1/19/2024 0 Comments King charles iii young picturesIn the decades after Mountbatten’s murder by the IRA in 1979, however, Prince Charles grew gradually closer to both his parents, his Prince’s Trust charity being one of several examples of shared interests with his father (who had earlier set up the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme) being pursued in different ways. For instance his famous recommendation that he should “sow his wild oats” before marrying a young woman without “a past,” which helped propel Charles into his unhappy first marriage to Lady Diana Spencer. He often gave Charles the impression that he was not the sort of son he had wanted and could fly into a rage at random aspects of his behaviour, once even rebuking him for reading in bed: “If he wants to sleep, why doesn’t he sleep? If he wants to read, why doesn’t he sit in a chair and read?”įrightened of his father and starved of attention from his mother while she was busy as the queen, during the 1970s Charles came increasingly under the wing of his great uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten, the brother of Prince Philip’s mother, whose influence was not always especially helpful. In many ways a very attentive father, Prince Philip was also seen by some courtiers as too controlling of his eldest son, overcompensating, it was surmised, for the fact that there had been no one around to guide him when he was growing up. Neither the Queen nor Prince Philip encouraged Charles to talk to them about his feelings, which instead tended to be bottled up to avoid any awkward conversations. He was later mercilessly bullied at Gordonstoun, where his father had been head boy, describing it as a “hell-hole.” Charles was the first heir to the throne of Britain to go to school, briefly attending a small pre-prep (Hill House) in Knightsbridge, London, aged eight, before going as a boarder to his father’s old prep school, Cheam, whose rugged regime Prince Philip extolled in a preface to a history of the school: “Children may be indulged at home,” he wrote, “but school is expected to be a spartan and disciplined experience in the process of developing into self-controlled, considerate and independent adults.” King Charles, a very different character, would doubtless demur, having hated his time there.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |