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How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all
There have long been whispers of a romance between the queen and her Scottish servant John Brown, but nothing concrete to support them. Now Fern Riddell, author of an explosive new book, reveals how she turned sleuth to track down evidence of their secret passion
The story that’s consumed my life for much of the past few years has it all: family dysfunction, political intrigue, royalty, the rewriting of our national history. A secret hidden for generations. These are the sort of things historians can get carried away by. When we’re undertaking historical research, it often becomes clear that the relationship between fact and fiction can be a murky one. There’s often a gap between what we want the truth to be and the reality of the lives that have been lived. So it was with my latest project. After four months of research, I couldn’t quite believe what I’d uncovered. I’d been tracing the footsteps of both historians and historical people, and I was finally convinced that what I’d found came close to representing irrefutable proof of a remarkable secret – one offering an answer to a 160-year-old question. But making the breakthrough didn’t come without risk – one faced by nearly every historian who had got so far before me, and who turned back at the final hurdle, unable to bring their research to light. WATCH | Fern Riddell on her quest to discover the secrets of Victoria's later love life View Green Video on the source website So, before I pushed ahead, I called a trusted friend and mentor to discuss what I thought I’d discovered. “I’ve found it,” I exclaimed. “I’ve found the lost archive of Queen Victoria and John Brown.” Royal inspiration Towards the end of 2021, my agent, Kirsty McLachlan, had set me a challenge. “You need a new project,” she declared. “What can you say about Queen Victoria?” “I don’t do the royals,” I retorted, instantly rejecting the suggestion. “Anyway, most royal historians face censorship the moment they find anything interesting.” My focus has always been on the stories of ordinary people – what we call ‘history from below’. These are the lives that fascinate me, not those of the wealthy and powerful. Victoria felt like a lost cause. After all, what could be left to discover about one of history’s most famous women? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/TOPFOTO-hip2652872-2webready-c8032de.jpg" width="1500" height="916" alt="A painting shows Queen Victoria dressed all in black on top of a black horse. To the left, John Brown, dressed in black with a kilt, stands holding the horse's reign. By him, two dogs lay on the ground. On the far left, two women, dressed in blue and beige are seated on a bench. In the background, there is a large yellow manor house" title="A painting of Victoria and John Brown at Osborne House, her private family home on the Isle of Wight, in 1865. Brown began accompanying the queen more frequently after Albert’s death, first joining her at Osborne in 1864 (Image by TopFoto)" /> But there has always been something fascinating about Queen Victoria. She is an enigma: a woman who became the cornerstone of an empire, a queen, a wife, a mother and an icon of an entire age. Her life with her husband, Prince Albert, has been the subject of multiple dramas and documentaries, as has her grief-stricken widowhood after his death in 1861, aged only 42. But what this passionate mother of nine did for her own comfort in the lonely decades that followed has only been whispered about, until now. There have long been rumours surrounding Queen Victoria’s relationship with her Scottish Highland servant, John Brown. Were they lovers? Did they marry in secret? Did they even have a child together? However, no one had been able to establish the truth. This, I decided, was something that piqued my curiosity – a thread to pull and see where it led. John Brown is often relegated to a footnote in Victoria’s history, glossed over as a servant, or awkwardly portrayed as ‘just a friend’. Yet for almost 20 years he stood at Victoria’s side as her “strong right arm”, her “best friend” – and, as I discovered, her “beloved John” and her “true and devoted one”. But as I carefully set out on my research, I had little comprehension of the journey I was about to take, nor the astonishing secret it would reveal. Read more | “There was a general perception that Queen Victoria’s mourning was neither normal nor acceptable” Searching for sources With the thought of perhaps writing about Victoria’s mid-life, I ordered every book ever written about John Brown. Modern historians have long believed this to be a pointless effort, knowing that most of John’s original documents – his diaries, letters and more – were destroyed by members of Victoria’s court after his death in 1883. But I felt sure that something must remain somewhere. I started with Queen Victoria’s John Brown by EEP Tisdall, which was published in 1938. It’s gossipy and fun, but entirely devoid of references or sources – useless for my purposes, except for insights into how John was seen 50 years after his death. Next up was Tom Cullen’s The Empress Brown: The Story of a Royal Friendship, released some three decades later. This turned out to be a goldmine. In its pages are a series of letter facsimiles from Victoria, the original documents faithfully reproduced for readers. They showcase such a tenderness between Victoria and John, as well as his family, and I felt an itch – a historian’s twitch – that there was much more to this history than I had been aware of before. While combing Cullen’s acknowledgements, I saw a reference to John’s descendants, and a brief mention that they held a family archive. This is also hinted at by Raymond Lamont-Brown, author of John Brown: Queen Victoria’s Highland Servant (2000). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-514896440webready-5a9d214.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of Victoria and Albert. He sits on the left, dressed in a black suit and bow tie, with one arm leaning on the back of the seat and the other holding a scroll. Victoria, dressed in a long white dress, sits on the right, looking slightly away from Albert and the camera" title="Victoria and Albert in 1854, some 14 years after the queen married her first cousin. By the time this photograph was taken, she had already borne eight of the nine children they would have together (Image by Getty Images)" /> That was when things started to become interesting. Although rumours of a family archive, kept safe by John’s surviving relatives, have long swirled, no one would say where it was held or if it still existed. This felt like a mystery I wanted to solve. These letters must be real, I thought – more than one person claimed to have seen them – yet only Cullen provided evidence. No historian since had been able to bring them into the public eye. Had they been destroyed? Lost? Or were they still out there, waiting to be found? I started by tracing John’s surviving family: the descendants of his brothers James, Donald, William, Hugh and Archie. Hugh and Hilda Lamond, grandchildren of John’s second-youngest brother Hugh, appear in historians’ acknowledgements more than once, and I became convinced that they must have been the guardians of the family archive. But their own descendants emigrated to the US in the 1970s, and I had no idea how to contact them. I reminded myself that modern historians need to be able to utilise many different tools and skill sets for our research. One of the most powerful resources we have today is the internet, providing access to digitised records. In the space of a single afternoon, using the gigantic global databases available via Ancestry and Scotland’s People, I mapped out John Brown’s entire family – including his brothers and cousins – through births, marriages, deaths and census records. This led me to Minnesota, and a burning question: did John Brown’s great-great-great-nieces still hold on to their family’s precious collection, packed carefully in moving crates, carried down the generations and now possibly on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Long shot At that point, the pandemic continued to hold the world in its grip. How was I to get in touch with Brown’s relatives some 4,000 miles away in the US? Genealogy can get you only so far, and I had no up-to-date contact information. And yet… might they be on Facebook? It seemed like the longest of shots but, as I typed their names into the search bar, a result flashed up instantly. A connection to the descendants of Hugh Brown – the only people who might, just possibly, hold the keys to the John Brown family archive – was right in front of me. I opened up Facebook’s messenger app and began to type, unsure if I would get a response. Eventually I hit send – and sat back to wait. Days and weeks went by, with no response from Minnesota. So I returned to the documents I could access – those letters uncovered by Cullen more than 50 years ago – for hints that some of John Brown’s papers must have survived somewhere. On a whim, I typed lines from the letters into Google – and, to my shock, a link to an archive in Aberdeen appeared. Suddenly, there it was in high definition, staring back at me: an original letter, kept safe by Aberdeen City Archives. As I gazed at the screen, the realisation slowly dawned on me that I could confirm for the first time the existence of part of the John Brown family archive. Surely it couldn’t be simply sitting there, waiting to be discovered? But I learned a long time ago that, with a history and a nation as diverse as ours, and with correspondingly bulging archives, answers are often to be found sitting in plain sight. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain Within an hour I found two more letters in the archives, digitised and perfunctorily labelled. There was nothing to give away their significance, no indication of their importance. But if I could confirm that at least some of the archive had survived, then might that prove there was more out there to find? And why, after John Brown’s family had kept this secret for so long, was some of it now available in a public archive with little information and no fanfare? I booked a research trip to Aberdeen. Meanwhile, I began the forensic work of raking through the city’s entire online library, collections and archives. I realised that references to John Brown, both artefacts and letters, are scattered across Aberdeen’s new Treasure Hub, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Town House archive. On my first research trip to the city, I held the original letters in my hands, reading in Victoria’s own handwriting her memories of John: “So often I told him no one loved him more than I did… and he answered, ‘nor you than me, no-one loves you more’.” I was awestruck by this powerful declaration between Victoria and John. In Town House, the team allowed me to rifle through the collection of the writer, artist and historian Fenton Wyness. I’d found a passing reference that this included some material on Brown, but what I found there astonished me. At some point in the 1950s or 1960s, Wyness – a local Aberdeenshire historian – decided to write about John Brown. Like Tom Cullen, he was given access to the John Brown family archive, which he then proceeded to photograph in its entirety. Now, in the archive in Aberdeen, I realised that a record of the letters, documents, cards and gifts from Victoria to John and his family was sitting in boxes all around me. It’s an incredible resource to study – a reference collection that is utterly unmatched. Pieces of the puzzle Over the three years that followed, as I travelled to Aberdeen and to other archives and private collections across the country, Victoria and John’s life together began to unfold. And the story is vastly different to the one we have been told before – as I reveal in my new book, Victoria’s Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen. The documents I unearthed and studied provide undeniable proof of an intense love affair and, I believe, evidence that John Brown and Victoria did indeed marry – as well as of a determined and ongoing campaign to eradicate him from her history after their deaths. The language Victoria used in her letters to describe her relationship with John deepened as the years went by. She called him her “darling one”, “faithful and devoted”, while describing herself as his “true and devoted one”. Cards she sent him, recorded in the John Brown family archive, are printed with the words “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” and poems such as “I send my sewing maiden / with new year’s letter laden, / its words will prove / my faith and love, / to you my heart’s best treasure, / then smile on her and smile on me, / and let your answer loving be / and give me pleasure.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/Alamy-3BJNGW8webready-262dc4c.jpg" width="1500" height="1911" alt="A man sits facing the left. He has a thick beard and brown hair and has a blue collared jacket" title="Norman Macleod, Victoria’s Scottish chaplain, portrayed in a posthumous painting. He reportedly confessed on his deathbed to marrying the queen and John Brown (Image by Alamy)" /> Also revealed in Victoria’s Secret is the possibility that Victoria and John had an ‘irregular marriage’, a legal marriage under Scottish law that involved an exchange of vows and potentially rings, the evidence of which sits in portraits and photographs of John from 1873 onwards. Add to this the fact that Victoria’s Scottish chaplain, Norman Macleod, confessed on his deathbed to marrying them, and that Victoria went to her grave wearing John’s mother’s wedding ring – a point that was hidden from her children at the time – and it feels to me like solid, irrefutable evidence of their relationship. Floored by photos Although I tried to remain clinical and dispassionate as I weighed the material that I was collecting, a couple of objects floored me. In Treasure Hub sits a photographic album Victoria dedicated and gifted to John’s mother, Margaret Leys. It is bursting with pictures of both Brown’s family and her own, side by side – a record of all of the people who mattered to them. But nothing prepared me for the revelation that, in the week after John’s death, Victoria had his hand cast and then carved in stone. The photograph of this object in Fenton Wyness’s collection – the tender placement of John’s hand on a pillow, the importance given to a signet ring that he wore every day from 1873 onwards – felt like a gut punch. Finally, there is a pair of four-leafed clovers that Victoria and John collected, and which he dried and taped into a scrapbook, their stems crossed over one another for eternity. In the Victorian language of flowers, this has a singular meaning: Be Mine. I still had unanswered questions, though – and the only people who might have been able to help answer them were thousands of miles away in America. Fortunately, at that stage Angela, one of Hugh Brown’s descendants whom I’d attempted to contact via Facebook, got in touch. She is bubbly and forthright – and, with the agreement of her family, was happy to discuss their history and the stories she had heard while growing up. Read more | Queen of spies? Inside Queen Victoria’s secret intelligence network Over a series of calls, emails and texts, she slowly began to trust me with a secret her family had kept for a very long time. Not only do they have the final remnants of the John Brown family archive, including original documents, such as Victoria’s own investigation into John’s family history, but they also guard a story that is fantastical and amazing. Angela was sanguine, telling me that “it’s just what I’ve always been told – I don’t know if it’s true”. Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder: could this be the final missing piece of the puzzle for which I’d been searching so long? Throughout my research, and across John’s life, one of his siblings featured more prominently than all of the others: Hugh, whose family became the guardians of John and Victoria’s legacy. As I was writing and researching, it became increasingly clear that, though all of John’s brothers and their families mattered to Victoria, Hugh and his wife, Jessie, were most dear to the queen. Unusually among John’s extensive clan, they had only one child – a daughter, Mary Ann, Angela’s great-grandmother. According to Angela, Mary Ann was the secret child of John Brown and Queen Victoria. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1450268872webready-5502a62-e1753974720717.jpg" width="1488" height="1010" alt="Victoria pictured with her children and a bust of Prince Albert, 1863. Beatrice was the last of her babies officially recorded – but did the queen later give birth to another daughter, fathered by John Brown? (Image by Getty Images)" title="Victoria pictured with her children and a bust of Prince Albert, 1863. Beatrice was the last of her babies officially recorded – but did the queen later give birth to another daughter, fathered by John Brown? (Image by Getty Images)" /> Whispers of a love child have swirled since the 1860s, but historians have always been quick to dismiss such rumours. They claim that Victoria was unable to have more children after the birth of her last acknowledged daughter, Princess Beatrice, in 1857, as she suffered from a prolapsed uterus. However, this condition was only discovered after the queen’s death in 1901. None of Victoria’s doctors reported any evidence that she suffered it in the aftermath of Beatrice’s birth. As a prolapsed uterus is common – nearly half of women over 50 will experience some form of pelvic organ prolapse during their lifetime – I believe this ‘fact’ has become historical misinformation, used to discredit any chance of a child between Victoria and John. Moreover, as I discovered during my research, although Victoria was advised not to have more children after Beatrice, it had no connection to her physical health. After her repeated battles with severe post-partum depression, including hallucinations and possibly even psychosis, Victoria’s doctors were terrified that another pregnancy would send her mad. This was the reason why she was advised against having any further children. But there is even evidence to suggest that she was planning to have another baby before Prince Albert died in 1861. “Mama so longed for another child,” her eldest daughter, ‘Vicky’ (Victoria), wrote after Albert’s death. So it is perfectly possible that Victoria could have had a child with John in 1865, the year of Mary Ann’s birth. The queen was healthy, fertile and only 45. Many of John’s female relatives – indeed, Victorian women more generally – had children into their mid- to late forties. Journey of discovery It was not the end of the story, of course. But that discovery set me on a long journey to try to separate family memory from historical fact. My research took me from the glorious glens of the Scottish Highlands to the wildness of 1860s Otago in New Zealand’s South Island, and back again. The reality of Victoria’s secret was long buried by panicking politicians, government campaigns, cowardly courtiers and family rebellion. Without DNA evidence, we may never know the truth – but, every time I speak to Angela, I find myself surreptitiously looking for any resemblance to Victoria in her face. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/10508806webready-4fb264a-e1753974815126.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A statue showing an man with white hair, dressed in a jacket and kilt" title="A statue of John Brown at Balmoral. “The revelation that the queen chose the son of a Scottish crofter as her second husband, and potentially had a child with him, would have rocked Victorian society like a nuclear explosion,” writes Fern Riddell (Image by Mary Evans)" /> The revelation that the queen chose the son of a Scottish crofter as her second husband, and potentially had a child with him, would have rocked Victorian society like a nuclear explosion. Her world did not believe that a common man could look at a king as an equal, let alone marry a queen. Yet, based on the evidence I’ve found, I believe that this is exactly what Victoria did. Far from remaining the grieving widow for the rest of her days, she spent her passionate mid-life privately joined to a man who saw her as “his only object in life”. Now it is time for John and his family to take their rightful place in history once again. Dr Fern Riddell’s new book, Victoria’s Secret (Ebury Press), is out now in hardback. The book has inspired a Channel 4 documentary, Queen Victoria: Secret Marriage, Secret Child?, which is available to stream now This article is in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Charles and Diana: a history of their marriage
