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Counsellors of State entitled to carry out her functions when she was abroad. It was
something of a rerun of his experiences of 1957, when, as an embarrassed Cheam
schoolboy, he had unexpectedly seen the news of his promotion to Prince of Wales
announced on television. Again, no one had thought to tell him. He heard the
announcement of his new powers on the 6 p.m. news.
On 22 December 1965, a year before Charles was to leave Gordonstoun, Elizabeth and
Philip had held a dinner-party at Buckingham Palace. The participants were the Prime
Minister, Harold Wilson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, the Dean of
Windsor, Robin Woods, the Chairman of the Committee of University Vice-Chancellors,
Sir Charles Wilson, Mountbatten, representing the services in his capacity as Admiral of
the Fleet, and Michael Adeane. Its purpose was to chart the next stage of the Prince’s
education. He had shown that he had reached university level and here at least there
were no father’s footsteps for him to follow. At this conference Mountbatten seems to
have taken the lead. ‘Trinity College [Cambridge] like his grandfather,’ he said.
‘Dartmouth like his father and grandfather; and then to sea in the Royal Navy ending up
with a command of his own.’ Mountbatten was an inveterate planner or plotter when it
came to the royal family; he was not one to pass up the opportunity offered by his
relationship to them. He was always popping in to the Palace proffering advice;
sometimes Elizabeth accepted it, sometimes she did not. Now he was being offered a say
in the career of the heir to the throne. The naval emphasis was his and Philip’s; the
choice of college and university, however, was due more to the wishes of the Queen
Mother. Not only had Trinity College, Cambridge, been the college which her late
husband had attended during his brief and undistinguished university career, but the
Master of Trinity was an old and trusted friend of hers, Rab Butler. At Cambridge
George VI and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had not been allowed to live in
college but in a rented house on the outskirts run by his minder, Louis Greig, and his
wife. As a result, they had had a very dull time, courted by dons but meeting very few
undergraduates. The Queen Mother was determined that, after her grandson’s
experiences at Cheam and Gordonstoun, he should have the opportunity of meeting
intelligent and civilized people of his own age and have the chance to lead a normal,
enjoyable university life. Rab Butler was represented as being the ideal man to take
charge of the Prince and the decision was taken that Charles should live in college at
Trinity. Again, Elizabeth had played a passive role in charting her son’s future, but this
time Philip, also never having been to university, had had little input. He did, however,
make an inspection visit, incognito, piloted by Bishop Woods, whose son was at Trinity.
But while Philip later adapted to university life and very much enjoyed staying with the
Butlers on informal visits to Trinity, Elizabeth was never at home there and seemed ill at
ease on her first visit, quiet and sitting on the edge of her chair at lunch. She did,
however, despatch the Palace ‘tapissier’ (the official in charge of furnishings) down to
Cambridge to do up Charles’s rooms.
Charles went up to Trinity in the autumn of 1967 to study archaeology and
anthropology, subjects well suited to the descendant of the God Wotan, to whom almost