Prince Charles by Sally Bedell Smith

Author:Sally Bedell Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

“Her face might have been a mask that represented ‘grief’ and ‘injustice.’ ”

Diana’s Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in which she blamed Camilla Parker Bowles for Charles’s “devastating” infidelity, November 20, 1995. REX/Shutterstock

CHAPTER 21

Three in a Marriage

AS 1995 GOT under way, all seemed calm between the heir to the throne and his estranged princess—on the surface at least. They shared custody of William and Harry without incident. The boys were now together at Ludgrove most of the year. When they were at Kensington Palace and Diana was busy, their nanny, Olga Powell, took charge. Tiggy kept them occupied in their father’s absence and helped supervise in Gloucestershire, Norfolk, and Balmoral, where at age twelve William led a pheasant shoot.

In January, Charles took his sons hunting with the Beaufort—a first for both boys. William and Harry embraced blood sports, but neither took to the tranquility of fishing beloved by their father. At Balmoral, when they weren’t shooting in the hills, the threesome walked along the banks of the River Dee, throwing sticks in the water for their dogs to retrieve.

Diana increased her charity patronages, adding new causes that caught her interest. She made ten overseas trips in 1995, traveling as far afield as Japan, Russia, and Argentina. In Tokyo she visited the offices of the International Red Cross, one of her new patronages, and in Hong Kong she went on “fact-finding” tours of a cancer treatment facility, a homeless shelter, and a drug rehabilitation center. She was also quietly waging a sustained campaign to win the favor of newspaper proprietors, editors, and reporters, whom she met for lunches and dinners, often in her apartment at Kensington Palace.

Diana always offered a personal grace note. “She asked the right questions, took an interest in your affairs,” recalled Max Hastings, who by 1995 had become editor of the Evening Standard. “She realized we are all humans who are susceptible to being flattered. It suited both of our interests. I loved going to lunch because she made us feel great. Did she get a slightly better break as a result? Perhaps she did.”

Charles met with journalists as well, but the tenor was different because “the prince felt too ill at ease with anyone in the media to play the game as she did,” said Hastings. Charles could go through a long conversation, and “at no time would he ask a polite question about where you lived, where your children were in school, where you liked to go fishing—the small change of human beings.”

At Highgrove, Charles and his sons posed for their most playful Christmas card photograph: the Prince of Wales seated on a garden bench between William and Harry standing inside two giant terracotta pots. The annual images were always grist for analysis in the tabloids: a flicker of marital disturbance in 1985 when Diana looked away from the camera; the family’s stiff pose in 1991 as they struggled to keep up appearances; William and Harry by themselves for the first time in 1992, their expressions painfully wistful.

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