Their 15-year marriage began with a fairy tale wedding and saw the birth of two princes, but ended in a public and acrimonious divorce involving infidelity that threatened to rock the monarchy. But what was the real nature of Prince Charles and Diana’s relationship: how did they meet, when did cracks first appear, were they in love, and was Diana really the wronged party? We asked royal biographer Penny Junor to tell us the real story of Charles and Diana…
Who was Diana, Princess of Wales? Maiden name: Diana Frances Spencer Born: 1 July 1961 at Park House, the home that her parents rented on Queen Elizabeth II’s estate at Sandringham Died: 31 August 1997, in a car accident in Paris (aged 36) Married to: Prince Charles (m. 1981–96) Height: 1.78 m Children: Prince William (born 1982) and Prince Harry (born 1984) Grandchildren: Prince George (born 2013); Princess Charlotte (born 2015); Prince Louis (born 2018); Archie Mountbatten-Windsor (born 2019) Parents: John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer & Frances Roche Siblings: Lady Sarah McCorquodale (1955–present); Jane Fellowes, Baroness Fellowes (1957–present); John Spencer, died within 10 hours of his birth on 12 January 1960; Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer (1964–present) Educated: Silfield Private School in Gayton, Norfolk; Riddlesworth Hall School near Thetford; West Heath Girls’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent; Institut Alpin Videmanette in Rougemont, Switzerland View Green Video on the source website When did Diana Spencer meet Prince Charles? It was in the summer of 1980, at a house party hosted by Diana’s friend Philip de Pass in New Grove, near Petworth, that Prince Charles first saw Diana Spencer as a potential girlfriend. Sitting next to each other on a bale of hay at a post-polo barbecue, an 19-year-old Diana expressed her sympathy for Charles over the loss of his beloved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who had been murdered by the IRA a year earlier. “My heart bled for you when I watched the funeral; I thought, ‘It’s wrong, you’re lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you’,” said Diana. This, says Penny Junor, was exactly what Charles needed to hear. “Mountbatten was a very important figure in Charles’s life and he was in a fragile state at that point,” says Junor. “Diana really touched a nerve in Charles, she said just the right thing to him, at the right moment, and he was moved by her.” This encounter was not, however, the first time Charles and Diana had met. The pair had been introduced two years earlier, in 1977 – Charles thought her “jolly” when he visited Althorp, the Spencer estate, when he was dating Diana’s older sister, Lady Sarah (a relationship that ended in early 1978). Diana had also attended Charles’s 30th birthday party along with her sister at Buckingham Palace in November 1978, and in January 1979 Diana again met Charles when she and Sarah were guests of Queen Elizabeth II at a weekend shooting party at Sandringham. After that weekend, Charles occasionally invited Diana to the ballet as part of a group or to dinner with friends. The relationship was, at this stage, purely platonic – Diana was fun to have around. It was not until their heart-to-heart about Lord Mountbatten in 1980 that Charles first saw Diana as girlfriend material. Keen to spend more time with Diana, Charles promptly invited her to Balmoral to join him and a group of friends staying there for a summer holiday. Diana enchanted and delighted. “She seemed to be the perfect girl,” says Junor. “She was funny, she was fun, everybody seemed to love her – she made everyone laugh and she seemed to adore Charles. “She was, on paper, absolutely perfect as a bride for him. At the time it was thought Charles’s bride must be a virgin, an aristocrat and a member of the Church of England. Now, we should remember that by the 1980s, after the 1960s sexual revolution and the introduction of the contraceptive pill, there were very few aristocratic virgins around, and as time went by – Charles was by this point in his 30s – they were getting fewer and fewer. “So, here was this girl who appeared to be absolutely lovely; perfect marriage material. And she appeared to be very uncomplicated. She was fresh and naïve and full of the joys of life. Or so it seemed.” But, says Junor, pressure began to mount on Charles and Diana almost immediately. “Ever since Charles was around the age of 18 the press had been looking at every girlfriend and asking, ‘could this be our next queen?’. They delved into the background of all of these women, which put an awful lot of them off. It was very difficult for Charles to meet and get to know somebody. And this is exactly what happened with Diana: she met Charles and almost immediately the press discovered that he was seeing her. The paparazzi camped outside the door to her flat in London; everywhere she went she was photographed and harassed. It was impossible for the two of them to get to know one another in any sort of ‘normal’ way.” Charles was also under pressure from his father, Prince Philip, to stop ‘playing the field’ and get married. It was time for Charles, who was now in his 30s, to settle down and find a wife, his father thought. “The bottom line being, of course, that every heir requires an heir of his own in order to keep the monarchy going,” says Junor. Did Prince Philip tell Charles to marry Diana? The catalyst came in the form of a memo sent by Prince Philip to his son in early 1981 urging him to make up his mind. You either marry this girl or you let her go, he wrote. But, says Junor, this memo was fatefully misinterpreted by Charles. “The royal family communicates with one another in very strange ways,” she said. “Rather than just picking up the phone or having a chat face-to-face, it was all done through memos. Charles misread his father’s memo: he thought he was being told that he must marry Diana – and so he asked her to marry him.” When did Prince Charles and Diana Spencer get engaged? Charles proposed to Diana on 6 February 1981 at Windsor Castle. But it was a tragic mismatch, says Junor. Charles and Diana had, at this point, barely spent any time together – Diana later claimed that she and Charles had met only 13 times before they became engaged. “And most of that time they'd not spent alone together,” Junor adds. “So they really didn't know one another at all.” Read more | How accurate is The Crown’s portrayal of Charles and Diana’s engagement? Diana’s mental health Diana soon began to struggle in her new role. Aged just 19 and having been living happily in a flatshare in London with a group of girl friends, Diana was taken away from everything she knew and moved into a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace. “It was awful for her, and lonely,” says Junor. “As soon as she moved into Buckingham Palace she appeared to be a very different girl from the girl she had been at Balmoral – she suddenly became very weepy and jealous of anywhere Charles went and anyone he saw. Her moods went up and down; shooting to stardom in a very short space of time was too much for her. “Meanwhile Charles, who was on a perpetual rollercoaster of engagements that he couldn’t get off, didn't quite know how to cope with this; he didn't know what was going on.” Diana was struggling with her mental health and with the eating disorder bulimia, says Junor. “She’d had a very traumatic childhood; she was a very damaged little girl who had grown into a very damaged young woman,” says the royal biographer. Diana’s parents had endured an unhappy marriage and separated when she was just six years old. Diana Spencer's early life A year-and-a-half before Diana was born, her mother, Frances Ruth Roche, who was already the mother of two girls, Diana’s elder sisters, had given birth to a baby boy who died when he was just 10 hours old. Diana was born 18 months later, in July 1961, followed by a much-wanted male heir: Diana’s younger brother, Charles. When Charles was around the age of two or three, Diana’s mother met Peter Shand Kydd, an heir to the wallpaper fortune built by his father, Norman Shand Kydd. The pair began an affair and later decided to become a couple. “Frances thought she could finally be happy, and she had every intention of taking her children with her,” says Junor. But, tragically, Frances lost custody of Diana and her three siblings following an intervention by her mother, Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. “Appalled that her daughter had run off with a ‘man in trade’, Baroness Fermoy gave evidence in the custody proceedings against her own daughter,” says Junor. “She told the court Frances was a bad mother, and as a result, custody of all four children went to Diana’s father. This is, I believe, why Diana’s mother later became a reclusive and very sad woman. It was because she had lost her children.” Diana, aged just seven and completely unaware of the custody proceedings, was left feeling abandoned and as though her mother did not love her enough to take her with her. “And then she worked out that actually she was a bit of a nuisance,” says Junor. “Her mother and father had wanted a boy, and that boy had died. Diana later told journalist Andrew Morton [who wrote the authorised 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story], her parents had tried for another boy but ended up with Diana. “Diana felt very unloved and unwanted, and she took those feelings into her adult life – she was always desperate to be loved but expected people to abandon her.” Diana’s bulimia Diana struggled with bulimia for many years before seeking professional help. It’s difficult to know when exactly it started, but it was “in full swing” by the time of their honeymoon, says Junor. She may initially have been treated for anorexia. “I think that the eating disorder was a manifestation of a much greater disorder,” says Junor. “Her mental health was poor; she had struggled mentally from childhood. “Bulimia and anorexia are very destructive conditions; they’re very hard to live with,” says Junor. Revelations of Diana’s bulimia were first published in Andrew Morton’s 1992 authorised biography, Diana: Her True Story. She later spoke about her struggle with the condition in her famous 1995 Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. [In 2021, an independent inquiry found that Bashir had used deception to secure the interview] “I think she felt that nobody could help her,” says Junor. She saw various conventional therapists but also turned to a number of alternative, complementary therapists including astrologers and crystal healers.” Wwhere and when did Charles and Diana and get married? The wedding of Charles and Diana married at St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 July 1981 in what has been described as the wedding of the century. “I think Charles and Diana both knew they were making a mistake when they walked down the aisle,” says Junor. “But it would have taken somebody very brave to cancel at that point. Charles had always said that marriage for him must be for life and it was therefore very important that he marry the right girl – ‘If I’m deciding [on] whom I want to live with for 50 years – well, that’s the last decision on which I [would] want my head to be ruled by my heart.’ “So although I don’t think he was actually in love with Diana, I think he thought he could grow to love her. Fundamentally I think he had every intention of making his marriage work. “A lot of people believe that Charles used Diana; that he never loved her and he never had any intention of honouring his marriage vows. They think he just needed his heir and his ‘spare’ and that once that was achieved, he went off with the woman he’d always loved, Camilla. That is very much the story that a lot of people like to believe. “Having spoken to a great many people who were around at the time, I happen to believe that story is completely wrong. I have always felt that it was just a very tragic mismatch; these two people were just completely wrong for one another. I really do not think that Charles used Diana or intended to use Diana, but once he was inside that marriage life was utterly unbearable for both of them.” Read more | Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance Was Charles still seeing Camilla when he married Diana? Charles’s relationship with Camilla had ended when she married Andrew Parker Bowles in the summer of 1973. Camilla settled into her new life as a wife and mother and her friendship with Charles remained platonic in the years that followed. But the pair restarted their affair shortly after the birth of Camilla’s second child, Laura, in early 1978, and in 1979 Charles turned to Camilla for consolation for his grief following the death of Lord Mountbatten. Camilla was “his best friend, his soul mate, and, and after the death of his great-uncle, lover,” writes Marlene Koenig in this article for HistoryExtra. This second affair lasted until Charles’s engagement to Diana in 1981. “Camilla’s husband, unfortunately, was very unfaithful to her, so she was very lonesome in her marriage,” says Junor. “And Charles made her feel good. Who can blame her for enjoying that relationship while Charles was single? But she knew that once Charles became married, the physical side of their relationship would end. She was under no illusion that it would carry on. And when Camilla realised that Diana was jealous of her, she stepped right back.” Tensions were made worse by the fact that Charles had failed to tell Diana about his history with Camilla when they first began dating, says Junor. Early on in his relationship with Diana, they even went to stay with the Parker Bowles’s, but Charles did not disclose the fact Camilla was his ex-girlfriend. Instead, Diana found out on the grapevine “through Buckingham Palace gossip,” says Junor. “As a 19-year-old, Diana would have been hugely upset by that, and very jealous,” she adds. “She probably felt like a bit of a fool”. Read more | Everything you need to know about Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall Diana and The G&F bracelet The last time Charles and Camilla saw one another before he married Diana was just a few days before the wedding. They had one final lunch together, during which Charles gifted Camilla a bracelet inscribed with the letters ‘G’ and ‘F’, which is thought to have stood for ‘Gladys’ and ‘Fred’ – their nicknames for one another. Shockingly, Diana had discovered the bracelet just two weeks previously, in the office she shared with Charles’s right-hand-man, Michael Colborne. Prince Charles had asked Colborne to buy jewellery as presents for a number of women with whom he had been close during his bachelor years, as a way of thanking them for their companionship. “All the jewellery had been delivered to the office that Diana was sharing with Colborne and put on his desk,” Junor explains. “Colborne was called away to a meeting down the corridor. He left the jewellery on his desk and when he came back he met Diana storming out of the office. He quickly realised she had unpacked the boxes, discovered the bracelet and got into a jealous rage.” Camilla attended Charles and Diana’s wedding but the pair did not then see one another or communicate for nearly five years – apart from when Charles notified her of the birth of his first son, William. Princess Diana's sons: the births of William and Harry In June 1982, less than a year after Diana and Charles married, their first son, Prince William, was born. This was, for the most part, a happy time for the couple, says Junor. “I’ve interviewed people who visited Kensington Palace in the early 1980s – they describe Diana charging about the house playfully looking for William who had run away and hidden under his father’s desk at bedtime. Others describe Charles chasing Diana up the stairs. I think there were definitely good times. Diana would later tell journalist Andrew Morton that the period just before Harry was born [in 1984] was the happiest the couple had had together. “Diana very much enjoyed being a mother, she absolutely loved William and Harry with every fibre of her being. If you are someone who desperately needs love – as, I would argue, Diana did – there’s nothing quite like a baby to fulfil that need. So having children was the best possible thing for Diana.” Tensions in Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage But tensions in the marriage were escalating and Diana’s moods were changeable. “She was incredibly complicated,” says Junor. “There were behaviours that she exhibited privately but not publicly, and I think this is why the public has always found it very hard to believe anything other than Diana’s story. Andrew Morton’s biography, for example, is absolutely Diana’s story, but it’s her story, it’s not the story. "The truth is we’ve never heard Charles’s side. Apart from admitting adultery to Jonathan Dimbleby [in his televised 1994 interview] he has never talked about their marriage or criticised his ex-wife in all these years. “Ultimately I think Charles did everything he could to try to make Diana happy. But she wanted 101 per cent of Charles’s attention all the time, and he was just not the man who would ever have been able to give that to her because the bulk of his attention has always gone on his work.” Tensions also arose as the press and public lavished attention on Diana over-and-above Charles. During their 1983 tour of Australia – which features in season four of The Crown – Charles is said to have bemoaned the fact he was being outshone by his wife. Junor, who joined the royal couple on their very first royal tour – of Wales shortly after their honeymoon – says Charles was often overshadowed by Diana to the extent it was “painful to watch”. During royal tours of towns and cities, thousands of people would line both sides of the street and Charles would meet-and-greet those on one side, Diana the other. “There were audible sighs and groans from people on Charles’s side,” says Junor. “They would hand Charles bouquets of flowers and ask him to pass them to his wife.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/10/GettyImages-716770063-9cbe210.jpg" width="5296" height="3511" alt="Prince Charles and Princess Diana's royal tour of Australia, 1983" title="Princess Diana and Prince Charles visit Yandina Ginger Factory in Queensland, Australia, during their 1983 royal tour of Australia. The tour is expected to feature in series 4 of 'The Crown'. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images)" /> The press were also “obsessed” with Diana, says Junor. Charles would give a speech about an issue dear to him, such as the environment or a charitable cause, but – much to his frustration – newspaper reports the next day would be dominated by photos of Diana, with commentary on her hairstyle, her weight and her clothes, and often speculation as to whether she was pregnant. There would be no mention of his speech. “After a while, this began to really grate on Charles,” says Junor. “He had spent his whole life being in the spotlight. Members of the royal family do their own engagements, they’re used to being the star of the show. So when Charles suddenly found himself being kicked into the wings, with his wife – for all the stupidest reasons, like a hairstyle – suddenly the star, who could blame him for getting a bit peeved?” Read more about the start of ‘Dianamania’ here Would Diana have had a career if she hadn’t met Charles? “I suspect not,” says Junor. “She was not very well educated. And because she was the product of a divorced couple I think each parent probably spoiled her; I don’t think there was any real discipline in her life. “If she started something and wanted to give up, she gave up: she’d gone to finishing school but didn’t like it, so left; she’d done jobs she hadn’t enjoyed, so she’d given them up. And one thing that the royal family has in spades is discipline; their lives are regimented, and I think Diana found that very difficult. “Diana had left boarding school with no real qualifications at all and she wasn’t a great reader of books. In the late 1970s she studied ballet and briefly taught at the Vacani School of Dance, and she had looked after children briefly as a kindergarten teacher. “She had dabbled in lots of things she liked. But with no qualifications she was never going to go anywhere great. She really didn’t need to work; she had plenty of money. So if she hadn’t met Charles, she probably would have married someone posh and had children, staff and nannies – and an active social life.” What was Diana’s relationship like with the Queen and Prince Philip? To begin with, both the Queen and Prince Philip were very enthusiastic about Diana, says Junor. They’d known her as a child because her family lived at Park House on the Sandringham Estate; her father was an equerry to the Queen. Diana was also a similar age to Prince Andrew and she used to attend parties with him. “When Diana stayed at Balmoral in the summer of 1980, the Queen and Prince Philip thought she was enchanting,” says Junor. For many years Charles kept secret the difficulties he and Diana were having in their marriage. “The Queen and Prince Philip were blissfully unaware,” says Junor. “But as time went by and they came to learn of the problems in the marriage through the press, they became very irritated with her. Diana’s behaviour was damaging the monarchy, and if there’s one thing the Queen cares about above all else, it’s the monarchy. She is safeguarding it for the future; that’s the prime task for any monarch.” Read more | Did the Queen really forbid Charles and Diana from divorcing, as is shown in The Crown? When did Charles and Diana’s marriage break down? When did Charles start his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles? Diana would later tell Andrew Morton that she realised her marriage to Charles was over around the time their second son, Harry, was born, in 1984. According to Diana she was crushed by comments Charles supposedly made following the birth. “Something inside of me died,” the princess told Morton. By 1986 the marriage had collapsed and Charles was at what Penny Junor describes as “a critical sort of low”. Two mutual friends, concerned for Charles, independently contacted Camilla and urged her to reach out to him. She picked up the phone to Charles and their friendship restarted from there. “Some years later Charles would confirm that Mrs Parker Bowles was a good friend, but insisted he had been faithful to Diana until their marriage had ‘irretrievably broken down’,” writes Marlene Koenig. Charles and Camilla first saw one another again in 1986 when Charles invited her and her husband, Andrew, for tea at Highgrove. Over the coming months Charles and Camilla’s friendship developed and by around 1987 the pair were romantically involved again, says Junor. “Andrew was still being horribly unfaithful to Camilla and she didn’t feel loved or cherished by him in their marriage,” says Junor. “Meanwhile Diana by this time had had affairs with several men, the first of which was probably with her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee. James Hewitt [a former cavalry officer in the British Army, with whom Diana admitted to having an affair] was also well in the picture by the time Charles went back to Camilla. Charles and Diana were leading very separate lives by this point.” When did Charles and Diana separate and divorce? Charles and Diana lived largely separate lives from around 1986, and Charles’s affair with Camilla continued. In December 1992, after years of speculation by the tabloid press that the marriage was in jeopardy, British prime minister John Major announced that the couple had formally separated. In the summer of 1994, Charles’s interview with Jonathan Dimbleby was televised “in which he admitted infidelity and revealed both a lack of sympathy for Diana… and a worrying distance from his family,” writes Sarah Gristwood in this article for HistoryExtra. This revelation, says Junor, compelled Andrew Parker Bowles to divorce Camilla. The pair announced their divorce in January 1995. A few months later, in November 1995, Princess Diana gave her famous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in which she told viewers “there were three of us in this marriage – so it was a bit crowded”. Did Charles ask Camilla to leave her husband, as is shown in The Crown? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/09/GettyImages-618242606-8a56be0.jpg" width="3966" height="2820" alt="Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana for the TV programme 'Panorama', November 1995" title="Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana in Kensington Palace for the television programme 'Panorama', November 1995. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> Within weeks of the interview, the Queen suggested the couple should divorce – and quickly. Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles was dissolved in August 1996, after four years of separation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/10/GettyImages-51420457-6d65c90.jpg" width="1467" height="991" alt="Britain's national newspaper headlines dated 21 December 1995 report that the Queen has suggested Charles and Diana should divorc" title="Britain's national newspaper headlines dated 21 December 1995 report that the Queen has suggested Charles and Diana should divorce. (Photo by Johnny Eggitt/AFP via Getty Images)" /> On 31 August 1997, Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. She was 36 years old when she died. In January 1999, Charles and Camilla made their first public appearance together as a couple. Their engagement was announced on 10 February 2005 and they married just a couple of months later on 9 April at a civil wedding at Windsor Guildhall, followed by a Service of Blessing at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. Princess Diana in The Crown Princess Diana first appeared in season 4 of Peter Morgan’s royal drama The Crown, where she was played by Emma Corrin, with Elizabeth Debicki taking on the role in seasons 5 and 6. “As in real life, the collapse of both Anne’s and Andrew’s marriages proved to be a mere sideshow compared to the far more sensational and high-profile split between the Queen’s eldest son and his first wife,” writes historian Tracy Borman of the how the breakdown in Charles and Diana’s marriage is portrayed in season 5. Read on to explore more of the real history of The Crown and events seen on screen: Diana and Charles’s wedding: everything you need to know Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan: what happened and why did he break in? Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War? The Crown: the real history Why was Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, assassinated? Everything you need to know about King Charles III, formerly Prince Charles Who is Queen Camilla, formerly the Duchess of Cornwall? Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage Who is Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II? This article was written following an interview in November 2020 with royal biographer Penny Junor, who is the author of 10 books on members of the royal family including Charles and Diana: portrait of a marriage (Headline, 1991)
Pomp & power: royal ceremonies through the centuries
Ahead of King Charles’ coronation, Dr Alice Hunt explores how British royals have long used pomp and pageantry to reinforce their power and popularity
Later this week, royal ceremony and spectacle will be deployed in full force for the coronation of King Charles III. But this latest lavish display is nothing new – British monarchs have long used pomp and pageantry to reinforce their power and popularity. Dr Alice Hunt speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about how monarchs down the centuries have used ceremony and ritual – and how it’s gone down with the public.
Seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, beginning in the early 1990s, depict the gradual decline of one of its most vibrant and controversial characters, charting the failing health of Princess Margaret, once a dazzling beauty and staple of the gossip columns. Anne de Courcy maps Princess Margaret’s life and final years, and considers what might have led to her early death…
In February 1999, the 68-year-old Princess Margaret was holidaying on Mustique, in her private villa Les Jolies Eaux. One morning, she went into the bathroom to wash her hair. Stepping into the bath, she inadvertently turned on the bath taps instead of those of the overhead shower. The water that gushed out of them was, thanks to a faulty thermostat, near-boiling. Janie Stevens, lady-in-waiting and friend to the princess, became alarmed by Margaret’s non-appearance and went into the bathroom, where she found the Princess sitting dazed on the edge of the bath, her feet appallingly scalded and in great pain. The incident, which left Margaret hospitalised, was a well-publicised episode in a broader period of declining health and spirit, a sorry trajectory for the Queen’s sister, once the sparkling face of the royal family. Princess Margaret’s early life <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-1036124564-1b5671e-e1667818467197.jpg" width="619" height="412" alt="Princess Margaret, future Countess of Snowden, 1930 - 2002. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and sister of Queen Elizabeth II. From The Coronation Book of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, published 1937.(Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="Princess Margaret, future Countess of Snowden, 1930 - 2002. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and sister of Queen Elizabeth II. From The Coronation Book of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, published 1937.(Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Princess Margaret was born at her mother’s home, Glamis Castle, on 21 August 1930. She was four years younger than her sister, the then Princess Elizabeth. At the time, their parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, had no idea of the future that awaited them. On the podcast | British royal family podcast episodes With an older brother, the future Edward VIII, as heir to the throne, the Duke of York had believed that he and his family (‘we four’, as he often described them) would continue to lead the quiet and peaceful life they so enjoyed. But Edward’s abdication in December 1936 catapulted not only the Duke and Duchess, as the new king and queen, into public roles for the rest of their lives. It also altered the relationship between their two daughters. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-515219070-daa4e7a-e1667818256231.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="The crowned King George VI and Queen Elizabeth with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on their return from Westminster Abbey." title="King George VI and Family in Royal Regalia" /> No longer was Margaret simply the younger sister of an older sibling, but of someone who would one day become the most important figure in the kingdom – while she remained, merely, the younger sister. Separation of sisters <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-929229918-c6adaad-e1667818354120.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="Princess Elizabeth, future Queen Elizabeth II, left, and Princess Margaret, right, driving a pony and trap in Great Windsor Park, England, 1941. Princess Margaret, Margaret Rose, 1930 – 2002, aka Princess Margaret Rose. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth, future Elizabeth II, born 1926. Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From a photograph. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="Princess Elizabeth, future Queen Elizabeth II, left, and Princess Margaret, right, driving a pony and trap in Great Windsor Park, England, 1941" /> Of course, this dramatic change in status was not immediately apparent to the small child Margaret then was. But as she grew older, it was clear that Princess Elizabeth was being groomed as future queen. The children had always done everything together, including lessons under the supervision of their governess Marion Crawford; now Elizabeth was being given twice-weekly tuition in constitutional history by Henry Marten (later Sir Henry) the Vice-Provost of Eton (conveniently close to Windsor Castle); and Margaret was unhappy that she was not included. In fact, all her life she would regret her lack of education and, in later days, when she visited museums, would map out programmes and take notes on objects or paintings she particularly admired, to study them afterwards. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-929227248-16c4cc0-e1667817722235.jpg" width="413" height="538" alt="Princess Margaret, left, and Princess Elizabeth, future Queen Elizabeth II, right, playing a duet at the piano in 1940. Princess Margaret, Margaret Rose, 1930 – 2002, aka Princess Margaret Rose. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth, future Elizabeth II, born 1926. Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From a photograph. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="Princess Margaret, left, and Princess Elizabeth, future Queen Elizabeth II, right, playing a duet at the piano in 1940. Princess Margaret, Margaret Rose, 1930 – 2002, aka Princess Margaret Rose. Younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth, future Elizabeth II, born 1926. Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From a photograph. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> As the princesses grew up, the difference in their temperaments was underlined by the differing roles they would play. Elizabeth, naturally more serious and responsible, had begun to realise her destiny, while Margaret was, as their governess ‘Crawfie’ put it, “warm and demonstrative”, with a well-developed sense of mischief. “Lilibet is my pride, Margaret is my joy,” said the King. Both parents, conscious that as the girls grew up, Margaret would be relegated more and more to the background, tried to make it up to her by indulging her, something that may have encouraged a naturally rebellious streak. Coming out When the two princesses respectively reached 18 – the age at which upper-class girls traditionally ‘came out’ – the difference in their roles was apparent. Elizabeth, in those wartime years, was in ATS uniform learning how to maintain and repair vehicle engines. Read more | From balls to Bridgerton: a brief history of debutantes and the social season <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-3362632-2a44b72-e1667817843229.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="13th June 1946: Queen Elizabeth II attending the passing out parade of the ATS whilst wearing full military uniform. (Photo by J. A. Hampton/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)" title="13th June 1946: Queen Elizabeth II attending the passing out parade of the ATS whilst wearing full military uniform. (Photo by J. A. Hampton/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)" /> Margaret, now a pocket Venus with an hour-glass figure, was free to go to the parties that were beginning again and to take on public roles and presidencies such as those of the NSPCC and the Girl Guides Association. She was also in love – with a glamorous war hero sixteen years older than herself. Group Captain Peter Townsend, DSO, DFC and Bar, who had been appointed equerry to her father in 1944, a job in which he saw the Princesses almost every day. After her idolised father’s death in 1952, Townsend must also have represented the security so often found with someone older. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-545350045-1a2a190-e1667820393573.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) Margaret Rose, Prinzessin *21.08.1930-09.02.2002+Graefin von Snowdon, GBSchwester von Queen Elizabeth II.- mit Captain Peter Townsend in ueüdafrika- 1955 (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" title="Margaret Rose, Prinzessin - Graefin von Snowdon, GB/ mit Peter Townsend" /> But Townsend was divorced (although the innocent party) which meant that the Queen, as Head of the Church of England, which in those days forbade the remarriage of divorced persons, could not give her consent. At 25, if Margaret gave up much of her royal status, she would be free to marry. But when the time came, she renounced Townsend in a touching statement. Party years Then came the party years: Margaret in a wasp-waisted Dior dress, long ivory cigarette holder in manicured hand, Margaret in night clubs, Margaret doing the can-can at the American Embassy, Margaret at the centre of a group of friends, her violet-blue eyes smiling first on one suitor, then another – among them Colin Tennant (later Lord Glenconner), ‘Johnny’ Dalkeith and ‘Sunny’ Blandford, heirs to the Buccleuch and Marlborough fortunes and estates respectively; ideal conventional husbands for a princess. Read more | “Cheap men and expensive bottles”: Princess Margaret’s love affairs She was the Diana of her day, one of the two most photographed women in the world (the other was Elizabeth Taylor) and garlanded with the aura of a tragic romance. An unlikely suitor But Princess Margaret did not settle for domesticity with a duke. Instead, in an extraordinary divergence from conventional royal behaviour, she chose a photographer, Antony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon) at a time when photography was regarded as a trade rather than a profession. True, Tony, as everyone called him, had been to Eton and danced at debutante balls, but when he took the photographs for Colin Tennant’s wedding to Lady Anne Coke (later Lady Glenconner, she became a lady-in-waiting to the princess), he was sent to the back door tradesman’s entrance and Anne’s father, the Earl of Leicester, derogatorily dubbed him ‘Tony Snapshot’. Unlike other royal courtships, Margaret’s romance with Tony was conducted in such total secrecy that the first the world, and the avid press, knew of it was the announcement of their engagement on the Six O’Clock News. They were married in May 1960. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-3426604-c8fea3f-e1667818578529.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="1964: Princess Margaret (1930 - 2002) with Lord Snowdon and Viscount Linley at Kensington Palace shortly after the birth of her daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" title="1964: Princess Margaret (1930 - 2002) with Lord Snowdon and Viscount Linley at Kensington Palace shortly after the birth of her daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)" /> After the birth of Princess Margaret and Antony’s two children, their marriage gradually began to fall apart and, although they did not divorce until 1978, both largely went their separate ways. Around the same time, Margaret began making annual visits to the Caribbean island of Mustique, where its owner, her friend Colin Glenconner, had given her a plot of land on which a private villa was built – Les Jolies Eaux. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-1302429443-7601241-e1667818668402.jpg" width="620" height="404" alt="Princess Margaret, Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner and Anne Tennant, Lady Glenconner wait on the jetty for Queen Elizabeth ll and Prince Philip's arrival to Mustique on Britannia in1977 in Mustique. (Photo Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)." title="Princess Margaret, Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner and Anne Tennant, Lady Glenconner wait on the jetty for Queen Elizabeth ll and Prince Philip's arrival to Mustique on Britannia in1977 in Mustique. (Photo Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)." /> In 1973, she began an affair with Roddy Llewellyn, a sweet-natured man 17 years her junior. When it was revealed, causing a tabloid scandal, Margaret was vilified; a far cry from her celebrations as a glittering young debutante. Throughout these turbulent years, Margaret’s love and loyalty to the Queen never faltered. Although they had very different personalities, she said they rarely argued. “I’ve only twice ever had a row with my sister,” Margaret told author Andrew Duncan. The two would speak on the telephone most days; what the Queen wished for above all was her sister’s happiness saying, much later, to Anne Glenconner: “It was rather difficult at moments, but I thank you so much for introducing Princess Margaret to Roddy because he made her really happy.” How did Princess Margaret die? As she entered her sixties, Princess Margaret’s health deserted her. She had smoked heavily since her early teens – although she gave up smoking in 1991 – and drunk equally heavily, mostly her favourite whisky, Famous Grouse. Already, at 54, a portion of her left lung had been removed and she suffered from migraines, bronchitis and laryngitis. Additionally, Anne Glenconner had noticed that she would often pause in mid-sentence for a few seconds before carrying on as if nothing had happened. In 1993, she was rushed to hospital with pneumonia. Then 1998, on her annual three-week visit to Mustique, she and the Glenconners were out to dinner with friends when Margaret suddenly slumped over the table. She had suffered a mild stoke but, bar a slight speech impediment, seemed to recover well from it. And then came the trauma of the bathtub scalding. Despite her injuries, Margaret had to leave the villa because her son, David Linley, had let it out almost immediately afterwards. Somehow Janie found them another place but she had to leave shortly thereafter. So, Anne Glenconner took over as the princess’s day-and-night nurse. She wore a buzzer around her neck at all times and, as the princess would allow no one in her room but Anne, whom she summoned constantly, it was a wearing time. Eventually the exhausted Anne rang the Queen to say that either she must have more help or else the princess must be flown home – by Concorde, as she was not strong enough for the much longer regular transatlantic flight. The two were flown home. Margaret’s recovery was slow and only partial, and she suffered a relapse before Christmas 2000. Three months later, in March 2001, she had a further stroke, which left her paralysed down her left side so that she now needed a wheelchair. Her sight was also impaired. Princess Margaret's final moments and death She was last seen in public before Christmas 2001 at the 100th birthday party of Princess Alice, the dowager duchess of Gloucester, sitting in a wheelchair, her face puffy and swollen through medication, her famous eyes hidden behind dark glasses. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/GettyImages-52107207-edfaa3b-e1667818805886.jpg" width="413" height="619" alt="LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - AUGUST 04: Princess Margaret At Clarence House She Is In A Wheelchair After Suffering A Number Of Strokes. Helping Her Is The Queen Mother's Butler William Tallon. (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)" title="Margaret In Wheelchair" /> Soon afterwards, after a further stroke that left her with heart problems, she was rushed to the King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, where she died peacefully in her sleep at 6.30am on 9 February 2002, her son and daughter at her side. Her final years were a sad contrast with the lovely young woman remembered by so many and, by the Queen, as “my beloved sister”. Read more | The Queen's "rebel sister": 13 facts about Princess Margaret Anne de Courcy is a writer, journalist and book reviewer and the author of the authoritative Lord Snowdon biography (Snowdon: the Biography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) Read more about the history behind each episode of The Crown season 5: The Crown S5 E1: ‘Queen Victoria Syndrome’ and a second honeymoon The Crown S5 E2: Prince Philip’s ‘keeper of secrets’ and Andrew Norton’s book on Princess Diana The Crown S5 E3: exiled royals and the al-Fayeds The Crown S5 E4: the Queen’s “annus horribilis” and Princess Margaret’s relationship with Peter Townsend The Crown S5 E5 real history: ‘Camillagate’ tapes and a “war council” for the monarchy’s survival The Crown S5 E6 real history: the Romanovs’ murder, and Philip’s “spiritual companionship” The Crown S5 E7 real history: the introduction of Martin Bashir, and a royal education The Crown S5 E8 real history: Diana’s Panorama interview causes fireworks The Crown S5 E9 real history: the divorce settlement between Charles and Diana
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Camilla Parker Bowles was ‘the other woman’ in the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer and played a central role in the couple’s split, in what royal biographer Penny Junor describes as the darkest days of the modern monarchy. Here, we explore the life of Camilla, Queen Consort to King Charles III, and her portrayal in the epic royal drama The Crown…
Camilla, Queen Consort to King Charles III, was born Camilla Rosemary Shand on 17 July 1947 at King's College Hospital, London. Born into a well-to-do family, Camilla grew up on a sprawling country estate in Plumpton, Sussex. Her father, Major Bruce Shand, was Vice Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex, while her mother, Rosalind, came from the aristocratic and wealthy Cubitt family – her ancestor Thomas Cubitt made his fortune as a property developer in the 19th century. Her father’s rank meant Camilla and her family lived somewhat regally and socialised with Britain's high society. Camilla Parker Bowles: a biography Maiden name: Camilla Rosemary Shand Born: 17 July 1947, at King's College Hospital, London Married to: King Charles III (m. 2005–present); Andrew Parker Bowles (m. 1973–95) Children: Thomas Henry (born 1974) and Laura Rose (Lopes) (born 1978) Grandchildren: Eliza Lopes (born 2008); Louis Lopes (born 2009); Gus Lopes (born 2009); Lola Parker Bowles (born 2007) and Freddy Parker Bowles (born 2010) Parents: Major Bruce Middleton Hope Shand and The Hon Rosalind Maud Shand (née Cubitt) Siblings: Annabel Elliot (born 1949) and Mark Shand (1951–2014) Educated: Dumbrells School in Sussex; Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington; Mon Fertile School in Switzerland and the Institut Britannique in Paris Camilla, the eldest of three children, was first educated at Dumbrells School, a co-ed school in Sussex, and later attended the fashionable independent all-girls boarding school Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington. There she acquired the nickname ‘Milla’ and, according to the journalist and author Christopher Andersen, was known to boast about the fact her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was the mistress of King Edward VII. “Fellow pupils remember 10-year-old ‘Milla’ waltzing into class and grandly ordering the other children to bow before her. ‘My great-grandmother was the lover of the King,’ she proclaimed. ‘We’re practically royalty’”, writes Andersen in his 2016 book Game of Crowns. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/09/GettyImages-1053860668-c0113f0.jpg" width="4662" height="3502" alt="Camilla Shand and sister Annabelle at the 1952 wedding of Jeremy Cubitt and Diana du Cane" title="Camilla Shand, aged four (left), and her three-year-old sister, Annabelle, at the wedding of Jeremy Cubitt and Diana du Cane in St Mark's church, North Audley Street, London, 17 January 1952. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Camilla was described as a tomboy and said to possess a “boisterous sense of humour and utter lack of self-consciousness that made her a favourite of both sexes – but especially the boys”. Camilla left Queen’s Gate at the age of 16 with a love of reading – but with only one O Level to her name (in kennel hygiene). When did Camilla meet her first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles? After attending finishing schools in Switzerland and France, Camilla returned to London to work briefly as a receptionist at a Mayfair-based decorating firm. It was around this time, in 1965, aged 17, that she first met Andrew Parker Bowles, an officer in the Royal Horse Guards, at a debutante party. The pair proceeded to date on and off for seven years, during which time Andrew was said to also been involved with a number of other women – including Princess Anne, whom he dated briefly in 1970. When did Camilla meet Prince Charles? It was in the summer of 1971 when a 24-year-old Camilla first met Prince Charles, who was then 22. A legend has been fostered that the couple were introduced at a polo match at Smith’s Lawn in Windsor, but, according to Jonathan Dimbleby’s authorised biography, The Prince of Wales (1994), the introduction was in fact made by a mutual friend, Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean ambassador to the United Kingdom, whom Charles had met when he was a student at Cambridge. The monarchy with Tracy Borman Member exclusive | In this five-part series, historian Tracy Borman charts the changing fortunes of the monarchy, from the bloody Norman conquest of 1066 through the upheaval of civil war in the 17th century to the reign of Elizabeth II. Watch all episodes now Charles and Camilla were instantly attracted to one another and over the next 18 months their friendship became a love affair. But “Charles knew that his parents would not approve of the relationship,” writes Marlene Koenig in this article for HistoryExtra. Camilla’s background, while well-to-do, was not sufficiently aristocratic, and Camilla had what Prince Charles’s godmother, Patricia, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, described as a “history”. So it was that as Prince Charles prepared to join HMS Minerva in mid-January 1973 for a seven-month voyage in the Caribbean, he refrained from expressing the depth of his feelings for Camilla. Two months later, in March 1973, Camilla became engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles. Camilla and Andrew married at Guards’ Chapel, Wellington Barracks, on 4 July 1973. The wedding was attended by Princess Anne and Charles’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Charles, meanwhile, sent his regrets from the Minerva. The following year Camilla gave birth to her first child, a son named Thomas Henry, and just under four years later, in January 1978, welcomed a daughter named Laura. Interestingly, Thomas is today not only Prince Charles’s stepson, but also his godson. When did Charles and Camilla begin their extra-marital relationship? In the early years of Camilla’s marriage to Andrew, her relationship with Prince Charles was said to have remained platonic, writes Koenig. But the pair became romantically involved again shortly after the birth of Camilla’s second child, Laura, in early 1978, and in 1979 Charles turned to Camilla for consolation for his grief following the death of his beloved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten. This second affair lasted until Charles’s engagement to Diana in 1981. Read more | Why did Charles end up marrying Diana instead of Camilla? Camilla remained Charles’s close friend and confidante throughout the 1980s – the pair were seen going to the theatre together and attending many of the same parties – but the prince would insist years later that he had been faithful to Diana until their marriage had “irretrievably broken down”. Charles says he rekindled his affair with Camilla only in 1986, when his marriage was beyond repair. This was five years after he married Diana. In 1989, while attending the 40th birthday party of Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, at the home of Lady Annabel Goldsmith in London, Diana is reported to have confronted Camilla about the nature of her relationship with her husband. According to Andrew Morton’s controversial 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story, Diana told Camilla: “I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.” Morton claims Camilla told Diana “you’ve got all the men in the world fall in love with you and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?”, to which Diana responded: “I want my husband.” The real history behind The Crown Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts… Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance Why did Charles and Diana's marriage fail? The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan: what happened and why did he break in? Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War? The Crown: the real history behind series 1–3 Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding: everything you need to know Why was Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, assassinated? Everything you need to know about Prince Charles Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon: why did their marriage break down? Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage Who is Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II? The affair reportedly continued, and in the summer of 1994 Charles’s interview with Jonathan Dimbleby was televised “in which he admitted infidelity and revealed both a lack of sympathy for Diana… and a worrying distance from his family,” writes Sarah Gristwood in this article for HistoryExtra. The following year, in January 1995, Camilla and Andrew announced their divorce. “Throughout our marriage we have always tended to follow rather different interests, but in recent years we have led completely separate lives,” the couple said in a statement. A few months later, in November 1995, Princess Diana gave her famous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in which she told viewers “there were three of us in this marriage – so it was a bit crowded”. [In 2021, an independent inquiry found that Martin Bashir used deception to secure the interview.] Read more | Diana: the rebel princess Within weeks of the interview, the Queen suggested the couple should divorce – and quickly. Charles’s marriage to Diana was dissolved in August 1996, after four years of separation. On 31 August 1997, Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/09/GettyImages-618242606-8a56be0.jpg" width="3966" height="2820" alt="Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana for the TV programme 'Panorama', November 1995" title="Martin Bashir interviews Princess Diana in Kensington Palace for the television programme 'Panorama', November 1995. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> When did Charles and Camilla get married? Charles and Camilla kept a low profile in the months after Diana’s death. “Camilla was the wicked witch and marriage wrecker, globally loathed,” said royal expert Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine. “The Queen really wanted him to say goodbye to her [Camilla], and he refused,” says royal biographer Penny Junor, author of The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair that Rocked the Crown. “This man, who has duty written through him, did not obey his mother on this occasion.” Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? It was not until January 1999, some two-and-a-half-years after his divorce from Diana and more than 18 months after her death, that Charles and Camilla made their first public appearance together as a couple. At a 50th birthday party at the Ritz Hotel in London for Camilla's sister, Annabel Elliott, the pair signalled that their long-running love affair was now official. The couple’s engagement was announced on 10 February 2005, with Camilla wearing a ring widely believed to have come from the Queen Mother's collection. The ring features a five-carat emerald-cut diamond in the centre, and its extensive family heritage means it could be more valuable than more modern royal engagement rings. Camilla and Charles were married on 9 April 2005 at a civil wedding at Windsor Guildhall, followed by a Service of Blessing at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. At the reception, Queen Elizabeth II offered a toast to the newlyweds in which she said: “They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.” Following their marriage, Camilla legally became the Princess of Wales, but because the late Diana, Princess of Wales was primarily known by that name, Camilla instead went by her secondary title, Duchess of Cornwall. When King Charles III takes the throne, the Duchess of Cornwall will automatically become Queen Consort upon his accession – under common law the spouse of a king automatically becomes queen. But because of uncertainty about public opinion, it was suggested that might not always be the case. “At the time of their marriage the official intention was for Camilla to be known as the Princess Consort. But plans for her title became more ambiguous in recent years,” BBC News reported. In a message marking the 70th anniversary of her reign in February 2022, the Queen expressed her desire for Camilla to be known as Queen Consort when Prince Charles becomes king. “Queen Consort” refers to the spouse of a ruling king and would mean “Queen Camilla” as her future title. “The Queen’s intervention means barriers to her becoming Queen have now been removed, and will allow her to have a fully-fledged royal role beside Charles,” BBC News reported. Why was it ever in doubt that Camilla would become Queen? According to constitutional experts at University College London’s Constitution Unit, there were two possible reasons why Camilla might not have assumed the title.