The Prince Charles Letters (6 page)

Charles

Diana, Princess of Wales

c/o Buckingham Palace

London

England

6 February 1982

Dear Diana

Knowing you as I do a bit, I’m sure you’re going to think it’s a bit formal, my writing to you like this – especially when you’re sitting in the next room, doing whatever you’re doing in there, but sometimes I find this to be the best way of unleashing what you might call the maelstrom of my emotions, beneath what is, I daresay by ‘Duran Duran’ standards, a fuddy-duddy exterior. To really talk about what I’m feeling, and hang all protocol and tongue-tied small talk.

So, how are you? I’m all right. I just spoke to Anne on the phone. She’s all right. Grandmamma continues all right, though I don’t think she likes Mr Scargill. I’m all right, as I mentioned. Are you all right? Well, all right. I hear music coming through the walls, so I suppose you must be all right – if anyone knows what ‘all right’ is.

Gosh, somehow it feels good to have got all that off my chest.

Your Prince

Charles

HRH The Prince Philip

Buckingham Palace

London

England

1 March 1990

I’ve jolly well had it, Father! I’ve had it up to here … I’m fed up with being habitually addressed as ‘boy’, even though I’m almost 42 years old, and addressed with the habitual brusqueness even a char-wallah might bristle at. I’m fed up with you sauntering into my quarters without knocking and striking up conversations with my potted plants, which are sarcastic in the extreme and in no way designed to nourish their growth, merely for you to have a hearty laugh at my expense.

I’m fed up with your summary family meetings, which I notice I am often the only one to come running to attend, in which you dress me down about some supposed infraction or other in front of the footmen. If I want to slouch at the dining table, I’ll slouch – and hang the consequences to my posture!

Most of all, I’m fed up with you regaling your old Navy chums over brandy and cigars with tales of the privations I suffered at Gordonstoun at the hands of bullies like Roger Braithwaite, Tuppy Fitzroy and the Armitage brothers (G) and (S). I deplore your bringing up the yoghurt episode, which was one of the most traumatic and humiliating of my young life and from which I feel, in a very real and keen sense, I have never recovered. It appalls me to suspect your sole, beastly motive for delivering me into the most miserable years of my existence was so as to build for yourself a fund of amusing, after-dinner anecdotes.

Well, now that’s that out in the open, I don’t suppose I’ll send this but the sentiments are deeply felt, mark my words.

Charles

HRH The Prince Edward

Buckingham Palace

London

England

6 April 1991

I thought I’d entrust delivery of this letter to a footman rather than the Royal Mail, which is not always reliable, if the number of replies I expect to receive to my own correspondence that go missing is any guide.

Well, hello, Eddie! We were born rather far apart, you and me. Creates a distance, really; makes it hard to know a fellow. From that distance, however, I have wondered what it must be like to be HRH The Prince Edward: last, if by no means least of the litter, but inevitably the overlooked one. Is it like being the fourth man on the moon, the one no one’s ever heard of; or that fellow Ridgeley, who used to sing alongside George Michael? In some ways I envy you, really – in terms of discharging your duties to the nation. With me, it’s a constant grind of appointments, correspondence, committees, campaigns, a tremendous responsibility … With you, it was
It’s A Knockout
. I sometimes think, suppose we could swap places? But then I think, perhaps best not. Even
It’s A Knockout
proved a bit of a stretch, if I recall.

Perhaps by correspondence like this, we can draw closer.

Yours, in hope

Charles

HRH Princess Margaret of York

Buckingham Palace

London

England

17 March 1993

Dear Margaret

I know we don’t correspond often – I suppose we really don’t have an awful lot in common, you and me. As I was growing up, you seemed a somewhat remote, glamorous figure, wreathed in mystery and smoke. Whenever I get a whiff of tobacco I must confess I always think of you, and vice-versa.

You will see that I sent you a copy of a letter dated 16 November 1992, sent to Malcolm Rifkind and circulated among members of my family. It concerned plans to reduce the number of regimental bands – a decision I deplore because this would irrevocably alter the whole framework and fabric of the British Army.

