saw a script of the programme half an hour before it went on air. But the minute they saw Diana, with all the melodrama and the heavy kohl on her eyes, instead of leaping to criticize most of the courtiers gathered round the Press Office television set felt a sudden wave of protective sympathy. As one says, ‘I thought if this was my daughter I’d just want to help her, because what a terrible misjudgement to get on television and talk about all this, with her children at school.’ The Queen and the Prince of Wales both agreed. Horrified and appalled as they all were, the overwhelming emotion was concern for Diana. Speaking on BBC’s
Newsnight
immediately afterwards, Nicholas Soames made the immortal comment that Diana seemed to be exhibiting ‘the advanced stages of paranoia’ – something with which a number of people watching agreed, but very many more lapped up Diana’s words, her accusations and her condemnation of her husband, his family and the institution without question.

The Queen decided that it was time to intervene and call a halt to the marriage that had brought such grief before any more damage was done. She was concerned, as much as anything, for William and Harry, who had been through enough in the last few years; and she was concerned for the monarchy and the damage that the War of the Waleses in all its guises was inflicting on the institution. After consulting with the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Queen wrote formally and privately to both her son and daughter-in-law
asking them to divorce as early as could practicably be done.

The divorce was complicated and acrimonious. Negotiations lasted for months and although the Queen stripped Diana of her HRH status – an action widely perceived as petty – the settlement was unequivocally generous. The Princess received a package worth over £17 million: a lump sum of £15 million, reckoned to yield an income of £1 million per annum, plus £350,000 to pay for her private office (at Kensington Palace, not St James’s which she had wanted) and an apartment at Kensington Palace to provide a ‘central and secure home’ for her and her children. They retained equal access to the boys and equal responsibility for their upbringing, and when she was with them she continued to be protected by armed bodyguards.

It was the end of fifteen years of marriage but it was not the end of the war. Diana was no happier outside the family she seemed to have hated so much than she was within it, and was still angry with Charles and determined to embarrass and upstage him at every opportunity. And, according to the opinion polls, she took the majority of the public with her. As the divorce became absolute a statement was released saying that the Prince of Wales had no plans to remarry. It was just as well; at a televised debate on the monarchy, run by Carlton Television with a randomly selected audience of three thousand, every time Camilla Parker Bowles’s name was mentioned it was drowned by boos and hisses. The public was not about to forgive Camilla any more than Diana was and the Church was no comfort either. A poll on the day of the decree absolute showed that 56 per cent of all full-time Anglican clergy were opposed to a divorced Prince who remarried becoming king. A columnist in the
Catholic Herald
accused the Queen of having a flexible conscience and that, by not only agreeing to but urging divorce on her son, she had ‘betrayed the ideal of
marriage’; while the Dean of St Paul’s said that divorce was all right but marrying again was the problem – that was what constituted adultery in God’s eyes. For the next year Camilla remained firmly and quietly in the background; known to exist but knowing better than to show her face. And as a result the stakes were raised yet again on a photograph of the two of them together.

In the mid-1990s very few people knew what Camilla looked like. There had been very few photographs of her, even on her own, but during the latter part of 1996 that began to change. It was no accident. There was an attempt progressively to inch Camilla out of the closet and make her acceptable to the British public. The Prince did not want to spend the rest of his life hiding from photographers, behaving like some sort of criminal, unable to share the simple pleasures of life with the woman he loved. The person charged with making this possible was Alan Kilkenny, the PR consultant behind the Great Ormond Street Wishing Well Appeal in the 1980s, one of the most successful fundraising campaigns ever. He had been working quietly for the Prince on a variety of projects for most of the 1990s, which included minimizing the media fallout from the Parker Bowles divorce in 1994.

In April 1997 the newspapers published the first glamorous photograph that had ever been seen of Camilla, taken by Sir Geoffrey Shakerley. It accompanied the announcement that Mrs Parker Bowles had agreed to become a patron of the National Osteoporosis Society. This was none of Kilkenny’s doing – the NOS involvement was entirely personal. Camilla’s mother had died from the disease and when the society asked Camilla to become a patron her immediate instinct was that with her reputation she would probably do them more harm than good. It was only after much persuasion that she agreed.
But there were reports that this was the start of a PR campaign to sanitize Camilla, to raise her profile and make her acceptable to the British public. Diana was incensed; but it was as nothing compared to her rage when she heard of the Prince’s plans to throw a fiftieth birthday party for Camilla at Highgrove in July 1997. And because Diana was cross, Robert Fellowes was cross and so too the Queen.

It was risky, as everyone knew, but the press seemed to be warming to Mrs Parker Bowles. There were no photographs of her and the Prince together, but there were plenty of her arriving bedecked with jewels that he had given her for her birthday and the reports in the following day’s newspapers did nothing to calm the Princess. The
Daily Mail
began, ‘She was the first to arrive, sweeping into Highgrove last night with all the confidence of a queen.’

Meanwhile, the Princess who would never be queen – and who would never be sweeping into Highgrove again either – was cavorting in a leopard-print bathing costume on a luxury yacht belonging to Mohamed al Fayed in the South of France. He was the foul-mouthed, high-profile Egyptian owner of Harrods, who had been repeatedly refused British citizenship. His great coup was that Diana was having a fling with his playboy son Dodi, which he hoped might lead to marriage. Nothing could have delivered a two-fingered salute more effectively to the British Establishment that had snubbed him. What’s more, she took William and Harry to stay on the yacht with her, too. He had a plan that was coming together nicely. But the newspapers that had championed Diana over her rival for so many years were not impressed. ‘The sight of a paunchy playboy groping a scantily-dressed Diana must appal and humiliate Prince William …’ wrote Lynda Lee-Potter in the
Daily Mail.
‘As the mother of two young sons she ought to have more decorum and sense.’