History > 2007 > UK > Monarchy (I)

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The Independent        27.4.2007

Prince Harry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,2066791,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,1389376,00.html

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/personalprofiles/princeharry/

Prince William Turns 25

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LONDON (AP) -- Prince William turned 25 on Thursday and gained part of the inheritance left him by his mother, Princess Diana.

William, who is second in line to the throne, gains access to the interest and other income accrued on the $13 million he was left by his mother, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

William's Clarence House office would not say what the prince planned to do with the money, estimated at $500,000 to $600,000 a year.

Harry, 22, William's brother, will gain access to a similar amount when he turns 25. According to Diana's will, the brothers gain access to the capital sum when they turn 30.

William and Harry are both second lieutenants in the British army, earning salaries of about $44,000 a year. They also receive money for accommodation and other expenses from their father, Prince Charles.

Now that he is 25, William also can marry without the consent of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II -- but no royal nuptials are on the horizon. William and his long-term girlfriend, Kate Middleton, announced in April that they had split.

Prince William Turns 25,
NYT, 21.6.2007
 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Prince-William.html

6.15pm

Confirmed: Harry will serve in Iraq

Monday April 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Matt Weaver and agencies


Prince Harry will be sent to Iraq, the chief of the general staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, confirmed today.
There had been mounting speculation that the young prince, an officer with the Blues and Royals, would not see service in the Middle East after 12 British soldiers died in Iraq during April.

Sir Richard, who first announced in February that the prince would serve in the Iraq, told Sky News: "I, as chief of the general staff, will take the decision and have taken the decision as to whether he should or should not deploy.

"And I do so as chief of the general staff and having full command of every member of the army, including Prince Harry.

"Second, the decision has been taken he will deploy. Third, I will of course keep that decision continually under review, and if circumstances are such that I change that decision, I will make a further statement."

His comments came after the home secretary, John Reid, said yesterday it was up to the army to decide whether the prince should fight in Iraq.

Last week it was reported that worsening violence in the country had prompted a review of the decision to send the prince to Iraq. Last Thursday the Sun reported that if he did go he would be given a "desk job" away from the frontline.

Yesterday the Observer revealed that special forces have already been sent to Iraq to provide protection for his tour of duty.

One military source told the paper: "The probability of Harry becoming a victim is incredibly slim."

Confirmed: Harry will serve in Iraq, G, 30.4.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2069119,00.html

The Guardian        p. 1        28.4.2007

Doubts raised

over Prince Harry's

war-zone posting

deployment to Iraq

Published: 27 April 2007
The Independent
By Kim Sengupta

The question of whether Prince Harry will be sent to Iraq, and whether he will resign from the Army if he is not sent, was mired in confusion yesterday. The Ministry of Defence said it was reviewing the issue of the Prince's deployment to Iraq after a rise in attacks against British troops and threats by insurgents to abduct him and cut off his ears.

According to one report, friends of the Prince - who is third in line to the throne - have said he will quit the Army if he is not sent. The claim was dismissed by the BBC's royal correspondent who said the friends had denied this was the case and insisted that the Prince will continue to serve.

Tony Blair, meanwhile, told reporters that he would be delighted if his son offered to serve in Iraq. This has caused a degree of puzzlement at the Ministry of Defence as none of the Prime Minister's children are known to be in the armed forces.

The controversy over the Prince's deployment surfaced yesterday with the news that senior officers are reconsidering whether the Prince, a 2nd lieutenant, should be sent to Iraq as this may make him a target.

In one of the bloodiest months for British forces in the country since the invasion, 11 service personnel have been killed this April.

In Maysan province, where the Prince and other members of the Blues and Royals are due to serve, two soldiers died last week when their reconnaissance vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

One option would be for the Prince to go to Iraq but not undertake any combat duty. However, in 2005 he said: "There is no way I am going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are fighting for their country.''

If the deployment does take place, the Prince will be the first member of the Royal Family to serve in a war zone since the Duke of York flew helicopters during the Falklands conflict 25 years ago. An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday: "Prince Harry's deployment to Iraq is, as we have always said, under constant consideration.

"It is still our intent that Prince Harry will deploy as a troop leader.''

    Doubts raised over Prince Harry's war-zone posting deployment to Iraq, I, 27.4.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2488851.ece

Joan Bakewell:

Prince Harry can't really do

his duty in Iraq

This young man of 22,

vigorous and enthusiastic,

is faced with the frustration of all his hopes

Published: 27 April 2007
The Independent

He's eager, he's available, he's qualified, and he's a prince. That means if Prince Harry goes to fight in Iraq he'll be a target, a risk, a liability and a headache. Prince Harry and the Army now find themselves in a no-win situation, and, let's face it, that's not what soldiering is about.

Did nobody think of this when career plans were being laid? For the heir to the throne to have two sons who've both decided to make the military their career seems deliberately perverse. Neither will ever be able to fulfil their role as officers in exactly the same way as their fellow soldiers. It's just not possible. They are royal and privileged; they are pampered and favoured; they are emblematic icons, while others are simply ordinary fellows trained in warfare. As parental career guidance it rates as rock bottom.

Shakespeare knew all about kings at war. Throughout the history plays, a king bearing arms is consistently the deliberate target of his enemies. As the great sequence comes to an end, Richard III, cornered and screaming, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse ..." is finally and ignominiously slaughtered, bringing his dynastic line crashing down with him.

The death of a king is that momentous. When Henry V - known to his soldiery, appropriately enough, as Harry of England - disguises himself and wanders his camp as an ordinary soldier, he hears the truth at first hand: an ordinary squaddie declares, "I would he were here alone. So should he be sure to be ransomed and a many poor men's lives saved."

For all his well-meaning intentions to be just as any other soldier, Prince Harry is different. His eagerness to serve in the front line, leading his men, is honourable and impossible. Consider the range of differences that apply in his case. Going out into the front line, Prince Harry can be assured of the very best kit, fully served with the latest in protective equipment.

There will be no wretched phone calls home about the inadequacy of his stuff or the need to supply his own boots. The vehicle he uses will be the best protected, the most thoroughly serviced. The route it takes will be tracked, the time of its return anticipated with relief by his superiors. There will be commendations for those who see him through it all, and more than normal relief when his term of duty comes to an end.

Were he to be wounded in action, the best of medical facilities will attend on him and the subject of his injuries be a matter of national interest and attention. Sneak photographs taken by the mobile phones of hospital orderlies will be sold round the world before a public enquiry as to how such dastardly behaviour could have been allowed. Should he need them, there is no question that the best of surgeons will be available, and on his return he will not be dumped in public hospital wards where other patients who disapprove of the Iraq war can come and remonstrate with him.

Were he taken prisoner or hostage, the mantra "we do not negotiate with terrorists" would be swiftly revised. Those responsible would have scored an amazing international coup and could set their own agenda as to how it was resolved. With such lavish options open to them, they would surely quarrel among themselves, delaying and confusing the outcome.

Meanwhile, snatch squads of our own, possibly with aid from Mossad, would make plans for dashing raids of heroic proportions, all of whose participants would claim that, following recent precedents, they should be allowed to sell their stories to the tabloids. Meanwhile Harry would return to a hero's welcome, and the troops in Iraq would relax their vigilance, leaving themselves open to instant opportunistic attacks.

This, as the military have now realised, is no way to fight a war. The insurgents have realised that too, making it known that the Prince himself would be the battleground.

Such declared targeting was not the case when his uncle Prince Andrew served as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands war. That was an old-fashioned confrontational fight between two armies. But Middle East wars are more elusive, more insidious and, for serving royals, more deadly. The only possibility of Prince Harry fulfilling his proper duty would have been for him to have gone in secret, served anonymously and returned from duty before the whole thing became known. Such is the double track of both royalty and celebrity that is currently the Prince's lot in life, that that was never conceivable.

Now we have a young man of 22, vigorous and enthusiastic, faced with the frustration of all his hopes. This is not what any family could wish for their child. Given Prince Harry's freedom with his fists and with drink, it could well result in further brawls and unhappiness.

Judging from blogs, the public is speaking out strongly in favour of his going to Iraq: "It's what he signed up to"; "He's trained, let him serve"; "His credibility as an officer is on the line." With only the occasional traditionalist: "The Royal Family are the backbone of society in this country ... its time we saw sense, and kept Prince Harry safe."

So whatever the outcome - front line or desk job, resignation from the Army or ham-strung career - opinions on whether he should go or not will be filling chat shows and column inches for a good while yet.

Joan Bakewell: Prince Harry can't really do his duty in Iraq, I, 27.4.2007,
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/joan_bakewell/article2488792.ece

Prince Harry will be sent to Iraq

despite misgivings over security

· Clarence House denies influencing military
· Decision could still be reversed at last minute

Friday April 27, 2007
Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor

Prince Harry will be deployed with his regiment, the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry, on the frontline in south-eastern Iraq next month despite concerns among military commanders that he might attract fire from insurgents and rogue elements within Shia militias.

That was the message last night from the Ministry of Defence, but officials did not rule out a late decision to leave the prince at home when his regiment begins its tour, whatever the consequences for his army career. Clarence House said it would not seek to influence the military on the matter. Friends of the prince have denied reports that he would leave the army if he was not allowed to accompany his men to Iraq but they told the BBC he would be "very disappointed" if he were kept away from the battlefield.

In a statement the MoD said: "Prince Harry's deployment to Iraq is, as we have always said, under constant consideration. It is still our intention that Prince Harry will be deployed as a troop leader."

A defence official said: "He would fulfill the normal role of a troop leader going out on patrol but spend a certain amount of time behind a desk". The prince is likely to be assigned a special "minder", probably an experienced non-commissioned officer though not a member of the special forces, defence sources have said.

The official said a decision to keep the prince at home while his regiment went to Iraq would provide insurgents with a "tremendous propaganda coup". Such a decision would be taken after discussions with General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the army, and almost certainly with Prince Charles and the Queen.

Prince Harry's uncle, the Duke of York, the last member of the royal family to be deployed in a conflict on the frontline, said after the Falklands war that his position in the navy would have been "untenable" if he had not seen action in the South Atlantic.

Sir John Nott, Tory defence secretary during the Falklands war, said yesterday he had been "very much in favour" of Prince Andrew serving in the Falklands, despite "hesitation" from Margaret Thatcher.

But he said yesterday: "I think the situation with Prince Harry is different because the Iraq war is much more fraught. There was complete public support for the Falklands campaign; there certainly isn't for Iraq. The danger is that Prince Harry will be hazarding the lives of other soldiers ... and I think that's not right."

