Sometimes, small moments can reveal much about someone’s state of mind.
When a gust of wind blew up the kilt Prince Charles was wearing at the Highland Games in Scotland last August, the heir to the throne initially struggled, red-faced, to not reveal “too much royal flesh,” as London’s Telegraph delicately pointed out. But it wasn’t long before the Prince of Wales and his wife of four years, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were “absolutely in hysterics, with tears rolling down their faces,” recalls Sarah Hughes, the royal correspondent for Britain’s 24-hours TV news channel, Sky News.
The scene revealed a more relaxed and content Prince – a man comfortable with his life. At the age of 60, Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor seems happy.
And topical – relevant – even. Just this June, Charles became embroiled in an architectural debate when modernist architect Lord Richard Rogers, with whom the Prince has differed in the past over modern vs. traditional styles of building, charged that Charles was ignoring constitutional conventions in getting Rogers pulled off a major West London project. Charles’s architectural foundation has long favoured neo-Georgian styles. Published reports indicated that Rogers was calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the Prince’s bold use of his hereditary connections combined with the power of his many foundations to exercise influence.
Compare this swashbuckling man with the Prince of a decade ago. As historian Andrew Roberts wrote prior to the Prince’s Nov. 14 birthday last year in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, Charles is  “far calmer and more serene” than he was when he turned 50 in 1998.
It was just over a year after the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in an automobile accident in a Paris tunnel, and “the world seemed an unforgiving and hostile place” both for Charles and his then-mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, wrote Roberts. And, as Hughes told Forever Young, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh “refused” to attend their son’s 50th birthday party hosted by Camilla.
The previous decade wasn’t any easier for Charles. Hughes said that when the Prince turned 40, his marriage to Diana was “breaking down irretrievably,” and he had already been made a “laughingstock” after revealing (reportedly in jest) to a TV reporter in 1986 that he talked to the plants in his country home to stimulate their growth. Charles was dismissed as a “crank,” though, as Time magazine reported, a decade later South Korean scientists showed that plants respond to sound.
“Some of his notions, which once sounded a bit daft, were simply ahead of their time,” wrote Catherine Mayer in 2007. “Now, finally, the world seems to be catching up with him.”
For instance, Prince Charles’s Duchy Home Farm at Highgrove (one of his residences) went organic back in 1986 and supplies ingredients for Duchy Originals Ltd., a company formed by Charles in 1990, which sells more than 200 organic products (most recently herbal remedies) and which has donated over $10-million to the Prince’s Charities Foundation. And, Charles began highlighting the effects of climate change almost two decades ago – long before terms like  “global warming” had attracted attention.
The Prince of Wales has also been prescient in promoting the importance of understanding between faith groups. In 1993, he delivered a speech, entitled “Islam and the West,” at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (of which he is a patron). He worried that Western attitudes toward Islam were being “grossly distorted” by the “extremes” revealed through “Islamic fundamentalism” – a warning all the more relevant more than a decade later.
According to Roberts, “Princes Charles has initiated debates earlier and with a higher profile than any comparable public figure inside or outside politics.”
As Paddy Harverson, communications secretary to the Prince of Wales, told Forever Young, issues Charles has raised that were once “outside the mainstream” are now “very much of the times.”
He said that since the Prince is not a politician, “he is able to think about the long term,” and has remained “entirely consistent in what he says and what he does.”
As an example, last year, Charles converted his Aston Martin, which the Queen gave him on his 21st birthday, to run on biofuel made from wine as a way to reduce carbon emissions. His other cars, which include Jaguars, an Audi and a Range Rover, run on 100-per-cent biodiesel fuel made from used cooking oil.
As Hughes pointed out, Charles is “exceptionally passionate” and “not ashamed about being outspoken” on issues, whether he’s promoting conservation, environmentalism and sustainable communities, warning about the risks posed by genetically modified food or promoting human-scale architecture over modernist design.
But, said Hughes, “there will always be those who say that he needs to shut up as heir to the throne. But my feeling is that he knows that his greatest legacy will be as Prince of Wales, because his time as king will probably be quite short or far shorter than his time as Prince of Wales has been.”
Given that title by his mother in 1958 (though his investiture took place on July 1, 1969, when he was 20), Charles is the 21st Prince of Wales, the third-longest-serving heir apparent. If Charles doesn’t become king before Sept. 18, 2013, he will surpass William IV who became monarch in 1830 when he was nearly 65.
At the age of 60, when many people would be considering retirement, Charles “hasn’t even begun the job that he was born to do,” as Hughes pointed out. As Prince of Wales, Charles is determined to “make a difference,” said Hughes.
According to his press secretary, Patrick Harrison, Charles is patron or president of over 400 charities, and has a group of 20 “core” charities, “19 of which he set up himself” and which form the Prince’s Charities. Among the best known is the Prince’s Trust, which the Prince of Wales established in 1976. It has provided “practical and financial support” and helped “develop key skills, confidence and motivation” to more than 575,000 young people.
And in recent months, Charles has brought his green campaign to the Vatican, where he met with Pope Benedict XVI, and to the likes of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian President Silvio Berlusconi and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a meeting he organized to coincide with the G20 summit in London.
