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one’s own room – a small bedroom/study – from the first day one arrived…’ 1
Elizabeth worried whether the proximity of the school to Windsor Castle and London
might make him more homesick, although most people would have thought that a homeloving
boy like Charles would have found its nearness reassuring. Perhaps she hoped
against hope that far away from home it would be easier for him to adapt to his new
environment. Whatever she might have thought, she had very little say in the matter.
‘The Queen was not allowed to have a view at that stage,’ a confidant said. ‘She was
constantly saying – “my view has to be checked over”. It was quite awkward. Prince
Philip was very obstinate and wouldn’t come round to Eton… The Queen was easily
overborne, she had no knowledge of schools and gave in to Prince Philip because he was
so anxious for his son to follow [in] his footsteps.’ Philip also argued, not unreasonably,
that Eton was too close to Fleet Street for comfort. The Dean of Windsor, Robin Woods,
and Mountbatten, of course, were also consulted. No one took Lord Altrincham’s
suggestions of sending the heir to a state school seriously.
Neither Philip nor Mountbatten seem to have recognized that Charles had a very
different and much more sensitive nature than theirs. No doubt the view they took was
that ‘it would make a man of him’ and, as so often, they prevailed. When it came to the
family, Elizabeth tended to revert to the traditional, wifely, submissive role. Whereas in
her executive capacity she had a sureness of touch which surprised even the most
experienced politicians, in personal matters she was reserved, even diffident, and would
do anything to avoid confrontation. And Philip was determined to have his way on this.
As early as 1959, in the opinion of his son’s biographer, 2 he was ‘clearly forcing the
pace in the family argument’, contributing £1,000 towards a rebuilding scheme at
Gordonstoun and writing to his brother-in-law, Prince George of Hanover, ‘Wouldn’t it
be nice if my son could take advantage of all these improvements?’ Prince George
himself had been a headmaster at Salem, Gordonstoun’s ‘twin’ school in Germany. In the
same year Dr Kurt Hahn, founder-headmaster of Gordonstoun, came to London to
address a meeting chaired by Mountbatten’s eldest daughter, Patricia Brabourne, where
the vote of thanks was proposed by Lady Rupert Nevill, wife of one of the Queen’s
closest friends, and the audience included James Orr, Philip’s Private Secretary, also an
old Gordonstoun boy.
And so on 1 May 1962 Charles travelled north in an aircraft of the Queen’s Flight with
his father at the controls. He was extremely apprehensive; everything he had heard
about the place made it sound ‘pretty gruesome’, and it was not made more attractive
by the fact that the Duke of Bedford’s son, Lord Rudolph Russell, had recently run away
from it. On a visit earlier with his parents he had found it spartan even compared with
Cheam. As it turned out, it was worse than he had expected. While Elizabeth might have
taken comfort from the fact that three of his cousins, Prince Welf of Hanover, Prince
Alexander of Yugoslavia and Mountbatten’s grandson, Norton Knatchbull, were there,
that did not protect him from the bullies. Officially bullying was strictly forbidden, but
good intentions cannot control the aggressive instincts of adolescent boys and Charles
with his sensitive temperament was a natural victim. The jug-ears, which have been