Camilla isn’t the woman who almost destroyed the monarchy – she’s the one helping to save it

WHEN the history of the 21st Century is written and we look back on events with the dispassionate gaze of hindsight, Camilla, now Queen Consort, will be remembered for one big thing.

The King’s wife, though a person of past controversy, will, in my view, be judged not as the woman who nearly destroyed the monarchy, but as the woman who helped save it.

I have known the Duchess of Cornwall since my salad days in the early 1990s. Back then she was Mrs Andrew Parker Bowles, an uncomplicated person with a love of the outdoors, a risqué humour, vintage aplomb (she smoked a cigarette like Ava Gardner) and a general bonhomie.

At the time, Camilla and Andrew were friends of my late father, Woodrow Wyatt, who was then chairman of the Horserace ­Totalisator Board.

Andrew adored racing and ­Camilla loved horses and rode with the Beaufort Hunt in Gloucestershire. They owned a picturesque Georgian house, where Camilla was a vivacious hostess and mother to their children Tom and Laura.

Yet she was not a socialite. She could see through the shallowness of the London scene, and as a ­couple the Parker Bowleses seemed to go their separate ways.

‘Good-natured fun’

Andrew, who was in the Household Cavalry, had a bolthole in Knightsbridge and was catnip to women.

There were whispered rumours about Camilla and Prince Charles, who by then had been married to Diana Spencer for six years.

Yet, none of the stories I heard were poisoned by viciousness or made ugly by moral indignation.

Camilla was the sort of person it was impossible to be indignant about. She played with a straight deck and had a basic fineness to her. As for Charles, his unhappy ­marriage had brought him to the point of black despair.

It was his friends who contacted his old love Camilla, who up until then had avoided meeting him at social occasions, with desperate pleas to “cheer up Charles”.

It would be wrong to call her a marriage-wrecker. The marriage had sunk like Atlantis by the time she agreed to meet Charles again.

Around this time, Camilla attended a polo match to which I was invited. She was seated in the row in front of mine, and when she turned back I was able to have a good look at her.

She wore no make-up apart from mascara and a slash of pink ­lipstick that made her face incongruously exciting.

She wasn’t, strictly speaking, a beauty, but her mouth curved enticingly and her aqua-coloured eyes were arresting.

Like many upper-middle-class Englishwomen who ride, her ­posture was as precise as a Clichy crystal. As for her clothes, her grey jacket seemed thrown on above a rumpled black top (she was ­notoriously untidy), and was not particularly chic. But she managed to be both voluptuous and rangy, her thick hair the colour of autumn harvests.

When she saw me, she began making good-natured fun of my ignorance of country matters. “That is a horse,” she said, ­pointing at some great beast that was being saddled up.

Her voice was scary with sarcasm but in a jovial way. She knew I was an urbanite and liked to tease me. “It is not a cow, Petronella. Do remember that.”

The Crown and its titles held no glamour for her. It was Charles whom she loved, despite his complexities, or perhaps because of them.

I laughed — her exuberance was catching.

I knew the Queen Mother — whom Prince Charles adored — and often thought that Camilla and she were very similar, and that was part of her attraction. Both women could be defined as a certain British type — very game, with a perennial twinkle and a healthy enjoyment of a stiff drink.

The Queen Mother had married a weak man who became King, and by her charm and strength of personality shored and ballasted him.
In his younger years, Charles had myriad weaknesses, the worst of which were self-pity and a gloomy introspection.

In the light of this, Camilla was no socially ambitious Wallis Simpson sort, flattered by the attentions of a future king, but a down-to-earth woman who was, in any case, used to mixing with members of the Royal Family.

The daughter of World War Two hero Bruce Shand and his aristocratic wife, The Honourable Rosalind Maud Cubitt, she was launched into high society as a 17-year-old debutante.

By then, she was already possessed with a remarkable amount of confidence, honed by her time at finishing school in Switzerland.