Speculation over the prince's deployment coincided with the return to Britain yesterday of the bodies of three servicemen killed in Iraq. Among them were the bodies of Corporal Ben Leaning and Trooper Kristen Turton of the Queen's Royal Lancers. They were in a Scimitar armoured vehicle, similar to those used by the Blues and Royals, when they were killed by a roadside bomb.

MoD officials said yesterday that the publicity surrounding Prince Harry's prospective tour was not helpful. Their concern were echoed by Bad CO, an administrator of Arsse an unofficial army website, who said: "I'm a dyed in the wool republican so this isn't been done because I'm a big fan of the monarchy. However, the two princes are as entitled to the same confidentiality we would afford any other serving soldier or officer. Any 'leaking' of information or gossip about the princes ... will be ruthlessly deleted ... "

This month has the been the bloodiest for the British army in Iraq since 2003 with 11 soldiers killed. Defence sources said they had no ready explanation for the surge but one theory is that insurgents are more confident that more attacks will hasten the withdrawal of British troops.

Meanwhile defence officials said no action would be taken against Corporal Richard Bradley of the Staffordshire Regiment, who told the 10 o'clock news on BBC One this week that the time had come to withdraw forces from Iraq. A defence official said: "The corporal is entitled to his views," but added that the corporal was "not qualified" to comment on policy.

Deadliest month


April has been the bloodiest month for British personnel since the Iraq conflict began in 2003, with 11 deaths bringing the overall toll to 145.


April 1 Kingsman Danny John Wilson, 28, of The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment was hit by small arms fire during a patrol in Basra City.


April 2 Rifleman Aaron Lincoln, 18, died from small arms fire in the Al Ashar district of central Basra.


April 5 Four British soldiers were killed in an ambush in southern Iraq: Second Lieutenant Joanna Dyer, 24, of the Intelligence Corps; Corporal Kris O'Neill, 27, from the Royal Army Medical Corps; Private Eleanor Dlugosz, 19, also of the RAMC; and Kingsman Adam Smith, 19, of The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment.


April 15 RAF Sergeant Mark McLaren, 27, of Ashington, Northumberland, and Colour Sergeant Mark Powell of the Parachute Regiment died when their Puma transport helicopters collided north of Baghdad.


April 19 Corporal Ben Leaning, 24, and Trooper Kristen Turton, 28, were killed while carrying out a patrol in the southern province of Maysan.


April 23
Kingsman Alan Joseph Jones, 20, of The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment died after coming under small arms fire in the Al Ashar district.

    Prince Harry will be sent to Iraq despite misgivings over security, G, 27.4.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,2066791,00.html

Steady as she goes

If you're not at Sandringham Flower Show, you're joking with schoolgirls in Pakistan or turning on the Christmas lights in Tetbury. It's a funny old life, being a royal, as Camilla Parker Bowles now knows. Emma Brockes joins the circus for a year, to find the woman behind the professional smile

Saturday March 31, 2007
Guardian
Emma Brockes

You are supposed to get a thrill from shaking hands with a royal. In medieval times, people thought that by touching the king you could cure yourself of scrofula, a nasty disease of the neck, and on a good day it is said that Henry IV got through 1,500 scrofulous peasants at Versailles. George I eventually outlawed the practice in England for being "too Catholic", but there remained the expectation that, if you shook hands with a royal, you were guaranteed a little frisson. This is because royalty is supposed to be close to divinity, but there is another explanation: that the frisson is in part the royal's fear of rejection.

On a wet Monday morning in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the Duchess of Cornwall bursts into the waiting room of a newly built doctor's surgery. "Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!" she says, holding out her hand, while local journalists press their backs to the wall and patients look on in frank amazement. "I thought it would pelt down," says the duchess, and, "You look very smart." Around a table laid with shortbread and untouched tea sits a group of people suffering from osteoporosis, a condition in which the duchess takes particular interest - her mother had the disease and she is familiar with its treatment. To a nurse she says, "You make all the difference."

The reception committee this morning consists of the mayor of Chippenham, various health authority bigwigs and the Lord Lieutenant, who has left his sword in the car so as not to alarm the infirm, one of whom is pulling on his ceremonial tassels. "Keep taking the tablets!" says Camilla and the woman laughs and says afterwards, "She's only human." A 94-year-old patient has a few words with the duchess and concludes, "She was much better than I thought she would be. To be honest, Diana was my lady." Her eyes fill with tears. "You levitate towards certain people and Camilla isn't one of them. But she was lovely. You don't think a duchess would be touchable, but she was."

A little before noon, the duchess unveils a plaque commemorating the new surgery building and the moment I have been waiting for since last July - in anticipation of which I have travelled from Gloucestershire to Norfolk to Pakistan to south London - finally arrives. Like the Queen Mother, the Duchess of Cornwall does not give interviews; but if you hang around for long enough, you may be granted that brief, transformative moment in the sun, the royal handshake.

"Hello!" she says. Her eyes blaze blue and her stare is direct, but her hand melts away like butter. I've been trying hard to work out what question I can ask that will unlock, in this 30-second window, the secret of her entire personality. Are you happy? Is Charles competent to be king? Who killed Diana? I clear my throat. "How was Pakistan?"