In light of all this, Charles is now generally accepted as a “force for good,” said Hughes. Indeed, even his mother delivered an unprecedented public tribute to him last year on the eve of Charles’s 60th birthday. “For Prince Philip and me there can be no greater pleasure or comfort than to know that into his care are safely entrusted the guiding principles of public service and duty to others,” said Elizabeth II. And the Queen’s annual Christmas message last year singled out her eldest son with clips from a previously unseen home movie showing a young Princess Elizabeth playing with one-year-old Charles.
Such high praise and attention from a beloved yet intensely private sovereign has added a precious jewel to Charles’ crown of achievements, since recognition of his hard work hasn’t come easy.
For the past three decades, his accomplishments have largely been overshadowed by the larger-than-life Diana.
“When he married this incredibly glamorous young woman [in 1981], suddenly the attention was off him and on Diana,” said Hughes. When he was in the spotlight before, during and after his 1992 separation and divorce, four years later, from Diana, Charles was often portrayed as cold and uncaring – an image reportedly fuelled in the media by the Princess of Wales and her supporters.
Even in death, Diana remained a supernova transcending any word or deed by England’s future king, and certainly made it difficult for his relationship to that “other woman” to gain public acceptance.
Yet Charles has never waged a concerted campaign to rehabilitate or reclaim his reputation or image. He’s left that for others to do, said Hughes.
“He has some very clever PR, and Paddy Harverson is particularly influential and Prince Charles trusts him. It’s not so much about him, but more about showing the world the work that Prince Charles is doing,” she explained.
In a telephone interview from London, Harverson said that since joining the staff at Clarence House, the Prince of Wales’s official residence, in early 2004, he has made a “concerted effort to try to shift the media focus” onto Charles’s work and charitable initiatives.
Harverson explained that the Prince’s website (princeofwales.gov.uk) is intended to be “proactive” in explaining what the Prince does and “why he does it.”
With his private life now “stable,” there’s less attention on it and more of a focus on his work – which is “certainly the way Prince Charles wants it to be,” said Hughes.
Besides his forays into public affairs, such as his tiff with the architect Rogers, Charles also generates headlines of a personal nature. In March, six love letters he wrote between 1976 and 1980 to Janet Jenkins, a Welsh-born woman whom he met while she worked for the British consulate in Montreal in 1975 and who now lives in Toronto, were up for sale on eBay for $30,000.
Around that time, the international edition of Esquire magazine named Charles, known for his Gieves and Hawkes double-breasted suits, the world’s “best dressed” man.
On a more important note, Charles is married to the “love of his life,” and Brits finally accept that Camilla makes him happy, said Hughes. “There’s a sense among a growing number of people that it’s a shame he wasn’t able to marry her in the first place and the whole tragic situation would never have happened.”
Less formal than the Prince, the Duchess of Cornwall, who turns 62 on July 17, is often “very chatty” with press photographers covering the royal couple at events. On a boat trip at the source of the Nile River during a visit Charles and Camilla made to Uganda in 2007, Hughes saw the Duchess playing tourist, snapping shots of the sites while photojournalists were taking pictures of her.
Though surrounded by the formality and security of their royal roles, Hughes said that Charles and Camilla “laugh together a lot – their mouths wide open. They have the same sense of humour, and I think she lightens him up a bit.”
From the time he became a single until now, Charles has also shown affection and pride for his sons, William, who turned 27 on June 21, and Harry, 24, and they in turn have praised him for being a good father.
We’ve seen photographs of Charles with his arms around the princes, whose personal lives are now far more interesting to the media than his. And Charles expressed “great relief” when Harry returned to the U.K. after spending 10 weeks serving in Afghanistan as a second lieutenant in the Household Calvary last year. But Charles, who holds the ranks of admiral in the Royal Navy, Air Chief Marshal in the Royal Air Force, and general in the British Army, also said he felt “frustration” that his soldier-son was sent home early (over concerns he could be a Taliban target) because Harry “had been looking forward to coming back with the rest of his regiment.”   
It remains to be seen whether the recent call by Lord Rogers for censure of Charles will have any traction. A Sky News poll, conducted just before Charles’ 60th birthday last year, found that less than one in 10 people felt he has been too outspoken to be king, while 40 per cent said his strong views will make him an “effective monarch.”
For now, he’s a content Prince of Wales, who derives joy from his wife and sons – and “also, an enormous amount through his work,” added Harverson.
“He’s a bit of a workaholic, tireless in his devotion to the charities he founded and of which he is a patron.”  FY





Sidebar

Last year, the Associated Press provided a snapshot of Charles’s wealth. He controls the 136,000-acre Duchy of Cornwall estate, which King Edward II established in 1337 to provide income for his heir. AP also referred to official accounts that show Charles’s property and investments brought in $US24 million in 2007.
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The Prince of Wales will appear in The Rescuers: Heroes of the Holocaust, a film set for release next year about 12 people who helped save Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War. One of those heroes was Charles’ grandmother and the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece.