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Silver Stick in Waiting, not realizing that this is an honorary post held automatically by
the lieutenant-colonel commanding the Household Cavalry which involves attendance at
state functions, Trooping the Colour and the arrival of a head of state on a state visit. It
was a royal family tradition that the Prince of Wales should have mistresses – the only
recent exception being George V, who was utterly monogamous as far as Queen Mary
was concerned (but then he had not been brought up to consider himself as the heir to
the throne). Charles’s affair with Camilla was almost a re-run of Edward VII’s long
romance with Camilla’s great-great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, but with one important
difference. Queen Alexandra had been annoyed and puzzled by her husband’s fondness
for Mrs Keppel (whose handsome husband, Colonel Keppel, was also a cavalry officer)
but she had put up with it and never, ever made a scene. In the pre-divorce era of
private infidelity and public composure, Edward VII’s behaviour was nothing out of the
ordinary. Diana, however, was the product not only of a different era but of a different
generation almost even than her husband and the Parker Bowleses. She wanted sole and
acknowledged possession of her husband (at least until she finally gave up on him) and
came to passionately and dangerously resent her situation. ‘She worshipped him with a
calf-like adoration and he kicked her in the gutter,’ one Palace aide said. It was
outstandingly a case of ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. Elizabeth and her
family closed their eyes to it at their peril.
Increasingly too there was a lack of communication between Elizabeth’s advisers at
Buckingham Palace and the Prince’s staff at St James’s. The resignation early in 1985 of
the Prince’s Private Secretary, Edward Adeane, whose relations with the Queen’s
household were excellent, did not help matters. This is Dimbleby’s account of the split.
Adeane, he said,
belonged to the old school of courtiers, honourable and cautious… Adeane had always found it hard to
reconcile himself to the Prince’s unconventional enthusiasms and outspoken contributions to public debate
and he did not hesitate to say so… he grew more and more unhappy at his failure to corral the heir
apparent… Early in 1985 after a long succession of disagreements that grew ever sharper with the Prince,
Adeane finally tendered his resignation… 7
A Palace aide put it rather differently:
Adeane had very good relations with the Palace. He and Colborne didn’t get on because Colborne was the
provider of secret cuff-links and flowers for ladies and Adeane didn’t approve. Adeane tried to get the Prince
to work and stick to his plans but it was like nailing jellies to a wall to get him to stick to a programme and a
lot of deceit used to go on to make out he was doing a lot of work when he wasn’t – he was off playing polo
or something.
‘The Prince of Wales sacks anyone – like Edward Adeane – who tells him what to do,’ a
friend of the family said.
The Prince, despite his kind heart, essentially gentle nature and good intentions, was