In The Palace Papers, Camilla emerges as the most Machiavellian of all
Prince Charles, once the most eligible bachelor in the world, had infinite sexual options. But Camilla had a cunning strategy.
When, in The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, British-born American writer Tina Brown aka Lady Evans describes Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, as being “from the last generation of British women who were schooled in the necessity – and the skills – of being amusing”, she is, in effect, describing herself. For almost 50 years, Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair, has been without rival in her field.
Brown is a kingmaker, a determining force of global celebrity, and one of its most brilliant chroniclers.
As a breed, royal biographers are a fundamentally inhibited and sycophantic crew, but Brown, with her smart prose, savage humour and Thackerayesque eye, seriously enjoys herself. One of her two favourite targets is Carole Middleton, who, she reports with no small measure of delight, “was raised in a council flat in Southall, a suburban London district now known as Little Punjab. She inherited her drive from her socially ambitious mother, Dorothy ‘Dot’ Goldsmith, aka ‘The Duchess’, who, according to a snarky relative, ‘wanted to be the top brick in the chimney’.”
Former head of the Glossy Posse and graceful future Queen Kate Middleton may well be missing “the bitch gene”, but it remains an integral part of Brown’s success, and she can be very funny. The women at Kate’s wedding and their hats: Camilla (“the same old blonde seventies blow-dry with the feathery, Carmen-rollered side wings”) in her “cruise ship-sized Lady Bracknell headgear”, and Princess Beatrice with “what seemed to be a vast pink felt octopus – or was it antlers?” towering on her head.
One hundred and twenty sources at the highest levels of royal access were interviewed by Brown, some in “fading walk-up flats in far-flung London postal codes of former courtiers and retainers. The smell of their stair carpets always filled me with gloom, a waft of downward mobility and pointless, genteel sacrifice. The light always seemed to go out on the third-floor landing because of the time switch.”
For Brown, all this was tourism. Her interest has always been in the movement of money – where it comes from, where it goes, and the mess it leaves behind.
Brown uses the Harry/Meghan/Oprah uproar – 49 million viewers – as scaffolding for over 300 pages of dinner table gossip. Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are cited for gravitas, and, ostensibly for historical purposes, forgotten scandals and tragedies are ruthlessly resurrected – that of Australian heiress Dale “Kanga” Tryon, for example.
For a time, Tryon was Prince Charles’ preferred married mistress, but became overwhelmed by distinctly non-U excitement at the prospect of marrying into “The Firm”, as the Royal Family continues to be informally known. “It takes layers of aristocratic grooming to know how to play the royal mistress game to win,” Brown writes. “You just have to wait for the upstart to make mistakes. Dale became too obviously enthralled with Charles’s attention, talking too much about him, letting it be known she was his favourite. He dropped her or, rather, ‘created distance’, as the royals know how to do better than anyone.”
Tryon fell apart. At an upmarket rehab, she was rendered paraplegic after an unexplained 25 foot “fall” from a window. Prince Charles was mortified when, in a wheelchair, she “frantically pursued” him at a polo match. Her husband asked for a divorce. Three months after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Tryon died of septicaemia. She was 49.
Brown deeply understands the British monarchy, “a more than one thousand-year-old institution with a ninety-six-year-old CEO and a septuagenarian waiting in the wings. It cannot be expected to be nimble. It builds its social capital with steady, incremental acts of unexciting duty. Every so often the glacier moves, usually after a resounding shock to the system.”
Said “resounding shocks” are usually in the form of women – among them, Wallis Simpson, Diana, Meghan. It is Camilla, however, who emerges as the most Machiavellian of all of the players.
Having eased into “the life of a cosseted rich bachelor whose horses were saddled in the morning, whose fishing tackle was always ready, whose tweed jacket and corduroys were laid out for him the night before”, Prince Charles, then the most eligible bachelor in the world, had infinite sexual options. Camilla, understanding this, focused on being discreet and amusing, never burdening him with demands. Uncharacteristically threatened by his interest in Scottish heiress Anna Wallace, she staked her claim by ostentatiously kissing him as they danced at a ball. On seeing the display, Wallace, whose pride tolerated no such insult, “commandeered Lady Vestey’s BMW and screeched out of the gates”.
Camilla’s new strategy was to match her royal lover with a young woman who could be comfortably manipulated – “someone young, pliant, and, with a bit of luck, perpetually pregnant. After all, the supremacy of Alice Keppel as Edward VII’s immovable mistress was shored up by the quiet elegance of Queen Alexandra at his side. Her presence headed off the dangerous ambitions of young pretenders.”
Diana, who bore an unusual resemblance to Wallace, was, of course, the sacrificial lamb.
Like any newshound, Brown has an eye – and genius - for intrigue. Applied to the monarchy, it can be unforgivable. The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil is a shallow, terrible – even cruel – book that is impossible to put down, a perfectly executed amalgam of classist awe and punk disdain for an institution that continues to symbolise cohesion, inequality and political neutrality.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke’s new book, Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine, can now be pre-ordered.
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil
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