Somehow I imagine you sitting there reading that letter, draped on a chaise longue, cigarette and gin in one hand, exclaiming to yourself, ‘Do you think I’d give two figs if I never had to hear another bloody note by the Coldstream Guards again? If it were up to me, I wouldn’t just decommission them, I’d have them all shot for crimes against light classical music and personally jump up and down on their bugles! Many a garden party they’ve ruined with their abysmal medleys of James Bond theme tunes parping away in the background! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: what that boy Charles needs is some sex. Sex, sex and oodles of it, and we’d be hearing a lot less from him about the framework of the British Army. Sex! And he’s not getting it from that girl, that’s for sure.’

I suppose I simply wanted to confirm my fears are unfounded and you’re behind me four square on this one.

Your admiring nephew

Charles

HM The Queen

Buckingham Palace

London

England

16 October 1995

Dear Mummy

I’m writing to you for no reason in particular, but what with it being a pleasant autumn day – ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and so on – I thought it would be nice to correspond just for correspondence’s sake.

Do you ever look at Grandmamma and wonder? She has life pretty good, really – doesn’t she? Gin, Ascot, more gin, fine food, fine living quarters to rattle around in; able to speak her mind about whatever she wishes with only family and a discreet staff within ‘earshot’ and she can spend time with the dogs, put her feet up, peruse the
Racing Post
… Makes one a little jealous, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose being retired, having so few public duties, these are the perks. After all, at her age she ought to be taking it easy – let the younger generation take the reins and the responsibilities, and all that.

I understand you’re to visit Barrow-in-Furness next month to have a look around the new extension to their submarine-building facilities. Barrow-in-Furness is so nice in November, I imagine. Such are a monarch’s duties. I wonder what Grandmamma will be doing that afternoon? Watching the races, I expect.

Just random thoughts, you know, on an autumn day. The days are getting shorter, aren’t they?

Your dear eldest son

Charles

HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother

Buckingham Palace

London

England

6 April 1998

‘What ho, Grandmamma!’ as that Bertie Wooster from those paperbacks you like might say. I hope that strikes the right note because the matter I’m writing to you about is one of some delicacy.

You see, I was rattling around the Palace the other day, kicking one’s heels and chafing as one does about not having a role, some important task in modern life. Then Father piped up, gruffly: ‘If you want something to do, how about getting your grandmother to do something about her bloody overdraft?’ So there it is.

As you know, Grandmamma, I have always held you in the greatest esteem. I treasure your wartime stories about dear old Lord Halifax, champagne by candlelight in the East Wing and poring over maps of Canada. I fondly recall your impassioned remarks about ‘that repulsive little man, bent on war and on the ruin of all we hold dear’ – though with hindsight, was that perhaps a little unkind to Churchill?

Yours was truly the best of generations. And so I’m appealing to the better side of your nature: if you could see your way to reining in spending on the ‘gee-gees’, the gin and the staff, and the gin and so forth, I think you’d find the people of Britain would be inspired by your noble sacrifice as you looked them in the face. Recently, I forewent having a replacement toilet seat flown out by private plane to me at Klosters and I like to think both the people and Mother Earth thought well of me for this.

Anyway something to think about, to my mind: I’m just the messenger, by the way. I understand you threw a shoe at the last person who mentioned all this. Please, Grandmamma, don’t throw a shoe at me! They threw shoes at me at Gordonstoun. Rather a lot … The memory of those days would hurt a good deal more than the sharp end of the heel.

Your devoted grandchild

‘Little Big Ears’ Charlie

HRH The Princess Anne

c/o Buckingham Palace

London

England

1 August 2002

Dear Anne

I suspect on receiving this, you’ll stare away in that rather deadpan, mysterious way, full of distant hauteur and what have you, but I simply felt I had to open up a line of communication with you far from the stuffiness and the stiff upper lip of the family fireplace. What I wanted to say is this: invariably, when we do clink sherry glasses together, I find that I can think of little to talk to you about but horses. It may be my misapprehension, but they seem to be your sole topic of conversation – or so I assume.

I know you mock me for not knowing the difference between a fetlock and a martingale, but this seems unfair as I have a broad portfolio of interests. Can I suggest therefore that we have a sort of agreed-upon rota for subject matter when we meet, so that I get to talk about the things I’m interested in one time, then you have your turn the next. So, the rota might go like this:

ME: Breaking out of the concrete straitjacket: moves towards the greener pastures of a British New Age …

YOU: Horses.

ME: The wisdom of Sir Laurens van der Post, seer, Shaman, prophet, oracle in human shape …

YOU: Horses.

ME: Retuning the Pianoforte of the English Soul: Getting back to a pre-industrial harmony with Mother Nature, or Gaia …

YOU: Horses.

Of course it doesn’t have to be horses – it can be whatever you want. I put ‘horses’ because with you, it’s all I can think of. We could send and receive messages via some go-between – one of my staff, or perhaps your husband.

Yours, in great fondness

Charles

HRH Princess Michael of Kent

Kensington Palace

London

England

4 October 2003

I trust you are well. I am essentially in good health, but a little troubled by the most bizarre dream I had last night.

In it, I was transported back to my childhood days: we were in the nursery. You were our strict governess – in fact, strict to the point of being downright psychopathic. What’s more, you insisted on calling my sister Anne ‘Prince Anne’ and myself ‘Princess Charles’. Anne seemed to rather enjoy the whole thing, I did not.

Have you any idea what on earth all this could possibly mean, Michael?

Yours, in concern

Charles

HRH The Prince Harry

c/o Highgrove

Tetbury

Gloucestershire

England

13 January 2005

Well now, Windsor Minor

It would appear from a glance at the ‘yellow press’ Father and Son need to have something of a talk. Don’t worry, it won’t be like my Father-Son talks – there’ll be no tweaking of short hairs or barking short sentences in which the word ‘DISAPPOINTMENT!’ features strongly, an inch from your face. In fact, I thought I’d best do this by correspondence.

It seems you thought it a bit of a rag to dress up as a National Socialist. You must understand the Nazis were beastly people: they bombed the East Wing, you know. It’s the only reason your great grandmother could look the East End in the face – had a great effect on her. Even towards the end of her life, she watched
EastEnders
and always looked the characters in the face; a remarkable woman, your great grandmother – a testimony to the wartime spirit. And may I say in tribute to her that neither she nor your late, great grandfather King George ever gave in to the temptation to dress up as Nazis, certainly not where cameras might be lurking. For that, we owe them so much.

In short, if you must dress up as a German, be a post-war German like Mr Helmut Kohl. I know it’s not quite the same, but needs must.

Yours in kindly reproach

‘Dad’

Camilla Parker Bowles

c/o Highgrove

Tetbury

Gloucestershire

England

9 April 2005

Well, my dear

You know what I’d really like to say to you, but given our exchanges have in the past fallen into the wrong hands with decidedly embarrassing consequences, I’ll keep this note on a friendly, but formal footing if it’s all the same to you, dear sugar lump.

Today, as you know, is the day of our Civil Wedding. Who’d have thought it, eh, thirty years ago? And now you’re Duchess of Cornwall. I hope you don’t mind – the leg end of Britain, I know, and I can think of certain ex-wives of mine who shall be nameless, who probably couldn’t have stuck its rugged scenery and bracing remoteness for more than a half-hour without the need to go sit in the back of the Range Rover and listen to bally Phil Collins on the Sony Walkman set.

But you, my dear: you are different. Hang it all, raisins to my nuts, with you I feel I can talk about biodegradable Wellingtons for hours without the other party rolling their eyes as if in the presence of some dreary old prater. Not you, dearest – we shall have many such conversations. I envisage the remainder of our lives like some long, everlasting Sunday in Cornwall.

Your tin whistle, ’pon which a merry tune of love you play

Charles

HM The Queen

Buckingham Palace

London

England

6 January 2007

Dear Mummy

I know in the past you’ve said to me, ‘Stop with all these letters! If you’ve something to say to me, knock on my door and just say it,’ but hang it all, Mother, what with opening a swimming bath here and receiving some foreign dignitary there, you’re never around and we never seem to get the two or three clear hours I’d need to expand on my ideas in full.