“The first is the argument voiced by the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail Online, that Camilla cannot become Queen because her 2005 civil marriage to Prince Charles was not valid. The argument runs as follows: because the Marriage Acts from 1753 have explicitly excepted royal marriages from their provisions, the only valid marriage which a member of the royal family could contract in England was a religious marriage in the Church of England. “The Lord Chancellor in 2005 defended the validity of the Prince’s civil marriage, as did the Registrar General. But if Camilla became Queen, it might provoke further legal challenges. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/09/GettyImages-52611288-9da54e3.jpg" width="3527" height="2379" alt="Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall wedding photograph" title="Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall pose for an official wedding photograph with their children and parents (L-R: Prince Harry, Prince William, Laura and Tom Parker Bowles; Front: Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Bruce Shand) in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle following their marriage on 9 April 2005. (Photo by Hugo Burnand/Pool/Anwar Hussein Collection/Getty Images)" /> “The second possible reason is public opinion. In deference to public opinion, Camilla has not assumed the title Princess of Wales. Prince Charles will no doubt have regard to public opinion at the time of his accession, in deciding whether Camilla should become Queen; and he may also want to seek the advice of the government of the day. The fallback position is that Camilla would become Princess Consort as announced at the time of their marriage.” How is Camilla portrayed in The Crown? Camilla’s early relationship with Prince Charles was a key plotline in series three of The Crown, which followed their meeting in the summer of 1971. She was played by Emerald Fennell, who resumed her role in series four. The Crown S4 cast: which real historical figures feature in season four of Netflix’s royal drama – and what did they really look like? In series three of The Crown, Charles confides in Lord Mountbatten that Camilla is “the one” and asks for his great-uncle’s help convincing ‘the family’ to allow them to marry. Horrified at the prospect, Lord Mountbatten is seen conspiring with the Queen Mother to put an end to the relationship; the Queen Mother agrees the idea of marriage is “madness” and says “the sooner that girl is back where she belongs [with Andrew Parker Bowles] the better”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/09/Camilla-604a7f2-2-scaled.jpg" width="2560" height="1837" alt="Emerald Fennell plays Camilla Parker Bowles (then Shand) in 'The Crown'" title="Left: Emerald Fennell plays Camilla Parker Bowles (then Shand) in 'The Crown'. Right: The real Camilla Parker Bowles, pictured with Prince Charles c1975. (Photos by Netflix/Getty Images)" /> But in reality there was no such plot, and it is unlikely that Lord Mountbatten was behind arrangements for Prince Charles’s posting abroad. Christopher Wilson, author of A Greater Love: Charles and Camilla, told the Telegraph “I have never heard [such a plot] suggested at all.” The series also explores Camilla’s on-off relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, who, it is suggested, is Camilla’s first choice. Princess Anne, following her brief courtship with Parker Bowles, is seen telling her mother in series three that Andrew is “Camilla’s first love and the man she’s still devoted to…. She likes Charles, but she’s obsessed with Andrew.” Camilla and Andrew marry in the penultimate episode of series three, while a distraught Prince Charles, thousands of miles away in the West Indies aboard HMS Minerva, is seen crying alone in his cabin. Season four of The Crown, which landed on Netflix in November 2020, picked up in the late 1970s and featured Charles’s relationship with Princess Diana as a central plotline. The series also explored Charles’s extramarital affairs with Camilla and the love triangle than ensued between Charles, Camilla and Diana. Season four showed Diana’s torturous lunch with Camilla soon after she became engaged to Charles – there, at every turn Diana was reminded of how little she knew her future husband, and how well Camilla did. “Darling, you really know nothing, do you?” The infamous ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet – a bracelet Charles had designed for Camilla – also featured. The Crown’s creator Peter Morgan told Esquire: “Charles’s campaign to make Camilla queen is as passionate and as committed and as ruthless, in many ways, as was Henry VIII’s campaign to make Anne Boleyn his queen. More from us Exclusive quizzes for HistoryExtra members from our archives How to marry a monarch The Crown S6: the challenges of telling the story of living royals Five outrageous moments in royal fashion history Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers This article was first published by HistoryExtra in September 2020 and has since been updated
Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance
They met and fell in love in their early twenties, enjoying a “blissful” 18-month romance in which the young Prince Charles pursued Camilla with elaborately worded love notes and late-night telephone chats. Why, then, did he end up marrying Lady Diana Spencer instead? Royal expert Marlene Koenig explores the history of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s love affair...
Thirty-four years after their first meeting, the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles were finally married on 9 April 2005. Their long-term relationship as friends and lovers was summed up in The Sunday Telegraph's headline: “Husband and wife – at last.” At the reception at Windsor Castle, Prince Charles's mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in front of 800 guests, offered a toast to the newlyweds. “They have overcome Becher's Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles. They have come through and I'm very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.” Queen Elizabeth II | 50+ surprising facts about her life and reign Not surprisingly, the Queen, a lover of horses and horse racing, used racing references as she welcomed Camilla into the family: Becher's Brook and The Chair are fences at the Aintree Racecourse, where the Grand National takes place. It was in the summer of 1971, when Prince Charles, then 22, first met Camilla Rosemary Shand, who was 24. A legend has been fostered that the couple were introduced at a polo match at Smith's Lawn in Windsor, but, according to Jonathan Dimbleby's authorised biography, The Prince of Wales (1994), the introduction was in fact made by a mutual friend, Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean ambassador to the United Kingdom, whom Charles had met when he was a student at Cambridge. Who is Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall? | Everything you need to know about Prince Charles’s wife “Instant attraction” It was reportedly an “instant attraction” between Charles and Camilla. During an 18-month period their friendship blossomed into a love affair. They shared a lot in common, including an appreciation for the comedy of The Goon Show, a BBC radio series devised by Spike Milligan. Charles also liked that Camilla was very much at home in “the country with horses and hunting.” Camilla had been involved in an on-and-off relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, an officer in the Royal Horse Guard, that began when she was 17. But Andrew was said to have a roving eye and was involved with several women at the same time. In 1970 he dated Charles's younger sister, Princess Anne, as they shared a common interest in horses, but marriage between the pair was out of the question as Andrew was Roman Catholic. Why does Britain have a royal family? Charles pursued Camilla with “elaborately worded love notes” and late-night telephone chats. He thought about proposing marriage in November 1972 but was hesitant about taking the next step, according to Dimbleby. Charles, who played his cards close to his chest, realised that he was “too uncertain of his feelings” to ask Camilla to marry him. Their last weekend together was spent at the Hampsire estate Broadlands in mid-December 1972. His great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was the only family member in whom Charles had confided about Camilla. Charles knew that his parents would not approve of the relationship. This view was supported by his godmother, Patricia, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, who later told biographer Gyles Brandreth that the marriage “wouldn't have been possible, not then. Camilla had a ‘history’ – and you didn't want a past that hung about.” Charles wrote to Lord Mountbatten lamenting that this was “the last time I shall see her for eight months”, after he and Camilla parted after their final weekend together. Read more | Lord Mountbatten: Did Prince Philip’s uncle attempt to lead a coup against Harold Wilson’s government? Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles As a part of his naval service career, Charles joined the HMS Minerva in mid-January 1973 for a seven-month voyage in the Caribbean. He was in the West Indies when he received the news that Camilla had become engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles on 15 March. He wrote to his great-uncle of his disappointment that “such a blissful, peaceful and mutually happy relationship” would come to an end. Charles’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and Princess Anne attended Camilla and Andrew's wedding at Guards’ Chapel, Wellington Barracks on 4 July 1973. Charles sent his regrets as he was still serving on the Minerva. Arrangements could have been made to fly back to London for the wedding, but it would probably have been difficult for Charles to watch Camilla walk down the aisle and marry Andrew. As Camilla settled into her new life as Mrs Parker Bowles, raising their two children, Tom and Laura, in the country, her friendship with Charles remained platonic for some time. The years that followed, which Charles would later refer to as his “footloose” years, were a time when he was linked with numerous women, most notably Davina Sheffield, Amanda Knatchbull, Anna Wallace and Lady Sarah Spencer – Diana’s sister. Many believed that Davina Sheffield had a real chance to marry Charles, but this was scuppered when a former boyfriend spoke to the press about their relationship. A second affair Charles was in Iceland when he learned that Lord Mountbatten had been assassinated by the IRA in August 1979. It was with Camilla Parker Bowles that he sought consolation for his grief. Indeed, Camilla was the only person to whom he could talk about anything. She was his best friend, his soul mate, and, and after the death of his great-uncle, lover. This second affair – which royal biographer Penny Junor believes started the year previous, in early 1978, shortly after the birth of Camilla’s second child, Laura – lasted until Charles’s engagement to Diana in 1981. Read more | Charles and Diana: a history of their marriage In 1980, the duchy of Cornwall (Charles, as the eldest son of the sovereign, is the Duke of Cornwall), purchased Highgrove House, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, as a country home for the Prince of Wales. The estate was only 11 miles away from Bolehyde Manor, Camilla and Andrew’s home in Wiltshire. The purchase of the estate was an investment in his future, as Charles wanted nothing more than a “normal family life,” according to Lady Mountbatten. How did Prince Charles and Diana meet? Why did he marry Diana? Charles first took notice of Lady Diana Spencer in 1977 – he thought her “jolly” when he visited Althorp, the Spencer estate, in 1977, when he was dating her older sister, Lady Sarah. This relationship came to an end in early 1978: Lady Sarah and Charles were skiing at the Swiss resort Klosters when Sarah decided to have lunch with two British journalists. There she talked about her drinking and her battles with anorexia, but perhaps most damaging of the “kamikaze remarks”, as the journalist Tina Brown described her interviews, was her discussion of the Prince of Wales. “He is a fabulous person but I am not in love with him,” she said. “And I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love, whether he were a dustman or the King of England.” Read more | Why is Charles the ‘Prince of Wales’? Shortly before one of the interviews was published in Woman’s Own, Lady Sarah told Charles she had spoken to the press. Charles’s response was cold and right to the point: “You’ve just done something extremely stupid.” Lady Sarah did not realise it at the time, but she had inadvertently made it possible for Charles to pursue her younger sister, Diana. Later that year, both Lady Sarah (who was by now Charles’s ex-girlfriend) and Lady Diana received invitations to Charles’s 30th birthday party at Buckingham Palace. The Parker Bowles were also guests at the party. In the summer of 1980, Philip de Pass, a friend of Diana’s, invited her to a house party that his parents were hosting at their home, New Grove, near Petworth. He added that the Prince of Wales was the guest of honour. It was at de Pass’s house party where Charles first saw Diana Spencer as a potential girlfriend. Sitting next to each on a bale of hay at a post-polo barbeque, Diana broached the topic of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral and told Charles that “it was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched, I thought, ‘It’s wrong, you’re lonely – you should be with somebody to look after you’”. Read more | Diana: the rebel princess It was Diana’s innocence and her sympathetic nature that first caught Charles’s attention. They saw each other, on and off, for the next few months. In the first week of August 1980, Charles invited her to join his party on the royal yacht, Britannia, for the sailboat races at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. One month later, Diana was invited to Balmoral, where she stayed with her sister, Jane (Lady Jane Fellowes) who was married to the queen’s assistant private secretary, Robert Fellowes, as they had a grace-and-favour home on the Balmoral estate. This invitation came from the Queen at Charles’s request. Diana later recalled: “I was frightened because I had never stayed at Balmoral, and I wanted to get it right.” Read more | Why has the British monarchy survived? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/10/GettyImages-73389802-fff7275.jpg" width="2228" height="3600" alt="Lady Diana Spencer, 1980" title="Lady Diana Spencer leaves the Ritz Hotel in London after attending Princess Margaret's 50th birthday party, November 1980. This is thought to be one of the early pictures taken of her as rumours began of her romance with Prince Charles. (Photo by Jayne Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images)" /> Others at Balmoral included the Parker Bowles and other friends of the Prince of Wales. Charles sought out Camilla’s advice as he weighed the pros and cons of a marriage with Diana. On paper, Diana had all the right attributes: daughter of an earl with royal connections, and she did not have ‘a past’ – i.e. there were no worries about former boyfriends flogging their stories to the tabloids. The Crown S4 cast: what did the real historical figures look like? Yet, Charles had his doubts but as the media frenzy grew, his father, Prince Philip, took matters into his own hands. He sent his son a letter advising him that it was time to make a decision: propose to Diana or let her go. Charles wanted to do the right thing for “this Country and for my family”. He proposed to Diana at Windsor Castle on 6 February 1981. She accepted without hesitation, although she had already suspected that Camilla Parker Bowles was more than Charles’s best friend. The ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet and Diana’s lunch with Camilla One of Camilla’s friends told biographer Gyles Brandreth that Camilla “had encouraged Charles to marry Diana,” yet Diana was suspicious of Camilla’s guidance. But Charles, according to Dimbleby, tried to reassure Diana that Camilla had once been an intimate friend but now, as he was going to marry her, “there was, and there would be, no other woman in his life”. Both Charles and Camilla accepted that their affair had come to an end, yet they remained close friends as Camilla remained a touchstone and confidant. Wedding of the century In what many describe as the wedding of the century, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were married on 29 July 1981 at St Paul’s Cathedral. The couple had two sons, William (born in 1982) and Harry (born in 1984), before the first fissures in their marriage began to appear. Read more | Princess Diana: a "modern" mother who ripped up the rule book Apart from their children, Charles and Diana had few shared interests. By 1986 the marriage had collapsed. Two mutual friends, concerned for Charles, independently contacted Camilla and urged her to reach out to him. She picked up the phone to Charles and their friendship restarted from there. Some years later Charles would later confirm that Mrs Parker Bowles was a good friend, but insisted he had been faithful to Diana until their marriage had “irretrievably broken down.” Read more | When royals marry ‘commoners’: a brief history Charles's marriage to Princess Diana was dissolved in 1996. A year later, Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. It was not until January 1999 that Charles and Camilla made their first public appearance together. Their engagement was announced on 10 February 2005, followed by the civil wedding and Service of Blessing at Windsor on 9 April, where they acknowledged their “manifold sins and wickedness”. Read more | Did Charles ask Camilla to leave her husband? More than three decades after they had first met, Charles and Camilla were finally together in the “winner's circle”. Marlene A Eilers Koenig is an internationally recognised expert on British and European royalty. She is an academic librarian and author of Queen Victoria's Descendants (Rosvall Royal Books, 1997 & 2004). To find out more, visit royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com or follow Marlene on Twitter @royalmusing This article was first published by HistoryExtra in November 2019
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage
Queen Elizabeth married Prince Philip on 20 November 1947 at Westminster Abbey. Her marriage is the longest of any British sovereign. Here we bring you the facts about their relationship and look back on some of their major milestones, from their first meeting in 1934 to the Queen's ‘annus horribilis', or ‘horrible year’, in 1992 and beyond...
