Endgame, p.29
Endgame, page 29
On the edge of the undulating green and chalk hills of East Sussex’s “magical” South Downs, Camilla’s childhood home, the Laines, is a study in “rustic elegance.” A former rectory made of brick and timber in the Georgian style, the seven-bedroom estate oozes country charm. It features rooms that are at once spacious and cozy, rambling flower and vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and a Gothic-style orangery with wrap-around windows. By all accounts, the Shand family filled this bucolic home with familial warmth and affection. Major Shand passed on his love of horses and hunting to Camilla and her two siblings, Mark and Annabel. Rosalind taught Camilla the ways of the garden. And there were of course grand dinner parties and lively drinks in the orangery, times when the Shands turned on the charm and their country home glowed with bonhomie and social dazzle. In one of her many interviews with the Mail on Sunday, Camilla joked that those gatherings prepared her for life as a royal. “We used to complain and say, ‘Can’t we stay here and watch the television over fish fingers?’ and [my mother would] sit us down at the dinner table and the minute there was a silence, she used to say, ‘Talk! I don’t care what you talk about, talk about your budgie or your pony but keep the conversation going . . .’ And so I’ve never been able not to talk. It’s in the psyche, not to leave a silence.”
When it was time for school, Camilla got a good dose of the city. From the age of ten until her late teens, Camilla attended the exclusive Queen’s Gate School in London’s South Kensington. There, social training came first, academics a distant second. At the time, the school focused on preparing upper-crust girls for a life of socializing and administering to a big, grand house. Instead of formal higher education, Camilla attended a Swiss finishing school next to the shimmering waters of Lake Geneva, and then went to the capital of France, where she studied French literature (naturally) at the University of London Institute in Paris. Much of this traditionally patrician education took place during the sixties, a decade that was swinging and full of flower power and protest, one that eschewed convention and patriarchy. But there was Camilla studying the blueprint for the bluebloods, dutifully learning how to mix and mingle and drop a perfectly timed French phrase, while many young women of her generation were burning their bras as part of an effort to dismantle the system that prized this sort of old-fashioned behavior. (Today, Camilla stands for women’s equality but, interestingly, hates it when someone suggests she is a feminist.)
Camilla was fine with her outmoded upbringing then, and she’s proud of it now, a fact that is both admirable and a little troubling, considering where we are as a society two decades into the third millennium. Looking back, Camilla says she’s grateful to have been “brought up with the grounding of my parents, and taught manners. It sounds, especially in this day and age, sort of snobbish but . . . nobody went on to university unless you were a real brainbox. Instead, we went to Paris and Florence and learned about life and culture and how to behave with people, how to talk to people.” Not snobbish at all. You won’t hear the likes of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, or even Catherine, the Princess of Wales, espousing the virtues of elite, erstwhile social training. And while her royal understudy, Kate, spent a “gap year” abroad at the British Institute in Florence, she followed that up by working as a deckhand in Southampton for £40 a day that same summer. This is all before she went on to the University of St. Andrews to earn a degree in art history. In Camilla’s defense, she was part of the last generation of upper-class women who were born into these antiquated practices—it was expected of them, and deviations from it were frowned upon. “This was very ingrained in my upbringing and if I hadn’t had that, I would have found royal life much more difficult,” she has said.
You could say Camilla was born to play the part the royal system demands of its actors, and she demonstrated these skills from the very start of her long and twisting love affair with Charles. From the chrysalis of her loving but privileged childhood and her debutante-styled education emerged a dazzling, self-assured social butterfly who was not only trained to flit to and fro as prescribed, but also ready to face whatever circumstantial winds blew her way. Camilla might not have stood on the barricades in the sixties, but she did enjoy the sexual freedoms ushered in by that radical generation. Over the years, some who knew Camilla during this time have told various authors and journalists that the young Ms. Shand was known for being “raunchy and randy” and the sort to “throw her knickers on the table.” This reputation is one of the reasons why Queen Elizabeth II and the Firm rejected Camilla as a spouse for Charles, alongside the fact she was a “commoner” (the air around her family home not rarefied enough) and an “experienced woman” (read: not a virgin).
The result of this Palace meddling: Camilla married the horse-crazy, swashbuckling Andrew Parker Bowles, a man who at one time was also coiled around Princess Anne (though not at the same time as he was with Camilla, contrary to rumors and the third season of The Crown); Charles begrudgingly put one foot into his union with the Palace-approved, beautiful but naive Diana; and Charles and Camilla started a decades-long affair that flagrantly smudged the monarchy’s reputation and gassed up the tabloids for years. The two marriages engendered two sets of children, but the extramarital romance produced splintered families and, as can now be said with confidence, broke the hearts of those very same children.
