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staff included two public school boys, three with a grammar school background and two
from comprehensive schools, which, says Dimbleby, ‘sharply delineated St James’s from
Buckingham Palace’. He credits Aylard with a ‘sharp eye for public relations’ and as
sharing ‘the Prince’s frustration with the failure of Buckingham Palace to “get the
message across”’. Inevitably, as he pursued this course, Charles was bound to come up
against his mother, who, according to a former Press Secretary, ‘has a lot of input on PR
at the Palace and is extremely alert…’ A major part of the St James’s Palace public
relations offensive spearheaded by Aylard two years later would be the promotion of a
two-and-a-half-hour telebiography of the Prince and related book by Jonathan
Dimbleby. Elizabeth was to be consulted about neither project. As the new decade
opened she was about to experience the most difficult years of her entire life both on the
public and the personal fronts.