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10

An Education

Charles’s parents have always been remote. The Queen acceded to the throne when he was just three years old, and as a young mother she had no choice but to demote her family to second place. Thanks to the demands of the job, she and her husband were abroad for months at a time and there was no thought of taking their children with them.

Times have changed and lessons have been learned. Charles’s grandchildren, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, often travel with their parents, William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and they are a star attraction; but in the 1950s, this seemed impractical and unthinkable. Charles and his sister Anne, two years his junior, were left behind with their nanny, the terrifying Helen Lightbody, in the care of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. This is how the Prince of Wales developed such an enduring affection for his grandmother and why his relationship with his mother and father is more distant. And the Duke of Edinburgh was tough on Charles.

Prince Philip had his naval career taken away from him on the death of King George VI in 1952. From that day forward he has played second fiddle to his wife – something that did not come naturally. He has made the most of it, working tirelessly to support the Queen, and he has a raft of achievements under his belt, not least the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, which recently celebrated its sixtieth year and is now run in forty-eight countries. He has also been a prime mover in the field of conservation and technology and is responsible for cutting waste and helping to streamline the monarchy. He is often thought of as an irascible and reactionary old fool who always puts his foot in it, but he is about as foolish as a fox; and has been known to reduce grown men to tears with his cutting remarks and bullying attitude. Charles’s sister Anne was a tough proposition and the apple of her father’s eye. But Charles, the eldest, the heir, a small, shy and sensitive child, was often a victim and was easily bullied; he was a disappointment.

In private, Philip’s role was more traditional. As paterfamilias, he modernised and managed the estates at Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral, and he made the decisions about the children’s education. He decided that Gordonstoun, his own alma mater, would toughen Charles up. So rather than sending him to Eton, across the bridge from Windsor Castle, where he would have been with friends and close to home – his grandmother’s choice for him – he was dispatched at the age of thirteen to the north of Scotland, to a notoriously spartan and harsh regime on the banks of the Moray Firth, where he was hundreds of miles from home and utterly miserable. He slept in a large dormitory with no carpets on the floor and no creature comforts. He went on early morning runs, whatever the weather, dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, and into a cold shower at the end. At night the windows had to be kept wide open, so boys whose beds were close by would sometimes wake up with rain or snow on their covers. He was bullied by the other boys – kicked and punched on the rugby pitch, where he never excelled, and hit by his roommates in his dormitory at night for snoring. And he was picked on by the assistant housemaster, who was no great lover of the British monarchy. Apart from Norton Romsey, a cousin who was in a different year and whom he scarcely knew, he was friendless. As he wrote in a heartbreaking letter, ‘I don’t like it much here, I simply dread going to bed as I get hit all night long … I can’t stand being hit on the head by a pillow now.’ And in another the same year he wrote, ‘It’s absolute hell here most of the time and I wish I could come home.’

His father was unmoved by Charles’s plight, and seldom saw his son during term time. Gordonstoun had been the making of Philip when he was growing up and he was convinced it should be the making of Charles. He had given instructions to the headmaster and housemaster that Charles was to be treated just like every other boy, allowed no special dispensations. Philip’s childhood had been difficult and punctuated by loss, and he had no patience with his son who had grown up with the security and comforts that he himself had never known.

After two long unhappy years, Charles did eventually come to terms with Gordonstoun and make a few friends – he would occasionally cycle to Elgin on a four-seater bicycle with his cousin and a couple of older boys, singing lewd songs – but he was always a misfit. He was square, to use an old-fashioned term, old for his years and far more comfortable in the company of adults than boys of his own age. He didn’t swear, he wasn’t crude, he wasn’t loud, rowdy or physical as most of the others were. He wore his hair in a neat parting to the side, when most people had floppy Beatles styles, and he was not into pop music or sport or any of the things that interested the other boys. He liked classical music, and while others were fiddling around with guitars and drum kits, Charles took up the cello. What he did discover, however, was a talent for acting, and he was a brilliant mimic. His all-time favourite radio programme was the comedy show The Goons, with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, and he could imitate the lot of them to perfection. He also learnt to mimic some of the members of staff at Gordonstoun to good effect. Those were the only times, when pretending to be someone else, that he lost his awkwardness and spoke with confidence and presence.

At seventeen, his A level course was interrupted while he spent six months in the Australian bush to allow the Commonwealth to play some part in the future King’s education. It was another baptism by fire for the awkward, shy Prince, but as Sir David Checketts, who travelled with him, said on their return, ‘I took out a boy, I came back with a man.’