"It was lovely. Everyone said it was too risky to go, but it was lovely. Not what I expected. Very beautiful. Lovely people. Did you enjoy it?"

"Oh, yes." There is an awkward pause. I can't think of a single further thing to say.

"Well, it's nice to finally meet you," she says.

"Nice to meet you, too."

She turns to face the room. "Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!" Oh, God. Camilla charges out into the rain, and is gone.

Until very recently, a public appearance by Camilla Parker Bowles, née Shand, latterly HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, raised a real and terrifying possibility of booing. Even before her wedding to Prince Charles in April 2005, she is said to have voiced concerns over negative reaction from "well-wishers". No one did boo her in the end, but the sense of Camilla as someone forever on the cusp of a mortifying encounter persisted through the early stages of her public life, from her first appearance for the National Osteoporosis Society in 1997, to her first solo engagement, at Southampton General Hospital in May 2005, to her first appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony two months after her wedding. It added a certain suspense to her engagements and explained, perhaps, why she entered a room with such force, as if overcoming a resistance.

In the last couple of years, things have started to look up for her. Camilla's transformation from frumpy to "fun", from liability to asset, has taken place slowly, without the laundering of chatshow appearances and revelations of how close she came to suicide, although even if those routes were available to her, they are clearly not her style. She isn't loved. But she has started to be considered appropriate: appropriate for Charles, appropriate for his family and appropriate for the job at hand, which, depending on one's views of the monarchy, is either a great compliment to the woman or a terrible insult.

The first time I saw her was last July, at the 125th annual Sandringham Flower Show, in the grounds of the royals' Norfolk residence. It was a day so hot that bowls of water had been left out for the dogs and over the Tannoy a man cautioned smokers - "If you must smoke" - not to drop their cigarette butts on the ground. For 40 years, the Queen Mother presided over this event and this was the fifth consecutive year that Camilla had accompanied Prince Charles - her second, I overheard a woman say, "as wife". At 11am the guards straightened, someone said to a Gurkha, "You look absolutely lovely", as if correcting a false but universally held opinion about him, and the first two bars of the national anthem played.

At its height, the contest between Charles and Diana and Diana and Camilla was interpreted as a fight between two versions of Britain - the old and the new, the enlightened and the traditional, with Diana as one of us and Camilla, the heartless toff, as one of them. As memories of her dim, Diana is often now cast as a hysteric, an impossible woman, while Camilla is increasingly seen as a hearty, steady type, the sort of person who, were you to have lunch with her and start choking, could perform the Heimlich manoeuvre with a minimum of fuss. We have no way of knowing if this is accurate. As with all the royals, Camilla's private self is well concealed, her "personality" largely a contrivance, a sort of lightning rod for other hang-ups in the culture. All one can say is that if her "ordinariness" is a correction to Diana's superstar demands, then its value is mainly acoustic; she will return the monarchy to where it belongs - as background noise.

She was dressed that day in white linen shirt, green patterned skirt and semi-wedges to show off legs that, in more ungallant days, might have been described as "surprisingly shapely". "Is it cooler or hotter in here?" she said, entering the royal marquee behind her husband and followed by a retinue of house guests, among them the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Alan Titchmarsh. Past carrots and flowers the royal couple strolled. A woman exhibiting hanging baskets shook so violently in the face of Prince Charles that she couldn't curtsey, but collapsed on one side like a punctured inflatable. Prince Philip once observed that the stress of meeting the Queen provokes one in five men to forget themselves and curtsey.

The duchess spoke to Jean, a pastry-maker from Bedford. "She said it was very hot," Jean said, and on hearing that Alan Titchmarsh was in the party added severely, "Is he wearing a suit?" Next the duchess stopped for a group of women in red hats, who called themselves the Red Hat Society and handed her a box containing a red hat and a scroll "celebrating mischief and elegant ageing". (You wondered suddenly at the rapid mental calculations that go on as the royals scan a crowd for safe anchorage.) "She said she appreciated the hat very much and was very much in favour of mischief," said the society's president, whose impression of the duchess was of someone "light-hearted and a baby boomer, like us. Young and fun."

After the confusion of how to act before royalty, the appearance of Titchmarsh sent a blood rush through the crowd and the cheers for him - "Alan! Alan!" - became so loud and embarrassing that the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire was moved to observe in a low voice, "The British public really seems to like him."

After an hour, the slightest trace of sweat appeared along Camilla's linen blouse. She entered the King's Lynn & District Beekeepers Association tent and left again, whereupon her personal secretary went in to say thank you, like a parent thanking a waiter over the head of a child. Someone stuck out their hand and called, "Ma'am!" and Camilla went straight over, to a woman called Jenny, who reported afterwards that she was "very natural". What did she say to her? "She said she hoped we weren't as hot as she was."

At the Sandringham Association of Royal Warrant Holders, a basket of strawberries got a huge cheer, Titchmarsh having momentarily disappeared. "We like her," said a local resident and, sweeping away all the politics, the history, the particulars of character, added, "Of course we do. We're royalists." What choice do they have?

At 12.30, the royal couple got into a carriage pulled by two dappled horses and took off in the direction of the house, black Range Rovers churning dust in their wake. A royal aide told me that the duchess's skirt was designed by Robinson Valentine and a woman from Manchester, who attends the show every year, concluded that the duchess was "improving". "It's better now they're married. Her outfits are better. She chats nicely, she's down to earth. One year there were people with dogs and she stopped to pat them. She has a nice, relaxed manner."

Camilla spoke to her for the first time this year. What did she say? "She said, 'It's very hot.'"

Posh people do things differently, or so we are led to believe. In 1981, when Camilla Parker Bowles went to her ex-boyfriend's wedding, tried to force his bride to be friends with her and then acted surprised, down the line, if she got a little "difficult", it seemed to constitute a huge blind spot in her fabled common sense. But who knows? Posh people do things differently.

Diana was the daughter of an earl, Camilla is the granddaughter of a baron, and I've always vaguely wondered who was posher. (Camilla's father, Bruce Shand, was a wine merchant, a former major in the army and a master of the hunt; her mother was the Honourable Rosalind Cubitt.) The lady at Debrett's tells me, "The earl has it! Earl beats baron. But, of course, Camilla's family may be more interesting because of the Keppel connection."

Ah yes, Alice Keppel. Camilla's great-grandmother was Alice Keppel, the mistress of Edward VII and someone in whom the young Camilla is said to have shown a great and giggling interest. Camilla grew up between the family's country home in Plumpton, East Sussex, and a town house in south Kensington - a childhood she has described as idyllic. She went to a private school in west London, where she was taught French by the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald and, after leaving at 16 with one O-level, spent six months at a finishing school in Switzerland. Once back in London, she moved into a flat at "the wrong end of Belgravia", as Gyles Brandreth notes in his excellent book Charles & Camilla: Portrait Of A Love Affair, and worked in a series of temping jobs until, in keeping with her class and generation, she got married and never worked again.

Camilla, says Brandreth, is "straightforward, very much her parents' creature. I don't think she is terribly interested in herself, whereas Charles is anxious about how he is perceived. She is what she is, that is her strength." He adds, "There were times when one felt that Diana was as mad as a fox. But Camilla is a sturdy horse that takes the jumps. She delivers the goods."

The palace would prefer it if Camilla's history began with her wedding to Charles, although by now, surely, everyone must know all the other stuff. In case you are missing anything: she met Andrew Parker Bowles, a cavalry officer and godchild of the Queen Mother, when she was 19. They started going out. He dropped her for someone else. She started seeing Prince Charles, whom she ran into at polo matches, but her previous relationship ruled her out as a candidate for royal wife. Eventually she got back with Parker Bowles, with whom she was said to be greatly in love, and in 1973 they married. Charles was still in love with her, and so it all began.

As Camilla Parker Bowles, she was more at liberty to "be herself" than she is now as the Duchess of Cornwall. It's hard to say exactly when Camilla's makeover became noticeable, but I think it was the photo shoot she did with Mario Testino, in 2006; she looked suddenly glossy and elegant and much, much younger. I ask Testino if, given how horrible people had been about her appearance, she was nervous at the shoot. "The Duchess of Cornwall is a very good-looking woman," he replies, "but like any of us she is not conscious of her image, like an actress or a model, so she has perhaps been made to look less gracious than she is by the press."

He says she was "lively and very funny" during the shoot and the atmosphere was "upbeat" (a word, one might unkindly note, that is most often used in the context of overcoming adversity). One imagines Testino hesitated to accept the commission, given how close he was to Diana. But, he says, "No, I did not hesitate. The situation was unfortunate but no one has the right to judge other people's circumstances."

Camilla will be 60 this year. In the early days of her makeover, the thing she resisted more than anything was the amount of time and effort it took to create a "public face". Getting her up and out of the palace in the morning could, says one former adviser, be like prising a teenager from his lair. Her natural style is that of the "country set" and when they overhauled her, Camilla's team tried not to stray too far into science fiction. Her make-up artist, Julia Biddlecombe (former clients: Joan Collins and Zsa Zsa Gabor), likes to make the distinction between a "royal" makeover and a "Hollywood" makeover, which Christian Lacroix, for one, is keen to endorse. From the pages of Hello! magazine, he warns Britons that we "mustn't want Camilla Parker Bowles to be fashionable". Instead, he says, she must be allowed to emphasise "her famous sense of humour".

As criticism of her image has waned, one gets the feeling she has started rather to enjoy the fashion side of her life. On a recent trip to the US, she went for the sexy look for the first time, with a ruby-laden décolletage. The suspicion remains, however, that Camilla is a slob at heart and, despite the best efforts of her people, she occasionally falls off the wagon. Sometimes, a royal aide tells me, the duchess wears clothes that don't carry a designer label, and when people ask what she is wearing, it presents certain problems of what to say.

The operational notes received by journalists in advance of a royal visit tell you everything you need to know about the relationship between the media and the royals: do not approach the royals, do not speak directly to the royals, do not eavesdrop on the royals. Well, for goodness sake. If you can't eavesdrop, what's the point of being there? You'd think there would be a mutiny. But after a day or two on a royal tour, a sort of Stockholm syndrome sets in. It's very weird indeed.

At 10.45pm, we are standing on the tarmac at Chaklala air force base outside Islamabad, 30 hacks and a ceremonial guard. Royal photographers hate being written about, unless it's in their own memoirs, which tend to linger on the "special relationship" they enjoyed with Diana. The closest I can come to describing them is if you imagine Statler and Waldorf, the old hecklers on the Muppets' balcony, but in fishing jackets and carrying a stepladder.

A red carpet has been laid across the tarmac and, as the plane pulls up, we can see the royals peering through the windows and imagine Charles saying, "Bloody people, here we go again." Camilla does a better job of looking lively. As she comes down the red carpet, she smiles broadly at the photographers who, half-toadying, half-loathing, scramble to keep up with her and scream at the local snappers - "Oi, fatty! Get out the way" - for disregarding the pecking order. After almost two hours of waiting, the royals are gone in 30 seconds.

"I couldn't see a fucking thing."

"Time for a pint?"

"That was terrible."

"That was the worst it's ever been."

"Well, things can only get better."

"Wouldn't count on it."

"Best shot?"

"Half a shot, really."

"Better than none."

"Charles with his eyes shut."

"Your angle's better."

"Trips always start bad."

"It was all right."

"It'll be fine."

Camilla's first public trip abroad was to New York in 1999, when she spent four days in the company of Mark Bolland, Charles's then spin doctor, apparently testing the public welcome. America was seen as Diana's territory (Camilla's A Di Copycat was the headline in the Mirror that week) and the palace, which was highly nervous, had set up a series of Edith Wharton-type social encounters to establish her legitimacy. Barbara Walters and Brooke Astor were predictably gracious after lunching with her, but reaction from the US press was a little sarcastic: New York magazine described her as a "horsey royal heart-throb" and the New York Times as the "long-term paramour" of the Prince of Wales, which was technically correct but still sounded snippy.

Since then, she has gone on many foreign trips, and what's noticeable is that she never upstages her husband, never takes one side of the barrier as Diana did, leaving him to face the disappointment of those on the other, but sticks rigidly to his side. Her image abroad seems to be quite good now, although it's hard to tell good from indifferent, and there is still some confusion over who, exactly, she is. "Yes," says a Pakistani tradesman after being introduced to the duchess at a reception in Islamabad, "we like Lady Parker."

The morning after they arrive in Pakistan, Charles meets President Musharraf and Camilla meets the president's wife, Sehba - a meeting at which a British journalist is allowed to be present. He returns to the pack with news of the type of nuts on the table (cashews), flowers in the vase (gladioli and yellow roses) and decor (chintz). Camilla was reported to have said, "We're quite far north here" to which Mrs Musharraf replied, "Yes, we're in the foothills of the Himalayas."

Camilla is popular among royal reporters because, unlike other members of the royal family who speak in accordance with the no-eavesdropping rule, she has a booming voice that, wherever she is in the world, can always be heard back in Berkshire. After their respective meetings, Camilla and Charles reunite in a marquee in the president's garden, where local artisans and dignitaries are waiting to meet them. "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am! Sir, sir, sir!" Charles is introduced to some local entrepreneurs. Camilla is introduced to some traditional Pakistani weavers. A debate in the press pen takes off as to whether her bag is "raffia" or "raffia-look" and whether it's the same one she carried in Egypt, and then somebody notices she isn't wearing a Remembrance Day poppy. Her press agent says this is because the Muslim dupatta she is wearing would cover it up.

The royals take their seats in front of the stage and after some remarks by Andrew Fiddaman, who runs the international arm of the Prince's Trust, and a speech by some young Pakistanis who have been helped by its grants, a female singer comes on and does a song by the Carpenters. Then a male singer comes on and does a song by the Bee Gees, before explaining that his inspiration is actually Bryan Adams, with whom he once had the good fortune to work. Then Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister of Pakistan, comes on and says to the royal couple, "May both of you live happily ever after", which sounds like an oblique reference to their troubled past, and then Charles makes a speech. He says how lucky the UK is to have so much of the Pakistani diaspora in it. He praises the country for "maintaining its traditions in a contemporary way". He thanks them for the music. "Marvellous." Camilla smiles.

If this was your life, you would kill yourself.

A Pakistani model, who has been acting as a host at the event, whispers to me, "I'll be honest, we weren't very accepting of Camilla in this country, especially after the controversy of Diana's death. Diana came here and went to a cancer hospital. People here can't afford cancer treatment, so." I glance at the royal schedule and tell her Camilla is due to visit a hospital the following day.

"Really?"

When I get back to the hotel I check the notes. Brooke Hospital is a hospital for horses.

The splash in the Express the next morning is "Islamic" Camilla Dumps Poppy and the story quotes an 83-year-old member of the British Legion saying, "I met the Queen Mother while she was alive. Can you imagine her doing something like this?" The palace is furious and the reporter who wrote it is mercilessly sent up by other reporters. "I can't believe you mobilised the British Legion."

"Yeah, well, it's what our readers care about."

Later that morning, news comes in that the Pakistani air force has bombed a madrasa near the Afghan border, ruining plans for the prince's visit to Peshawar that day. The British high commission wasn't warned and there is speculation that the oversight was a deliberate slight on the relevance of the royal tour.

A contingency plan is rolled out; the royals will instead visit Fatima Jinnah University, the country's first all-women's university in nearby Rawalpindi. On the press bus, the poppy row continues to rage, only half-satirically.

"'Snagged' is your word," says the man from the palace.

"Well, somebody said 'snagged', then Paddy said 'caught'."