“He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.” These were the words of Queen Elizabeth II as she described her husband on their golden wedding anniversary in 1997. Her marriage to Prince Philip is – at more than 70 years long – the longest of any British sovereign, surpassing that of George III and Queen Charlotte by more than 13 years. But their relationship hasn’t always been straightforward, and when a young Prince Philip of Greece sought the hand of Britain’s most eligible woman, many obstacles lay ahead... Falling in love Elizabeth and Philip were first introduced to one another when the former was just eight years old, at the wedding of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark (Philip’s cousin) and Prince George, Duke of Kent (Elizabeth’s uncle) in 1934. Five years later, when Elizabeth was 13 and Philip was 18, they met again at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. It was here, reportedly, that Elizabeth fell in love with her future husband, and they later began exchanging letters. In 1946, Philip asked King George VI for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The king agreed on one condition – that the formal announcement of the engagement was delayed until Elizabeth turned 21 the following April. According to reports, both the king and his wife Queen Elizabeth were reluctant to approve the marriage out of fear that their daughter was “too young”. In postwar Britain, there were also fears over how Philip – who was born in Greece, considered himself Danish and had German relations – might be accepted as a member of the royal household. Indeed, upon becoming engaged to Elizabeth, Philip dropped his Greek and Danish royal titles, becoming a naturalised British subject and taking the surname Mountbatten from his maternal grandparents. Later, on the eve of their wedding, King George conferred upon him the titles of Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. Lord Mountbatten: Did Prince Philip’s uncle attempt to lead a coup against Harold Wilson’s government? Getting married Elizabeth and Philip's wedding day took place at Westminster Abbey on 20 November 1947. The event did not go without incident: Elizabeth’s tiara snapped on the morning of the wedding, and Philip was stopped for speeding through central London on the day of the rehearsal dinner (19 November). He reportedly said at the time: “I’m sorry officer, but I’ve got an appointment with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” At their wedding breakfast, King George VI described the union as a genuine romance: “Our daughter is marrying the man she loves,” he said. Meanwhile, former prime minister Winston Churchill hailed the event as a “flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel” – referring, no doubt, to the climate of postwar Britain. Listen | Andrew Lownie discusses the colourful and controversial lives of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten Life abroad Following their marriage, and in the years before Elizabeth became queen, the couple held a royal residence in Malta from 1949–51, where Prince Philip was stationed in the Royal Navy. They spent several years on the Mediterranean island, and it was here that Elizabeth lived the (relatively) normal life of a naval wife. As a surprise for their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007, Prince Philip took the Queen back to the island (and also to Broadlands, a country house in Hampshire, where they spent their wedding night). Fascinated by the royal family? We rounded up 24 history questions about the royal family for your home pub quiz during lockdown <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/GettyImages-1154589234-2-3e1ad95.jpg" width="1024" height="658" alt="Members of the royal family: Prince Louis; Prince George; Prince William, Duke of Cambridge; Princess Charlotte; Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Prince Charles, Prince of Wales; Princess Anne, Princess Royal; and Queen Elizabeth II during the Queen's annual birthday parade on 8 June 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)" title="Members of the royal family: Prince Louis; Prince George; Prince William, Duke of Cambridge; Princess Charlotte; Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Prince Charles, Prince of Wales; Princess Anne, Princess Royal; and Queen Elizabeth II during the Queen's annual birthday parade on 8 June 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)" /> Becoming parents On 14 November 1948, Elizabeth and Philip became parents for the first time to a son, Prince Charles – now the longest-serving heir apparent in British history. Three more children arrived in the years that followed: Princess Anne, on 15 August 1950; Prince Andrew, on 19 February 1960; and Prince Edward, on 10 March 1964. Retaining the royals: why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived? The birth of the four children, and Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952, brought with it a discussion on the family’s surname. The royal family had held the surname of Saxe-Coberg and Gotha until 1917, when King George V decreed that the family name would be the less Germanic-sounding Windsor. When Elizabeth became queen – just over three years after the birth of Charles – the name of the Royal House remained the same. Whether this caused any contention with Prince Philip is debatable. According to a biography of Elizabeth by Sally Bedell Smith, he once privately complained: “I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.” Surely enough, on 8 February 1960, a declaration made in Privy Council ensured that Mountbatten-Windsor would be the surname of Elizabeth’s and Philip’s male-line descendants. Becoming Queen In 1952, while on vacation at Sagana Lodge in Kenya, news of King George VI’s death reached the couple. Prince Philip was the person to break the news to Elizabeth, who was just 25 years old at the time. Having ascended to the throne, Elizabeth II’s coronation took place on 2 June 1953. Prince Philip was the first to swear allegiance to the new queen, describing himself as her “liege man of life and limb”. Incidentally, becoming consort to his wife spelled the end of Philip’s Royal Navy career, and years later, when Philip’s biographer Gyles Brandreth asked him how he thought he was perceived, he replied: “I don’t know. A refugee husband, I suppose”. Difficult times In 1992, the Queen had what she has famously described as an ‘annus horribilis’, or ‘horrible year’. The marriages of three out of four of her children had ended, and the whole family had been the attention of multiple media scandals (including, notably, the confirmation of an affair between Charles, Prince of Wales, and socialite Camilla Parker Bowles). Also that year, a fire broke out at Windsor Castle, one of the Queen’s residences, causing extensive damage. The royal couple have also had to face a number of other close bereavements over the years. These include, notably, the death of the Queen Mother in 2002, and the death of the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, in the same year. When Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997, just one year after her divorce from Prince Charles, the response from the royal family came under criticism from the public. Under pressure to demonstrate her grief, the Queen made an unprecedented TV broadcast in which she described Diana as an “exceptional and gifted human being”. “I admired and respected her,” she said, “for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys.” The Queen was later accused by some of not expressing enough sadness. Opposing the royals: a brief history of republicanism in Britain Jubilee celebrations As the longest-reigning British monarch in history, the Queen has celebrated a number of jubilees – silver (1977), golden (2002), diamond (2012) and, most recently, sapphire (2017). In a speech addressing the Houses of Parliament on 20 March 2012, to mark her diamond jubilee, she noted that Prince Philip “has been a constant strength and guide” to her throughout her reign. Indeed, the prince has accompanied the Queen on many of her royal engagements, and when he announced his retirement from his duties in August this year, he had completed 22,219 by himself. Prince Philip: a life of duty and devotion Expanding the family The Queen and Prince Philip have eight grandchildren in total – Prince William of Wales, Prince Harry of Wales, Peter Phillips, Zara Tindall (nee Phillips), Princess Beatrice of York, Princess Eugenie of York, Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severns. Their first great-grandchild, Savannah Phillips, was born in 2010 to their grandson Peter and his wife Autumn Phillips, with a second great-granddaughter, Isla Phillips, arriving in 2012. In 2014, a third great-granddaughter called Mia was born to their granddaughter Zara and her husband Mike Tindall. Sadly, the couple’s second pregnancy, which had been due in spring 2017, ended in miscarriage. The couple went on to have another child, Lena Elizabeth Tindall, in 2018. In 2012, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s announcement that they were expecting a baby sparked a remarkable change in royal precedent. The Queen introduced a new rule on royal succession which meant that if the new baby was a girl, she would become the third in line to the throne (and not be overtaken by any future younger brothers). As it was, the baby turned out to be a boy, who was named George. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge later went on to have a baby girl Charlotte, in 2015, and another boy, Louis Arthur Charles, in 2018. Rachel Dinning is Website Assistant at History Extra. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in November 2017
The Crown S4 E8 real history: why did Margaret Thatcher & the Queen clash over apartheid in South Africa?
Episode 8 of season 4 of The Crown sees Margaret Thatcher and the Queen come to blows over apartheid in South Africa – a disagreement that culminated in an explosive front-page Sunday Times story claiming the Queen privately felt Mrs Thatcher’s approach to be “uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive”
In this episode we see Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II clash over apartheid in South Africa, meanwhile Prince Andrew prepares to marry Sarah Ferguson but is enraged that his big day is being overshadowed by the ongoing saga between his mother and the prime minister (a situation for which his brother, Prince Charles, has no sympathy). But how accurate is The Crown’s portrayal of the apartheid clash? Why did the two women disagree and how did they repair their rift? And what was Prince Charles’s relationship really like with Prince Andrew? Let’s unpick the historical truths of episode 8… (This article contains spoilers for season 4, episode 8 of The Crown) Why did Thatcher refuse to back sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa? In 1986, amid a groundswell of global opposition to apartheid in South Africa – the discriminatory political and economic system of racial segregation which the white minority imposed on non-whites – Commonwealth leaders stood together ready to impose economic sanctions against the country. First implemented by the governing party, the National Party of South Africa, in 1948, the impact of apartheid on South Africa’s non-white population was horrific. Read more about the history and effects of apartheid here. But while 48 of the 49 Commonwealth nations had agreed a programme of economic sanctions – which included a ban on air travel and investments in South Africa, as well as a bar on agricultural imports and the promotion of South African tourism – Britain stood alone in its refusal to back the plans. Why? Margaret Thatcher was bitterly opposed to economic sanctions of any sort, and even to the threat of sanctions, because “she believed that they would not work and would damage Britain’s extensive economic interests,” The Times reported in 1985. Sanctions were, she felt, a crime against free trade. According to Richard Dowden, former director of the Royal African Society, Thatcher felt anything that damaged wealth creation must be bad for South Africa. She was apparently advised by her husband, Denis, who had business interests in South Africa. But while Thatcher was vilified as an effective supporter of apartheid rule, we now know from previously-closed archives that “Mrs Thatcher was much more critical of South Africa in private than people thought,” says historian Dominic Sandbrook. “She gave the country’s leaders quite a lot of grief behind the scenes, including telling them to release Nelson Mandela. She told the South Africans that Britain didn’t like the system and that it had to change. But because she refused to condemn it publicly, people assumed it must be because she secretly supported them.” Indeed, the apartheid government “valued Thatcher as a worthy political opponent and ‘true friend of South Africa’,” writes Sue Onslow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. “Thatcher’s loathing of apartheid on moral grounds, as well as her conviction it made ‘economic nonsense’, was well understood in Pretoria.” Frederik Willem de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president of South Africa, is quoted as having said Thatcher “correctly believed” that more could be achieved through constructive engagement with his government than international sanctions and isolation of the South African government. “FW de Klerk later said that Thatcher did have influence and that they did listen to her, precisely because she wasn’t one of the people publicly criticising them all the time,” says Dominic Sandbrook. Sandbrook maintains that while there are “still debates to be had over whether it would have been better for Britain to take a moral stand [against apartheid], I don’t think it’s true that Thatcher didn’t care or that she was secretly a supporter of the apartheid regime – although her husband, Denis, probably was.” Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” As is shown in episode 8 of season 4 of The Crown, a group of Commonwealth leaders carried out prolonged negotiations with Mrs Thatcher in an attempt to persuade her to modify her position. True to history, Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, a member of the negotiating team, said they were trying to persuade Mrs Thatcher to agree to sanctions. “But the lady’s not for corralling,” retorted a British official. Members of the negotiating group kept going backwards and forwards to present various compromise proposals to the prime minister – all of which she turned down because they contained sanctions, The Times reported. The situation was eventually resolved when, in the autumn of 1986, Mrs Thatcher was forced to impose what The New York Times described as “weakened sanctions” against South Africa by following the lead of the US Congress, which had passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. These limited new economic sanctions were agreed upon by the foreign ministers of the 12 European Community countries, which included Britain. Thatcher refused to endorse the tougher programme of measures originally laid out by other Commonwealth leaders, but “it was plain that she had moved enough to avert a split [in the Commonwealth],” the newspaper reported. The real history behind The Crown Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts… Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance Why did Charles and Diana's marriage fail? The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan: what happened and why did he break in? Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War? The Crown: the real history behind series 1–3 Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding: everything you need to know Why was Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, assassinated? Everything you need to know about Prince Charles Who is Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall? Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon: why did their marriage break down? Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage Who is Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II? Why was the Queen so upset by Thatcher’s refusal to back sanctions? The Queen’s role as head of the Commonwealth is her raison d'être, says Dominic Sandbrook, and she was gravely concerned that Thatcher’s refusal to back economic sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa could damage the Commonwealth, or even lead to its breakup. Embarrassed that Britain was “out on a limb”, she wanted Britain to fall in line with other Commonwealth countries and support the programme of sanctions. The Queen was also worried about Britain’s reputation because it was, she felt, “on the wrong side of the moral equation” when it came to apartheid, says Sandbrook. Margaret Thatcher, meanwhile, “thought the Commonwealth was a waste of time”, says Sandbrook. “Her attitude was ‘I could be talking to Ronald Reagan, or to Mikhail Gorbachev, but instead I have to make small talk with the president of Zambia, who I have no interest in and who slags off my policies which he knows nothing about.’” For the Queen, the issue was probably more about the Commonwealth than about apartheid, says Sandbrook. “In the 1960s, when Harold Wilson was prime minister, Britain had been criticised for not being hard enough on South Africa, but the Queen didn’t kick up a big fuss then because it wasn’t an incendiary issue within the Commonwealth. It was only when, because of Thatcher, Britain was isolated in the Commonwealth that the Queen got involved.” Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? The issue threatened to strain the relationship between the Queen and her prime minister – newly-declassified files in 2017 revealed that the Queen was so enraged with Thatcher over her refusal to back sanctions that she considered scrapping their weekly audience. The monarch is said to have fumed that the prime minister had damaged “her Commonwealth”, a Buckingham Palace source told a diplomat. What is the Commonwealth and why is it so important to the Queen? In episode 8 of season 4 of The Crown, Queen Elizabeth II, played by Olivia Colman, says holding the Commonwealth together is her “life’s work”. What exactly is the Commonwealth, and why does it matter so much to the Queen? Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 54 independent countries, including both advanced economies and developing countries, almost all of which were formerly under British rule. Its member governments agree to shared goals and they work together to promote prosperity, democracy and peace. Every two years, leaders of member countries meet to discuss issues affecting the Commonwealth and the wider world at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). The Queen regularly attends these meetings. Sixteen of the 54 countries are ‘Commonwealth Realms’ – that is, countries which have the Queen as its monarch. These include Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Jamaica. In her 1953 Christmas broadcast from Auckland, the Queen pledged her “heart and soul” as the head of the Commonwealth. Indeed, the Commonwealth is the Queen’s raison d'être, says historian Dominic Sandbrook. But “the Queen’s love for the Commonwealth is not mere sentimentality,” writes Robert Hardman in The Spectator. “She has embraced and shaped it to such an extent that it might have vanished without her. When she took over, it had eight members. Today, it has 54 – and rising.” It has been speciously suggested that the Queen needed the Commonwealth more than the other way around, writes Ashley Jackson in this article for HistoryExtra. The historian Ben Pimlott succinctly captured the symbiotic relationship: “The monarchy, with its imperial memory, keenly sought a Commonwealth role, partly to justify itself, but also because it had taken its supra-national role seriously, and – in a way that was never quite understood by politicians – it continued to relate to distant communities which showed their loyalty in ways that did not necessarily come to the attention of Whitehall.” Read more about the Queen and the Commonwealth here. But while The Crown depicts the Queen directly asking Thatcher in person to join the rest of the Commonwealth in imposing sanctions against South Africa, and later arguing with the prime minister over her failure to support her, in reality this would probably never have happened, says Dominic Sandbrook. “The tension between them would have been indirect, there would have been hints, but I don’t believe they would ever have had a row about it,” he said. “The Queen would not have thought that was constitutional; it would have been such a departure for her from what she had been doing for the past 30 years. I find it hard to believe the Queen would have ‘let herself go’ to that extent – remember, we’re talking here about two of the most buttoned-up people who ever lived!” 12 surprising facts about Queen Elizabeth II But the standoff between Thatcher and the Queen did culminate in an extraordinary Sunday Times scoop. On 20 July 1986, the newspaper ran an explosive front-page story claiming that the Queen privately felt Mrs Thatcher’s approach to be “uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive”. The source was the palace press secretary, Michael Shea. At the time, the paper said it relied on “several briefings by the Queen’s advisers, who were fully aware [the article] would be published”. According to a 2015 authorised biography of Thatcher by the journalist Charles Moore, the accusations of being “uncaring” left Thatcher feeling “desperately hurt”. And while “there’s no reason to doubt the article reflected what the Queen really thought,” says Dominic Sandbrook, the monarch was mortified. She telephoned Thatcher to apologise, at the suggestion of Sir William Heseltine, who was then the Queen’s private secretary. According to Sir William, the Queen told Thatcher she “could not imagine how the story came to be circulated, and anyway it bears no relation to the truth as I understand it…” He added that the Queen and the prime minister “had a very amicable conversation”. The relationship between Thatcher and the Queen survived. “But her prime minister did not forget it,” says Dominic Sandbrook. Ultimately, however, for Thatcher the row “probably wasn’t that big a deal. It would have been a bit awkward between them for a while, but there were probably 50 or 100 other people Thatcher had working relationships with that mattered more to her than the Queen.” Read the real history behind more episodes with our S4 episode guide to The Crown: The Crown S4 E6 real history The Crown S4 E7 real history The Crown S4 E9 real history The Crown S4 E10 real history Was press secretary Michael Shea made to take the fall? In The Crown, press secretary Michael Shea is cornered into resigning after being made to take the blame for the Sunday Times story. The Queen’s private secretary, Martin Charteris (played by Charles Edwards), is seen telling the monarch they need “a culprit… to deflect blame from you and to put these flames out ASAP”. (Interestingly, in reality Sir William Heseltine was the Queen’s private secretary by this time. Charteris was the Queen’s private secretary more than a decade before these events, from 1972 to 1977). But was Michael Shea really made to take the fall? Following the publication of the Sunday Times story in 1986, Buckingham Palace rushed out a statement in response: “As with all previous prime ministers, the Queen enjoys a relationship of the closest confidentiality with Mrs Thatcher, and reports purporting to be the Queen’s opinion of government policies are entirely without foundation.” A string of further denials followed, “but the Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was not for turning,” says the Independent. “A hunt for a Palace ‘mole’ ensued.” It quickly emerged that Shea was the source of the story – he had had several conversations with one of the paper’s reporters. During the ensuing furore, one Conservative MP said Shea’s “sense of honour (should) tell him what he ought to do now; he is a busted flush and he must go.” According to Shea’s 2009 obituary in the Independent: “The Palace publicly stood by Shea, but his days were numbered. After a decent interval he moved on, taking with him an honour but not the knighthood which might have been expected to come his way.” Shea announced his resignation from the palace in March 1987, eight months after the scandal. Asked by a television reporter if he had been fired, Shea said: “That’s ridiculous. I have held the post twice as long as any other press secretary, and I have had an offer that I cannot refuse,” the Associated Press reported at the time. Shea returned to his native Scotland and enjoyed a second career as the author of political thrillers and other books. He later privately admitted that he had talked to the Sunday Times in 1986 but claimed he had been “misinterpreted”. He always maintained he was not guilty of any indiscretion. Did economic sanctions help to end apartheid? Apartheid came to an end in the early 1990s in a series of steps that led to the formation of a democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela, in 1994. The economic sanctions imposed on South Africa in 1986 had served to isolate the country in the international community and to highlight its oppression of its people. Sanctions also “helped cripple the machinery that undergirded apartheid”, writes Joseph F Jordan, associate professor in the Department of African, African American, & Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina, in the New York Times. But in the years since sanctions were imposed, some economists have questioned how much impact they really had. “It would go too far, and give far too little credit to Nelson Mandela and his allies, to argue that international pressure was the main reason that apartheid fell,” says Joshua Keating writing for Slate magazine. Today it is generally accepted that the economic sanctions imposed in 1986 probably did contribute to political change in South Africa. Historian Dominic Sandbrook says, “there will never be a definitive answer” but that “sanctions probably did contribute to a sense among younger white South Africans that they had to change, and made life hard for them.” Listen | Author Peter Hain discusses Nelson Mandela’s remarkable achievements in the face of tremendous adversity Prince Andrew’s wedding to Sarah Ferguson Elsewhere in episode 8 we see Prince Andrew preparing to marry Sarah Ferguson. He informs the Queen that he has chosen his younger brother, Prince Edward, rather than Charles, to be his best man, calling him an “insecure, jealous fool” who cares only about his bloodline and “to hell with the rest of us”. He tells the Queen that Charles has always been jealous of him because of his “closeness” to their mother and the fact “I’ve fought in a real war, won real medals, of the fact I’m happier in love, more popular”. Andrew also tells the Queen he thinks he would be better at being the heir to the throne. Then, later in the episode, Andrew is seen bemoaning to his siblings that the Queen’s clash with Margaret Thatcher over sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa is overshadowing his big day. Prince Charles lambasts him: “You can hardly blame the newspapers for wanting to write about something other than the wedding of a fringe member of the family who’ll never be king!” How historically accurate is this? What was Prince Charles’s relationship like with Andrew in their younger years? Royal biographer Penny Junor believes Andrew’s conversation with the Queen about Charles in The Crown is “complete fabrication”. “Charles is 11 years older than Andrew and was away for most of Andrew’s childhood – at boarding school, then university, then the armed forces – so the two scarcely knew one another. Whereas Edward was just four years younger than Andrew, they had grown up together and overlapped at the same schools. I think it would have been very strange for Andrew to have chosen Charles over Edward as his best man. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/GettyImages-592604765-dcf6c39.jpg" width="3941" height="4950" alt="Prince Charles with his two younger brothers, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, 1969" title="Prince Charles (centre) playing a game of Bagatelle with his two younger brothers, Prince Andrew (left) and Prince Edward at Sandringham, April 1969. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> “I always understood that when they were growing up, Charles was very fond of his younger brothers. He famously wrote [children’s book] The Old Man of Lochnagar to entertain them. But I don’t think he and Andrew have ever been close, certainly not as adults.” Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey on 23 July 1986. The couple got engaged after only a year of dating. Andrew really did choose Edward to be his best man, but he also asked Charles to give a reading during the ceremony. The four-year-old Prince William was a page boy and wore a sailor’s outfit in honour of Prince Andrew’s career in the navy. An estimated 500 million people around the world tuned in to watch television coverage of the wedding. The 8 most famous royal weddings in British history Prince Andrew and his wife welcomed their first child together, Princess Beatrice, on 8 August 1988, followed by her sister, Princess Eugenie, on 23 March 1990. The couple officially separated in 1992 and divorced in May 1996, but reportedly remain close friends. Discover more real history behind The Crown here NEXT EPISODE: The Crown S4 E9 real history: Prince Charles’s ski avalanche accident and his failing marriage to Diana Emma Mason is the digital editor at HistoryExtra With thanks to historian Dominic Sandbrook, an expert on Margaret Thatcher and author of Who Dares Wins (Allen Lane, 2019), which explores the pivotal early years of Thatcher’s premiership in Britain: 1979–82, and to Penny Junor, royal biographer and author of 10 books on members of the royal family
The Crown S4 E3 real history: Diana’s struggles, the ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet, and a royal engagement
At long last, the heir to the throne has chosen a bride. But, as episode 3 of season 4 of The Crown reveals, the relationship between Prince Charles and Diana is no fairy tale romance
In this episode we witness for the first time Diana’s struggle with an eating disorder and see her roaming the halls of Buckingham Palace, lonely and bored, before enduring a torturous lunch with Charles’s ex-girlfriend, Camilla. Diana also discovers the famous ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet and tells the Queen the royal wedding cannot go ahead. But how historically accurate is all this? Let’s unpick the historical truths of episode 3… (This article contains spoilers for season 4, episode 3 of The Crown) Charles & Diana get engaged The sense of anticipation is palpable in the opening scenes of episode 3: Prince Charles watches from a window as Diana leaves Windsor Castle, while Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and Princess Anne each sit anxiously by their respective telephones, clocks ticking fervently in the background. At last the Queen’s phone rings, she picks up immediately. “It’s done, I did it,” Prince Charles tells his mother. The heir to the throne is at long last engaged. “Did you get on one knee?” his mother asks. “No, I thought in terms of rank the Prince of Wales only ever knelt before the Sovereign.” Having returned to London, the newly engaged Diana pushes past throngs of reporters to reach her flat in Earl’s Court. There, her three girlfriends gather in the hallway, eagerly awaiting news. Cue screams of excitement as Diana confirms what they hope and suspect: she and the Prince of Wales are betrothed. What follows is a whirlwind of excitement as the four ladies speed through central London in a black cab, squealing as they pass Buckingham Palace, and dance the night away in a nightclub before drunkenly singing ‘God save the Queen’ as they head home. Diana is flushed with joy: her newfound reality looks nothing short of a fairy tale. Is this really how Charles and Diana came to be engaged? The Prince of Wales did indeed propose at Windsor Castle, on 6 February 1981. Diana “thought at first that Charles was joking but nevertheless accepted, and was shocked when she later realised he meant it,” writes Tracy Borman in this article for HistoryExtra. It’s not known whether Charles got down on one knee, but royal biographer Penny Junor doubts the way he is seen to explain his decision not to in The Crown. “‘I thought in terms of rank the Prince of Wales only ever knelt before the Sovereign’ is such a pompous thing to say,” says Junor. “I can’t see him saying something like that.” Diana did, as the episode suggests, choose her own engagement ring – a 12-carat Ceylon sapphire stone set with 14 solitaire diamonds and a white gold band – from a selection of rings brought to Buckingham Palace by the House of Garrard, the then-crown jeweller in Regent Street. Diana is seen in the episode telling Charles and the Queen she’s chosen it because it reminds her of her mother’s engagement ring – this is, in reality, what she said – but “another theory is that she was drawn to its large size,” writes Tracy Borman. Indeed, in The Crown Charles quips that Diana has chosen it because “it’s the most expensive”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/Diana-chooses-ring-–-Des-Willie-02a84f0.jpg" width="6000" height="4000" alt="Emma Corrin as Lady Diana Spencer choosing her engagement ring in season 4 of 'The Crown'. (Photo by Des Willie/Netflix)" title="Emma Corrin as Lady Diana Spencer choosing her engagement ring in season 4 of ‘The Crown’. (Photo by Des Willie/Netflix)" /> But Penny Junor doubts whether the Queen would have been present when Diana chose her engagement ring, as is seen in The Crown. “I would be awfully surprised if that were true – why would the Queen have been there?” she says. “It wasn’t really any of her business.” At the time, Diana’s choice of ring caused a scandal, with many criticising her for not having a custom-made engagement ring. Instead it was available for anyone to buy. Some newspapers went so far as to dub it “the commoner’s ring”. Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/GettyImages-539585436-15cafde.jpg" width="5251" height="3331" alt="A close-up of Diana's engagement ring, later worn by Kate Middleton, who in 2010 became engaged to Diana's eldest son, Prince William. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="A close-up of Diana's engagement ring, later worn by Kate Middleton, who in 2010 became engaged to Diana's eldest son, Prince William. (Photo by © Pool Photograph/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> The episode also accurately shows Diana being moved into a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace, but in reality this didn’t happen until after the couple’s engagement was announced. Diana actually went to Australia for two-and-a-half weeks with her mother and stepfather after Charles proposed and their engagement was kept secret, probably to allow time to prepare for the official announcement, which was made on 24 February 1981, says Tracy Borman. Bidding her farewell, Diana’s flatmates toast to “no more worries, no more flatmates, no more rent collection… and to one day, not too far away, being the f***ing Queen!” But while the opening scenes of episode 3 are jubilant and celebratory, the mood very quickly changes: arriving for a family dinner at Clarence House, in one fell swoop the newly engaged Diana manages to offend Princess Margaret, whose storytelling is interrupted by Diana’s entrance, and blunder her way through greeting the rest of the family, mixing up titles and not knowing who to curtsy to first – to audible tuts and sighs. “Oh dear,” says the Queen Mother, “thank goodness we’ve got your grandmother to sort all this out.” Following Diana’s faux pas, the Queen Mother recommends that she undergo some tutorials, Martin Charteris tells the Queen, “for what will be a very drastic transition from teenager to royal princess”. After a brief discussion it is decided that Diana’s grandmother, Lady Fermoy, should be her teacher. But Penny Junor doubts whether Diana had any formal tutorials. “Michael Colborne, Charles’s right-hand-man, certainly drilled Diana and talked her through everything that would be expected of her, but I don’t think Diana ever spoke of having proper tutorials as such. I think if she had been put through a ‘crash course’ as is shown in The Crown she would have mentioned it in Diana: Her True Story [Andrew Morton’s authorised 1992 biography]”. The real history behind The Crown Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts… Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II: what was their relationship like? Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance Why did Charles and Diana's marriage fail? The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world” Buckingham Palace intruder Michael Fagan: what happened and why did he break in? Was the Queen opposed to the Falklands War? The Crown: the real history behind series 1–3 Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding: everything you need to know Why was Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles’s great-uncle, assassinated? Everything you need to know about Prince Charles Who is Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall? Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon: why did their marriage break down? Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage Who is Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II? “Whatever ‘in love’ means” Then comes what is arguably the most heart-breaking – and impressively realistic – recreation of the season so far: the first interview Charles and Diana gave to the media following their engagement. Diana (Emma Corrin) looks up nervously at her fiancée, like a rabbit in headlights, as the couple are quizzed by a reporter and told “You both look very much in love.” Cue Prince Charles’s famous reply: “Whatever ‘in love’ means.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/TheCrown_403_Unit_00549-7cbc074.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) in season 4 of ‘The Crown’" title="Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) giving their first press interview following their engagement in season 4 of ‘The Crown’. (Photo by Des Willie/Netflix)" /> Why did Charles say this, and what did he mean? Penny Junor is at a loss to explain it. “Charles is horribly honest and overthinks things”, she said. “It was the stupidest remark, it’s come back to haunt him again and again. And it made Diana look like a bit of an idiot because she was there saying, ‘of course we’re in love!’ But Charles was never brought up to express his emotions in public; he may have been a little embarrassed by the question. Remember, in those days people didn’t wear their hearts on their sleeve, and the royal family certainly didn’t, they kept their emotions totally buttoned up. And, in reality, Charles wasn’t in love. But I’m absolutely sure he thought he could, in time, grow to love Diana. The potential was very much there. On paper she was perfect.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/10/GettyImages-79731580-ebb5d8f.jpg" width="3632" height="5340" alt="Diana and Charles engagement photo" title="Lady Diana Spencer reveals her engagement ring while she and Prince Charles, Prince of Wales pose for photographs in the grounds of Buckingham Palace following the announcement of their engagement, 24 February 1981. (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)" /> The pair are then seen parting ways as Charles embarks on a six-week foreign tour. The prince did indeed go on such a tour (of the United States, Venezuela, New Zealand and Australia), but not until late March, the month after the couple’s engagement was announced, and it lasted five weeks. In The Crown, at the airport Charles tells his bride-to-be that he has asked Camilla to get in touch with her. “Your ex? Why would you do that?” a horrified Diana asks. “I just thought if you ever wanted company, she’s the best company,” Charles replies. Diana did indeed go on to socialise with Camilla (more on that below), but it is not known whether Charles floated the idea at the airport. In reality, the press reported that the couple had a “tender, tearful farewell” at Heathrow. Charles “smiled, patted [Diana] on the shoulder and said ‘Take care’. She whispered to him, lowered her head and began to cry.” One official reportedly said, “We have never seen such a touching farewell.” Diana’s bulimia In The Crown, having returned to Buckingham Palace, Diana’s boredom and loneliness soon become apparent: she is seen pacing her suite of rooms, looking thoroughly disinterested in tutorials with her grandmother, and being stonewalled when trying to reach both the Queen and her private secretary on the telephone. Meanwhile her husband-to-be, Diana claims, has failed to telephone her in three weeks while on his foreign tour. Things reach a head when, one night, Diana sneaks down to the palace kitchen and gorges on refrigerated desserts, before making herself violently sick. This unhappy depiction, says Junor, is largely accurate. Diana was struggling with her mental health and with the eating disorder bulimia – a condition with which she battled for many years before seeking professional help. But while it is true that Diana felt isolated in Buckingham Palace, Penny Junor stresses: “There were people looking after her. The Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, was an old family friend of Diana’s, she was around a lot. And Michael Colborne treated Diana like a daughter. The two of them shared an office. So, Diana was not just ‘dumped’ in the palace, there were people looking out for her.” And Junor thinks it quite wrong that Charles failed to telephone Diana while he was abroad. “I think that’s a dramatic device to show that Charles was very busy, he didn’t stop being busy just because he was engaged. He honoured his commitments and kept on working – which Diana resented. She hated being alone and couldn’t understand why his work had to take precedence of their being together.” Read the real history behind more episodes with our S4 episode guide to The Crown: The Crown S4 E1 real history The Crown S4 E2 real history The Crown S4 E4 real history The Crown S4 E5 real history Did Diana really have lunch with Camilla? Our sympathy for Diana reaches new heights when in episode 3 she is invited to a torturous lunch with Charles’s ex-girlfriend, Camilla. At every turn Diana is reminded of how little she knows her future husband – and how well Camilla does. From Charles’s eating habits (“He has a soft-boiled egg with everything, you must know that?”) to his love of gardening and his favourite colour (green), Camilla seems to relish lauding her in-depth knowledge of the prince over Diana – “Darling, you really know nothing, do you?” Camilla also reveals her nickname for Charles (‘Fred’) and his for her (‘Gladys’), and Diana is visibly pained when Camilla tells her she and Charles talk on the phone “most days”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/11/Camilla-lunch-ring-–-credit-Des-Willie-68f2598.jpg" width="4500" height="3000" alt="Emerald Fennell as Camilla Parker Bowles and Emma Corrin as Lady Diana Spencer in season 4 of ‘The Crown’" title="Emerald Fennell as Camilla Parker Bowles and Emma Corrin as Lady Diana Spencer in season 4 of ‘The Crown’. (Photo by Des Willie/Netflix)" /> How historically accurate is this, did Diana and Camilla really go on such a lunch date? Yes, says Penny Junor, but “it was a very friendly lunch as far as Camilla was concerned. She was welcoming Diana as a friend, she wanted to see the ring, and Diana showed it off gleefully. Camilla was excited for Diana and was offering a hand of friendship to her.” The depiction of Camilla lauding her knowledge of Charles over Camilla would have been based on the princess’s account of the lunch in Diana: Her True Story, says Junor. “When Camilla later read about it in Morton’s biography it had turned into this terrible lunch where she was supposedly asked leading questions to find opportunities where she could continue seeing Charles,” says Junor. And it would not, says Junor, have been unthinkable for Diana to have had lunch with an ex-girlfriend of her future husband. “What you need to get your head around is that amongst the upper classes it was perfectly acceptable and doable to carry on being friends with someone you’d had an affair with,” she said. “Andrew Parker Bowles was very friendly with Charles, for example, even though he knew Charles and Camilla were sleeping together. In 1981 Camilla knew that now Charles and Diana were engaged, her relationship with him was over. She and Charles remained friends and shared a big group of friends, so Camilla was simply welcoming Charles’s wife-to-be into the fold.” The ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet Later in the episode, following an uncomfortable scene in which a tearful and shaky Diana makes herself sick after her lunch with Camilla, we see her visit Charles’s right-hand-man, Michael Colborne, in his office. There she discovers drawings for a bracelet Charles had designed for Camilla, with the inscription ‘F&G’, standing for the pair’s nicknames for one another, ‘Fred’ and ‘Gladys’. Visibly furious, Diana storms back upstairs to her suite of rooms and tries to telephone the Queen, telling the operator “Don’t fob me off! It is absolutely essential that I see the Queen. This wedding can’t go ahead. It’ll be a disaster for everyone!” How historically accurate is this scene? Well, Charles really did give Camilla a bracelet with their nicknames inscribed, says Penny Junor. Just a few days before his wedding to Diana, Charles had one final lunch with his ex during which he gifted her a bracelet inscribed with the letters ‘G’ and ‘F’ (not ‘F’ & ‘G’, as The Crown depicts – Junor was originally told by Michael Colborne that the letters stood for ‘Girl Friday’). But in reality it was not a drawing of the bracelet that Diana discovered in Michael Colborne’s office, as The Crown depicts, but the bracelet itself, along with a hoard of other jewellery Charles had ordered as presents for a number of women with whom he had been close during his bachelor years, as a way of thanking them for their companionship. “All the jewellery had been delivered to the office that Diana was sharing with Colborne and put on his desk,” Junor explains. “Colborne was called away to a meeting down the corridor. He left the package of jewellery on his desk and when he came back he met Diana storming out of the office. He quickly realised she had unpacked the boxes, discovered the bracelet and flown into a jealous rage.” But did Diana really try to make a phone call to the Queen telling her the wedding could not go ahead? “I’m not aware of that happening,” Junor told HistoryExtra, “and I wouldn’t have thought Diana was sufficiently at ease with the Queen to have dared have that conversation.” Charles is later seen getting off a plane, returning from his royal tour – but instead of rushing from the airport to see his bride-to-be he travels straight to Highgrove. The next morning, he is seen leaving what appears to be Camilla’s house, presumably having spent the night with her, in what looks to be a final parting of ways. He then travels from Gloucestershire to the wedding rehearsal at St Paul’s Cathedral. There, Diana makes it clear she knows he went running to Camilla – and about the bracelet. “I had the bracelet made as a farewell gift, a souvenir,” Charles confesses. “And I went to Gloucestershire… to tell Camilla face-to-face that it’s over.” Is this really how Charles and Camilla broke off their affair? Did they spend a final night together when Charles was engaged to Diana, and did Charles tell Camilla face-to-face it was over? “It’s highly unlikely,” says Junor, who maintains that the physical side of Charles and Camilla’s relationship ended when he became engaged to Diana. “Camilla stepped right back even before the engagement, she totally understood that her relationship with Charles was over. Therefore, Charles wouldn’t have needed to tell her face-to-face. And I think it is absolutely untrue that she and Charles slept together just before the wedding. They are both decent, honourable people.” Did Princess Margaret really try to call off the wedding? As the wedding rehearsal gets under way, Princess Margaret can be seen eyeing the couple doubtfully. That night, on the eve of the wedding, back at the palace she tells her sister, Prince Philip and the Queen Mother: “Charles loves someone else. How many times can this family make the same mistake? Forbidding marriages that should be allowed, forcing others that shouldn’t… We can stop them now, before they tie the knot… We have to stop them now”. Did Princess Margaret really try to stop the wedding? “I’d be very surprised if that were true, I’ve never heard that,” says Junor. “I would think it’s a dramatic device to make the point that Margaret was prevented from marrying the man she wanted to marry and a whole lot of heartache followed, and that history would be repeating itself.” In the 1950s, Queen Elizabeth II discouraged Margaret from marrying her father’s equerry Group Captain Peter Townsend. If The Crown is to be believed, the Queen had told her sister that she would no longer be a member of the family if she went ahead with the marriage. But this is not necessarily true. On 31 October 1955, Margaret announced that she had decided not to marry Townsend and that she had chosen her “duty to the Commonwealth” over marrying for love. Returning to the action in episode 3 of the new season of The Crown: in response to Margaret, Prince Philip insists that Charles’s marriage to Diana will go ahead. He reasons: “The older Diana gets, the more confident Diana becomes, the more beautiful Diana becomes… the more Charles will fall in love with her, and this will all be fine.” This, says Penny Junor, is a sentiment both father and son shared. “Although I don’t think [Charles] was actually in love with Diana, I think he thought he could grow to love her,” she told HistoryExtra. “Fundamentally I believe he had every intention of making his marriage work… but once he was inside that marriage life was utterly unbearable for both of them”. Did King George VI have an affair? Interestingly, when in episode 3 Princess Margaret quips that Charles should “juggle” both women (referring to Diana and Camilla), the Queen Mother cries “That’s how it works! That’s how it’s always worked”. So, did the Queen Mother’s husband, King George VI, have an affair? According to Dowager Lady Hardinge of Penshurst, widow of King George VI’s principal private secretary and a lifelong friend of the Queen Mother, the king was “rather more than a little in love” with the actress Evelyn Laye. The future king first met Laye at the age of 24, several years before he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, but despite his devotion to his wife “there remains the startling possibility that George VI continued to carry a flame for one of Britain’s most dazzling stars,” says royal writer Michael Thornton in the Daily Mail. According to Thornton, the Queen Mother had always been aware of the king’s “intense admiration” for the legendary ‘Boo’ Laye. The Queen Mother’s late private secretary, Sir Martin Gilliat, who knew Laye socially, reportedly told Thornton: “She found it rather touching, and trusted absolutely in Boo’s discretion.” What’s the story behind Prince Charles’s great-grandmother, Queen Mary, who had an arranged marriage to George V? Later in episode 3, following her conversation with Princess Margaret, the Queen is seen trying to bolster a glassy-eyed and forlorn-looking Charles with a tale of his great-grandmother, Queen Mary, who made her arranged marriage [to George V] work because she prioritised “duty” over love. “If you could follow the example of your great-grandmother, love and happiness will surely follow,” she tells him. What’s the real history behind this story? Princess Mary (known to all as ‘May’) of Teck married the future King George V in July 1893, but she had been originally intended to wed George’s brother, Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence. Tragically, before Eddy and Mary could get to the alter, Eddy died of complications from a bout of flu that turned into pneumonia. “With the characteristic expediency of a dynasty bent on its own survival, May… was encouraged to transfer her affections to George,” writes Denys Blakeway in this article for BBC History Magazine. “The arranged marriage quickly developed into a bond of real affection and mutual support. The couple became a team… [and] espoused the virtues of the middle classes: fidelity and family.” Was Queen Mary, wife of George V, a kleptomaniac? The couple successfully “adapted the monarchy to the modern age while giving the appearance of rock-like security,” Blakeway adds. “The monarchy’s survival into the 21st century owes an enormous debt to the reign of George V and Mary.” Episode 3 ends with suspenseful scenes of the royals getting dressed for Charles and Diana’s wedding, including Diana in her iconic wedding dress. The real voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, can be heard delivering the speech from the ceremony. “Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made. The prince and princess on their wedding day… As husband and wife live out their vows… they will be transformed in the process. Our faith sees the wedding day not as the place of arrival, but as the place where the adventure really begins.” You can read everything you need to know about Charles and Diana’s wedding here. Discover more real history behind The Crown here NEXT EPISODE: The Crown S4 E4 real history: mothers in the spotlight and the ‘favourite’ royal child Emma Mason is the digital editor at HistoryExtra With thanks to expert Penny Junor, royal biographer and author of 10 books on members of the royal family