But the Crown and its titles held no glamour for her. It was Charles whom she loved, despite his complexities, or perhaps because of them.

Youthful affair

He needed her in a way that the buccaneering Andrew Parker ­Bowles — a womaniser, who even had a youthful affair with Princess Anne — never had.

The monarchy is no more than the sum of the individuals who make it up, and Charles, in those days, was problematic. His eeyore-ish tendencies and occasional petulance were alarming.

“If he didn’t like his boiled egg,” one acquaintance who stayed at Highgrove, Charles’s Gloucestershire home, told me, “he’d order ­literally six more in rows, all cooked one minute more than the other. Nor could you contradict him. If he pointed to a picture and said it was a vase, you had to agree.”

Camilla picked up a shattered, damaged soul, and patiently put the pieces back together again.

It was not an enviable job, but it was one the Queen Mother had performed with her darling “Bertie”, King George VI.

“Camilla was maternal, jolly, calm. Without her, he might have had a real breakdown,” confides a mutual friend.

“The other thing he loves is that she is completely free of snobbery and really has the common touch.” And it’s true. Camilla can talk just as well to a dustman as a duke, and treat both the same.

Her clothes have evolved with her public role.

Like most Windsor women, she dresses smartly but not fashionably. She likes her jewels, and knows when to put on a show, but she grasps that it must be in the supporting actress category, so that Charles remains the lead.

Camilla is the first English Queen Consort since Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s last and most ­fortunate wife (she managed to ­outlive him).

Centuries later, in the 1980s, there were two women who were serious contenders for Charles’s hand.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is facile to say it was a great pity that the young Prince of Wales married the 20-year-old Diana Spencer, and not Camilla, as it would have saved a lot of misery and bother.

But it wasn’t just a question of the Royal Family thinking the older woman unsuitable because she was not a virgin intact.

In the beginning, Camilla was very fond of Charles, but she wasn’t infatuated with him.

“She was madly in love with Andrew Parker Bowles, who was known as the great woman-slayer,” confides an old chum.

“The thing with Charles developed over the years, until, suddenly, they found they couldn’t live ­without each other.”

But it is a question of all’s well that ends well. (Or, as the Queen said at their wedding reception in 2005, the couple finally “reaching the winners’ enclosure”.)

I have no doubt Queenship will suit Camilla. As Duchess of Cornwall, she was more diligent than even her supporters expected. Aside from accompanying Charles, her charitable work was exemplary, and it is telling that she chose important rather than modish causes.

Sound character

Her charities included The Book Trust, The National Literacy Trust, Age UK, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Barnardo’s, SafeLives, military groups and numerous hospitals. She also encourages and helps English wine growers.

In all that she does, she displays sound character and unobtrusive kindness, that does not demand public hosannas. 

Having lived much of her life outside the Royal Family (she had neither titles nor vast wealth), she understands people’s real-life problems better than her ­husband. 

A friend who has ­accompanied Camilla on tours says: “she speaks to everyone and gets what they are saying.”

Members of the public have been entranced. One woman remarked after Camilla visited a London ­hospital: “I never thought someone of her status would really empathise with my problems, but she did. She is a fantastic listener.”

With no desire to be a celebrity, and understanding the monarchy’s survival in a democracy is dependent on rectitude, hard work and goodwill, Camilla has helped her husband make his peace with the media and its constant attention. She ensures photographers are always given the picture they want. Nor is she afraid to poke fun at her husband, and does so with impish humour.

“Camilla has ­transformed Charles, made him so much easier in himself and with others,” says an insider. “There is a feeling that with her at his side he could be a remarkably good king. One ­cannot think of a better Queen Consort.”

Indeed, it should be with a feeling of gratitude towards Camilla that the nation looks forward.

Just as the Queen Mother moulded George VI into a man to be reckoned with, it is Camilla who has pulled Charles back from the abyss and made him formidable.

Before she died, the Queen Mother was fondly known as the nation’s favourite granny.

I would not be surprised if one day that moniker goes to Camilla.