"No, he said, 'hidden'. Because it would've been 'hidden' by the dupatta."

"Sorry, can you clarify. We were told 'snag' yesterday, now you're saying 'hidden'. Which is it? Snagged or hidden? Off the record?"

At this stage, I feel sorry for all of us.

The man from the palace says, "No further comment."

There has been no time to make any formal arrangements. Outside the university's white stuccoed buildings, a man from the high commission runs about with a traffic cone in each hand, trying desperately to assemble a receiving line. "I mean, have all these people been vetted? I don't think so. Move, move, move. They're coming." Ten minutes later Charles gets out of the car, left hand dipping nervously into his jacket pocket, his wife, as usual, by his side.

"Guys, guys, please, five paces back."

"I practically bumped into them!"

"Fucking priceless."

"Total pandemonium."

"The World At One is saying, 'What can you offer us?' I said, 'Only absolute chaos!' "

In the heat and uproar, everyone starts suddenly to enjoy their assigned roles, even the royals, who are at their most likable when overcoming small, logistical inconveniences. There has been no time to pick out the best students or rustle up some weavers or choreograph a game by the women's first badminton team. For the very first time on the trip, it actually feels like something approximating a real encounter. Camilla meets students in the refectory and asks, "What do you study? What year are you in?" She jokes that they work harder than British students, who like to party. (Headline in the Express the next day - Camilla: British Students Just Want To Get Drunk.) She tells them about Tom, her son, who once tasted a hot chilli and almost fainted.

Everyone troops into the auditorium, where the vice-chancellor makes a warm speech about the surprise phone call she'd had that morning and what a historic day this is for the university. Charles addresses the students and when he says "my wife and I", you still get a little jolt. He talks about the role the girls will play in the future of their country and there is loud and spontaneous applause. He says he has great respect for "the inner meaning" of Islam and there is more wild clapping. "As it says in the Qur'an..." says the prince. His wife looks up at him, with love.

Two things become evident over time: that the life of the royals is incredibly boring; and that a lot of people who meet them get a genuine lift from it. "I'm usually restrained," said a cancer patient whom I met at a hospice during one of the duchess's visits, "but I got really excited and pressed my suit. I never in my life thought I'd meet royalty."

The banality of the royal family is relieved by something more than fame and so the question is, at what point, exactly, did Camilla become "royal"? Charles and Diana separated in 1993; Camilla and Andrew filed for divorce in 1994; Camilla and Charles married in 2005. "You wouldn't think a duchess would be touchable, but she was." The honorary nature of her title seems to make little difference, nor the fact that she's divorced, or was born a commoner, or used to be hated. Royal, for those who believe in it, is still somehow mystical, even in the very unmystical personage of Camilla Parker Bowles. Perhaps it is because, at this stage, she has nothing to gain.

About the bread rolls in the car park. It's the only example on record of public aggression towards the duchess and is said to have happened in January 1993, just after the Tampax Tapes story broke. Camilla was apparently bombarded with "bread rolls and buns" in the car park of a Sainsbury's at Chippenham, although a culprit was never identified. There is a suspicion it was a set-up by the News Of The World and I have to say the word "buns" rings alarm bells. Even if buns are something people buy, generally, I'm not sure they are heavy enough to be effective as missiles. Anyway, the story has been repeated so often now that even though the duchess says it's entirely made up, it is part of the mythology, the image of Camilla At Her Lowest, trying to get her shopping into the boot while all about it hails bakery. Meanwhile the taped details of Charles and Camilla's sex life, so embarrassing at the time, seem in this new Camilla-tolerant era rather to flatter her, as someone whose healthy human desire stands out against the bloodless royal standard.

I saw her twice more in 2006, once at the hospice in Clapham, where she poked gentle fun at the outpatients' artwork - "Well, watercolours are difficult" - and at herself - "I prefer oils, you can make more mistakes with oils." And then in November in Tetbury, where she was booked to turn on the Christmas lights. Tetbury is down the road from Highgrove in Gloucestershire, the place Diana hated and that Camilla apparently loves. These are her people, the green welly brigade, and when you walk through Tetbury you get the feeling you could stop any number of women on the street and they would do the job of royal consort just as well.

While the duchess went into Fraser & Brown the jeweller's and the House Of Cheese, her son, Tom, sat behind a desk in the bookshop signing copies of his book, The Year Of Eating Dangerously. He was wearing odd socks and had tramped down the heels on his trainers. His father, Andrew, hovered by the door.

"Terribly kind of you to have me," murmured Tom and, looking up from his book said, "Daddy, we're waiting for Mummy."

"As usual!" Andrew said cheerfully.

Enter the duchess, who gave her ex-husband a peck on the cheek, dodged a woman with a badge on her lapel that read Bollocks To Blair and then did something remarkable, something I had never seen her do before. Stark out of nowhere, Camilla turned to look at the photographers, then spoke to them directly; indicating her son's book, she said, "Don't forget to buy a copy."

"Gosh," said Tom, "it's a madhouse in here today."

It was time to go. Life has to move on. Camilla's rehabilitation will be helped, if it still needs it, by Helen Mirren's acceptance speech at the Oscars, which applauded the Queen and made all that stiff upper lip stuff seem admirable again, rather than cold and evasive. She will be helped by the certainty that, whatever else people think of them, they recognise that she and Charles are good together. Like salt and pepper shakers, they fit.

I have a single image that stands out from my travels with the duchess. It happened in Pakistan, after the visit to Fatima Jinnah, when we piled into the bus and sped off to the ruins of an ancient Buddhist temple at a place called Taxila. It was at the top of a hill overlooking an endless expanse of scorched farmland, and there were 247 steps to get to it. After the customary 50 minutes, Prince Charles emerged, rather jolly, making a reference to how far he'd climbed. Camilla was carrying a parasol.

The configuration of the ruined temple was such that while the royals walked around the perimeter, the only place for the non-royals to stand was in a dugout in the centre. And so there we all were: a couple in late middle age being shown, by a guide, some 2,000-year-old Buddhas, while affecting not to notice that 10 feet away from them stood 30 other adults, in a pit, shouting, "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am" and, "Sir, sir, sir", but beyond that not speaking to them and to whom they themselves would not speak.

Someone noticed a shepherd standing on the crest of the next hill and we joked that he might be a sniper. He was dressed in what looked like traditional shepherd's gear and he would have made an excellent addition to any royal receiving line. He stayed at his post the whole time we were there, quite still in the sun, looking down at us, at the idiocy of it all.

    Steady as she goes, G, 31.3.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,,2045748,00.html

News of the World editor resigns

after reporter and investigator

are jailed for royal household scam

· Coulson accepts 'ultimate responsibility'
· Journalist and freelance colluded in eavesdropping

Saturday January 27, 2007
The Guardian
Hugh Muir

The editor of the News of the World resigned last night after the paper's royal reporter was jailed for four months after one of the biggest privacy and newspaper scandals of recent years.

Andy Coulson stepped down after Clive Goodman admitted colluding with a freelance investigator to intercept more than 600 mobile phone messages left for three senior officials in the royal household. Mr Coulson said he accepted "ultimate responsibility" for his reporter's actions.

The ruse, which ended in Goodman's "humiliation and disgrace", involved the casual breach of security arrangements put in place by the main mobile phone companies, yielding information that was then used to produce exclusive stories for the News of The World.

His lawyers told the court he became desperate for information because he was sidelined on the paper and felt his stellar career was on the wane. He paid the investigator Glenn Mulcaire £12,000 cash for his role in the eavesdropping - money that was then reclaimed from News International. But it also emerged that Mulcaire had a formal relationship with the newspaper and a lucrative contract worth more than £100,000 a year to provide "information and research". Mulcaire was jailed for a total of six months.

Palace officials alerted the police when they realised that someone was accessing their voicemails before they had retrieved them. Mulcaire used similar techniques to eavesdrop on five other prominent figures in the search for stories about them. They were the publicist Max Clifford, the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, the model Elle Macpherson, the professional footballer representative Gordon Taylor and the sports agent Skylet Andrew. In total he intercepted 66 of their calls.

Passing sentence Mr Justice Gross said: "This was serious criminal conduct of which we must not become numbed. It is of the very first importance to the integrity of our public life that such intrusive, sustained and criminal conduct should be marked unambiguously by loss of liberty." He said members of the royal family hold a "unique position in the life of this country". The judge said the "intrinsically serious and unattractive nature" of the offence meant immediate custody was inevitable. Goodman stood impassively as the sentence was passed. Goodman, 49, of Putney, south London and Mulcaire, 36, of Cheam, Surrey, admitted conspiracy to intercept communications last November, avoiding the need for a trial.

The sentencing trained a harsh light on the practices and imperatives of some forms of red-top journalism.

Goodman, according to his barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, was a journalist of integrity and high professional reputation. "Goodman was the top royal reporter in the country," he said. "He was respected, rewarded and commended by his peers ... But by January 2005 the position was very different. His stories were not considered adequate by his superiors. He was demoted and sidelined and another younger reporter was appointed to follow the royal family. He was under intense pressure to produce and feared for his job."

His solution was to team up with Mulcaire, who ran the Nine Consultancy security agency from an industrial estate in Sutton, south London. Mulcaire, who has previous convictions unspecified in court, produced a company brochure aimed at celebrities and offering to protect them from intrusive journalists. The key to his deception was obtaining passwords issued by the mobile phone companies to their own security staff. This allowed Mulcaire, having obtained the mobile phone numbers of his targets, to call customer services and to obtain the voicemail retrieval numbers. Accessing the mailboxes from an external phone required a pin number but Mulcaire was able to circumvent that security arrangement by persuading customer services to reinstate a default pin number on each account.

David Parry QC, prosecuting, said that during the eight months from November 2005 to June 2006 they accessed on 609 occasions the voicemail accounts of Helen Asprey, personal secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the private secretary to both princes, and Paddy Harverson, the communications secretary of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Goodman was responsible for 487 intercepts, Mulcaire 122. Many intrusions followed a pattern. Mulcaire, using a false name, would have customer services reset the pin numbers, speak to Goodman and illicitly access the account. He would then call Goodman back.

Though the eavesdropping occurred for eight months, the information it yielded was scant. A series of diary stories appeared in the paper's Blackadder column, one of which talked about Prince Charles attending a function. Others related to Prince William's military training. The court heard no stories resulted from the targeting of celebrities.

News of the World editor resigns after reporter and investigator are jailed for royal household scam, G, 27.1.2007, http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1999923,00.html