But it was in this trail of wreckage that Camilla found her footing and started playing what can only be called a long game. Before Charles eventually married Diana in 1981, he floundered around with other women, but Camilla made sure he was always more than welcome at the Parker Bowles residences whenever he wanted to return to his true love. Brigadier Andrew knew about Charles and Camilla’s fling but enjoyed the whole aristocratic gamesmanship of it all—and the royal associations, even if it meant shuffling around his private clubs as a cuckold. So, Charles and Camilla threw caution to the wind, coming dangerously close to displaying their love in public, and, at one point, making it fodder for staff gossip. The rumor that one of Charles’s bodyguards found the passionate couple “doing what Lady Chatterley enjoyed best” in the garden at Camilla’s grandmother’s house has become an old (but probably false) fable in royal circles.
It wasn’t until after Diana entered the mix that Charles and Camilla added colluding to their canoodling. Marrying the woman the Firm demanded left Charles demoralized and in constant need of bucking up, a typical state of mind for the famously mopey prince. Enter Camilla, who kept up the sensual mistress routine, but she also, like her ancestor Alice Keppel did for King Edward VII, became Charles’s biggest champion and a dependable advisor. And Camilla managed to do this without scuttling her own marriage. When it came to Charles, Camilla leaned on that same self-assuredness and natural affection that made her so appealing and unique as a debutante, qualities that flowered from seeds planted during her upbringing. She confidently took on the role as the future King’s closest confidante and lover.
Charles admitted to his official biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, that what made Camilla so exceptional was that “she laughed easily and at the same silliness” as he did, while in a letter to his favorite uncle, Lord Mountbatten, he claimed he and Camilla experienced near perfection: a “blissful, peaceful, and mutually happy relationship.” Camilla became essential for Charles. No matter how high the stakes, he had to have her in his world. She shared his interests in hunting and country life and made herself indispensable when Charles fled Palace duties and a struggling Diana to while away in his prized gardens and don his tweeds at his rural retreat. This was made easier by the fact that his refuge, the vast country mansion of Highgrove, is only a fifteen-minute drive from Camilla’s beloved Ray Mill House, an almost Proustian re-creation of her childhood haven in Sussex that she still uses to this day. Their pastoral conniving involved others from their inner sanctum who opened up the doors to their own country manors for Charles and Camilla’s trysts when Ray Mill or Highgrove wasn’t an option. A housekeeper from one of these conspiratorial homes complained to a tabloid that she always knew when Camilla had been there: “After she’s been staying, I find knickers all over the place.” Camilla’s undergarments making yet another appearance.
The pair carried on like this until the calamitous 1990s sent them both reeling. In 1992, the Queen’s famous annus horribilis, Diana and Charles finally called it quits and separated. Enough was enough—Charles was checked out and, from the royal institution’s point of view, Diana was causing untold damage by openly discussing their marriage woes. And it quickly got so much worse, for Camilla in particular. After the new year celebrations of 1993, Australia’s New Idea magazine published the scandalous transcript of a bawdy phone call between Charles and Camilla. Former Mirror editor Richard Stott, who broke the story but didn’t run the transcript, claims that an amateur radio enthusiast from Merseyside gave him the tape after he randomly—and after “a few pints of lager”—picked up the call on his radio and recognized Charles’s voice. Dubbed “Camillagate,” the contents of this proto–sex tape are old news; even a 2022 episode of The Crown rehashed it in all its gory details. It’s worth noting, however, that after Charles says he wants to “live in [Camilla’s] trousers or something, it would be much easier,” Camilla laughingly responds with, “What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.” Those knickers seem to be a running theme in this story.
The barrage of lurid news tanked both of their reputations, forcing Camilla to batten down the hatches at Middlewick House, the Wiltshire manor she shared with Parker Bowles at the time. Charles, of course, had the Palace apparatus in his corner, and the system’s instincts to protect one of its own kicked in. Wasting no time to initiate an image-rebuilding effort for Charles, the spin machine went into high gear for the heir to the throne. Camilla, on the other hand, was left to manage on her own. It was a tough outcome for someone who had just been branded the most hated woman in Britain. She faced an unabating Hydra of scorn: hate mail, threatening phone calls, people scowling in her direction in public (though that famous story about shoppers throwing bread rolls at her is just a tabloid myth), and, of course, strikes from the papers and the wider world’s press. For her part, Diana nicknamed Camilla “the Rottweiler,” which, as she probably intended, the media picked up and ran with. Harassed and stalked, Camilla retreated into Middlewick, often afraid to step outside.
While in hiding, Camilla began her long climb back to normal life. She taught herself how to paint (a hobby she still enjoys to this day) and buried herself in books. Proving her resilience, she privately withstood her mother’s death from crippling osteoporosis and Charles’s disastrous TV interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in July 1994, where he publicly confirmed that he had cheated on Diana. The nineties weren’t done with her yet, though. Camilla and her brigadier finally divorced in 1995, and Parker Bowles went on to marry his own favorite mistress, Rosemary Pitman, shortly after. In February 1996, Charles and Diana’s divorce was finalized. The musical chairs of extramarital sex, collusion, and public humiliation were finally brought to an ignoble end for all involved.
After the ink dried on the divorce papers, Camilla found herself utterly alone in her cavernous Wiltshire home, but, because of her ability to “just get on with it” and her commitment to Charles, the cocoon of her new life started to form. Camilla’s stability and endurance during these hardships was recognized by those close to her and quietly by those in the orbit of the Palace. She never publicly aired her grievances or rushed to correct the record (at the time), no matter how vicious the rumor—she rode out the storm, prioritizing her relationship with Charles (who did the same in return, much to the frustration of young William and Harry, who a family source said “often felt like they came second to Camilla”). That grin-and-bear-it upbringing had already prepared her for a life of “never complain, never explain” as a member of the royal family. “The duchess is resilient . . . down to earth,” Julian Payne, her communications secretary during the 2010s, previously said to me. “She is focused on the bigger picture.” Her natural composure and confidence would see her through.
This time she had some serious help. After Charles and Diana’s divorce, the Queen and the institution slowly started to accept that Camilla wasn’t going anywhere—her gravitational pull on Charles was too strong, and their long affair had solidified into something that the Palace couldn’t easily dismiss. Diana’s tragic death in 1997 forced the couple to retreat from any plans to step out publicly, going to great lengths to avoid being be seen together. They wanted to change this unwelcome reality and, to achieve that, Charles and Camilla as a couple would need a PR miracle. So Charles promoted assistant private secretary Mark Bolland to a deputy role—tasking him to work with private secretary Stephen Lamport to incrementally rehabilitate Camilla’s image. Now widely known as “Operation PB” (Parker Bowles), the duo masterminded a long-term campaign as subtle as it was powerful, at least at first. When the press finally got the official first words about Charles and his ongoing relationship with Camilla, Bolland told journalists she was a “nonnegotiable” part of his life. However, they waited eighteen months before making their first photographed public appearance—a birthday party for Camilla’s sister at London’s Ritz hotel. Bolland personally phoned the likes of The Sun and the Daily Mail to assure them that the January 28, 1999, bash was “T-Day” (Together Day). The Queen was unimpressed—she felt her son was “over-promoting” their relationship. But it worked. Suddenly, at least in certain media quarters, Camilla had gone from being called “the other woman” to the “woman who waited.”
For Camilla’s own fiftieth birthday celebration in June 2000, Clarence House scaled up their efforts with a sparkly to-do at Highgrove, where she would meet the Queen for the first time (and Bolland would go on to share all the details with the News of the World, edited by his close friend Rebekah Brooks, now the managing director of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK). That night Camilla “dazzled,” and Charles and his “woman who waited” shared the spotlight in the same house they previously snuck away to for trysts. At the time, I’m told, both William and Harry struggled to come to terms with the reality of their family’s new normal. “They had few people they could share their anger with,” said a mutual friend of the siblings. “Here was a woman who had destroyed their family and tormented their mother, now having the time of her life. In those early days, they were angry with her.”
It would be another five years before Charles and Camilla would marry, and in the spring of 2005—in a toned-down civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall in front of their children, including Princes William and Harry—Camilla Parker Bowles completed the first stage of her transformation. Taking Charles’s hand in marriage, the vilified royal mistress became the Duchess of Cornwall, wife to the heir. Patrick “Paddy” Harverson, then Charles’s communications secretary and the PR chief responsible for taking the reins of Operation PB a year prior, counted the wedding as a crowning accomplishment for the couple. The former communications director for Manchester United Football Club (he turned David Beckham from a national hate figure to hero after the football legend was blamed for England’s loss against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup), Harverson was an experienced, likable, yet determined “comms guy” dedicated to his one mission: “protect and promote.” He embraced that position from day one with Camilla, recognizing how her outgoing nature and calm under pressure could benefit the monarchy’s reputation. He also quickly realized that Camilla was indispensable for Charles—she reanimated him in a way that no one or nothing else could. “She has been by his side, working diligently, supporting him while pursuing her own causes,” said Harverson. “They love each other. She is a source of great support and comfort and love to [Charles]. They share the same sense of humor and they blend together beautifully.”
Good for Charles, and good for the institution, as it turns out. The wedding meant that the Palace finally embraced Camilla and formally established a working role for her. The Queen had also come around to agreeing that the union was the best thing for the Firm. It had the potential to clean up the mess the couple had made over the years.
For William and Harry, it took a long time to get there, but they finally accepted Camilla for what she was and still is—an anchor for their father, an unflinching, steady support system for which he could not do without. But while she may technically be their stepmother, the relationship she has with both is “more professional and respectful than loving and familial,” described a family friend. In the years that followed, the new Duchess of Cornwall finally became tolerated, then later accepted, by the public (and now even approved of by some). In the early days it would have been unimaginable to think that one day William and Kate would meet Charles and Camilla for laugh-filled lunches, but the two couples have grown increasingly closer over the years, especially since the Sussexes’ departure. As for her relationship with Harry and Meghan, there is none. Camilla has told others she has “great sympathy” for what Meghan went through but, according to a royal source, has “no respect for the way they handled themselves.”
