In one of her most famous interviews on British television, Princess Diana told Martin Bashir on the BBC’s flagship program Panorama: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” The third person Diana was referring to was Camilla Parker Bowles, whom she also called “the enemy” and “the Rottweiler.” For many years Camilla was hated, vilified, humiliated but did she truly deserve such treatment? Why did Prince Charles leave his young and beautiful wife? Why was he prepared to do anything to keep Camilla by his side?
The 20th anniversary of Diana’s death was celebrated last year but are people’s feelings changing toward Camilla? In other words, are we less prejudiced against her? Are we ready to hear the other side of the truth and acknowledge that Camilla was not solely responsible for the break-up of the royal marriage?
Penny Junor, author of several royal biographies on Diana, Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry, has focused for the first time on Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. “In my view, when history comes to judge her, Camilla will not be seen as the woman who nearly brought down the House of Windsor. I think she will be recognized as the woman who shored it up,” she writes.
Prince Charles met and fell in love with Camilla Shand during the summer of 1971. She was 17 but remarkably self-assured for her age. Intelligent and well-read, she did not have a career in view. “I think in those days we weren’t encouraged to go to university. I think the very, very clever girls went on but nobody seemed to give us much inspiration to go on. So we went off and explored the university of life, and Paris and Florence and London,” she once said.
She desired nothing more than to be an upper-class country wife with children and a good social life. At the time she was dating a 25-year-old handsome officer, Andrew Parker Bowles, but that did not prevent Charles from falling in love with her. Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the man Charles called his honorary grandfather, made it clear that Camilla was not aristocratic enough to marry Prince Charles. Despite Mountbatten’s reservations, Charles felt he had probably found the right person to share his life with. But was he too shy to declare his love to Camilla? Or was he thinking about her lack of aristocratic lineage? He never discussed his feelings with Camilla. Would that have changed the course of history? In March 1973, when the Prince of Wales was in the West Indies, Charles Parker Bowles asked Camilla to marry him.
Camilla wrote to Charles to inform him. Her decision broke his heart. He even wrote to her a week before the wedding, begging her not to marry Andrew, but Camilla went ahead with the marriage.
When their son, Tom, was born, Andrew and Camilla asked Prince Charles to be his godfather. This created a bond between them all and from that time onwards, Camilla became his confidante. Charles would spend hours talking to her on the phone or writing her long letters. She treated him like a normal person and was not afraid to speak the truth. If he was wrong she would tell him so. She was a true and sincere friend.
Charles has never been close to his parents. His mother hardly ever showed her maternal feelings, according to the author, and his father thought his son was too sensitive so he was exceptionally tough on him. Prince Charles grew up in a privileged world where all his material needs were taken care of but most of his emotional ones were left completely unattended to.
Charles is different from the rest of his family. He is fond of music and art, and that was one of the reasons Charles and Diana’s honeymoon was such a disaster. The prince was looking forward to a wonderful holiday in the sun, swimming, reading and painting. Diana was not a reader and was upset that her husband would prefer reading a book to sitting and talking with her. “One day, when he was sitting painting on the veranda deck, he went off to look at something for half an hour. He came back to find she had destroyed the whole lot,” writes Junor.
According to the author, Diana wanted Charles all to herself. She could not accept that he had work to attend to, and she disliked his friends. She simply demanded his full consideration all the time. Although Charles and Diana had experienced different childhoods, they had both suffered an acute lack of attention. Diana never got over the pain of being abandoned by her mother when she was only six and when her father remarried, it only exacerbated her sense of loss and estrangement. Both Charles and Diana had been hurt; they both needed someone to understand them and were unable to help each other. It soon became apparent that their marriage was a terrible mistake.
When, at the end of her Panorama interview, Diana was asked whether her husband would ever be king, she answered: “I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him and I don’t know whether he could adapt to that.”
With those words, she had crossed the red line. The queen wrote to her son and daughter-in-law, asking them to divorce as soon as possible.
By July 1996, a settlement was made but Camilla felt as if she was publicly labelled “mistress” when St. James Palace, following the advice of Richard Aylard, Charles’ private secretary, issued a statement that the Prince of Wales had no intention of remarrying. At that stage Mark Bolland, a former public affairs executive, was hired. His task was to revive the prince’s reputation and make Camilla acceptable to the British public. He soon became indispensable and the person the Prince trusted the most.
And the unthinkable happened. On Sunday, Aug. 31, 1997, Princess Diana died in a tragic accident in Paris. Charles knew then that it would take a long time before his relationship with Camilla could be acknowledged and they could appear together.
Although the queen blamed Camilla for all her son’s problems since his disastrous marriage, she realized her son needed support and Camilla had given it to him. She had always been there for him. She helped him remain strong and self-confident and she gave him the love and tenderness that he had been deprived of, according to the author.
After Prince Charles’ divorce, Camilla gradually reappeared on the social scene. Although she was hated and the press always criticized the way she dressed, once you had met and spent some time with Camilla, you were never disappointed.
The next challenge was how a marriage between Charles and Camilla would be accepted by the public. The press had always described Camilla as the evil person who broke up Diana’s marriage.
The marriage took place on April 8, 2005. The public finds Camilla “genuine, down-to-earth, straightforward and approachable,” according to the book.
“Camilla will no doubt carry on doing her best. She will be the strength behind the crown and do her husband proud, and I suspect history will be a kinder judge of their story than their contemporaries have been,” Junor concludes.
Book Review: First considered ‘evil,’ this woman strengthened the British royal family
Book Review: First considered ‘evil,’ this woman strengthened the British royal family
Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq
- Mushtaq won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language
- As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage”
HASSAN, India: All writers draw on their experience, whether consciously or not, says Indian author Banu Mushtaq — including the titular tale of attempted self-immolation in her International Booker Prize-winning short story collection.
Mushtaq, who won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language — said the author’s responsibility is to reflect the truth.
“You cannot simply write describing a rose,” said the 77-year-old, who is also a lawyer and activist.
“You cannot say it has got such a fragrance, such petals, such color. You have to write about the thorns also. It is your responsibility, and you have to do it.”
Her book “Heart Lamp,” a collection of 12 powerful short stories, is also her first book translated into English, with the prize shared with her translator Deepa Bhasthi.
Critics praised the collection for its dry and gentle humor, and its searing commentary on the patriarchy, caste and religion.
Mushtaq has carved an alternative path in life, challenging societal restrictions and perceptions.
As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage.”
Born into a Muslim family in 1948, she studied in Kannada, which is spoken mostly in India’s southern Karnataka state by around 43 million people, rather than Urdu, the language of Islamic texts in India and which most Muslim girls learnt.
She attended college, and worked as a journalist and also as a high school teacher.
Constricted life
But after marrying for love, Mushtaq found her life constricted.
“I was not allowed to have any intellectual activities. I was not allowed to write,” she said.
“I was in that vacuum. That harmed me.”
She recounted how as a young mother aged around 27 with possible postpartum depression, and ground down by domestic life, had doused petrol on herself and on the “spur of a moment” readied to set herself on fire.
Her husband rushed to her with their three-month-old daughter.
“He took the baby and put her on my feet, and he drew my attention to her and he hugged me, and he stopped me,” Mushtaq told AFP.
The experience is nearly mirrored in her book — in its case, the protagonist is stopped by her daughter.
“People get confused that it might be my life,” the writer said.
Explaining that while not her exact story, “consciously or subconsciously, something of the author, it reflects in her or his writing.”
Books line the walls in Mushtaq’s home, in the small southern Indian town of Hassan.
Her many awards and certificates — including a replica of the Booker prize she won in London in May — are also on display.
She joked that she was born to write — at least that is what a Hindu astrological birth chart said about her future.
“I don’t know how it was there, but I have seen the birth chart,” Mushtaq said with a laugh, speaking in English.
The award has changed her life “in a positive way,” she added, while noting the fame has been a little overwhelming.
“I am not against the people, I love people,” she said referring to the stream of visitors she gets to her home.
“But with this, a lot of prominence is given to me, and I don’t have any time for writing. I feel something odd... Writing gives me a lot of pleasure, a lot of relief.”
‘The writer is always pro-people’
Mushtaq’s body of work spans six short story collections, an essay collection and poetry.
The stories in “Heart Lamp” were chosen from the six short story collections, dating back to 1990.
The Booker jury hailed her characters — from spirited grandmothers to bumbling religious clerics — as “astonishing portraits of survival and resilience.”
The stories portray Muslim women going through terrible experiences, including domestic violence, the death of children and extramarital affairs.
Mushtaq said that while the main characters in her books are all Muslim women, the issues are universal.
“They (women) suffer this type of suppression and this type of exploitation, this type of patriarchy everywhere,” she said. “A woman is a woman, all over the world.”
While accepting that even the people for whom she writes may not like her work, Mushtaq said she remained dedicated to providing wider truths.
“I have to say what is necessary for the society,” she said.
“The writer is always pro-people... With the people, and for the people.”
What We Are Reading Today: ‘And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer’
- Backman transforms personal pain into collective catharsis
Author: Fredrik Backman
Fredrik Backman captures the unraveling of a mind with devastating tenderness in his novella “And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer.”
This spare yet monumental novella, published in 2016, traces dementia’s heartbreak through intimate dialogues between a grandfather and grandson. Its power lies not in tragedy, but in love’s fierce endurance against oblivion.
Grandpa is trapped in a shrinking mental town square. He navigates fragmented conversations with grandson Noah (whom he refers to as Noahnoah), clutches vanishing memories, and wrestles with unspoken tensions with his son, Ted. All while preparing for the final goodbye — to others and himself.
The shrinking square is dementia’s cruel architecture made visceral. Yet within his exchanges with his grandson, luminous defiance shines. Gentle jokes. Shared secrets. Proof that love outruns oblivion.
Backman’s triumph is avoiding sentimentality. No manipulative tears here, just raw honesty: Grandpa’s panic when words fail, Ted’s helpless anger, Noahnoah’s childhood wisdom becoming the family’s compass. Generational bonds offer lifelines. Grandpa lives in the stories, not his head.
The resonance is universal. Readers who are familiar with dementia’s path will recognize the misplaced keys, the names that vanish, the sudden foreignness of familiar rooms. Backman transforms personal pain into collective catharsis.
A minor flaw surfaces though: Ted’s perspective aches for deeper exploration. His pain lingers tantalizingly unresolved.
My final verdict is that one must devour this in one sitting. Tissues mandatory. For anyone who loves, or has loved, someone slipping away, this story can become an anchor.
What We Are Reading Today: The Earth Transformed
- Frankopan shows that when past empires failed to act sustainably, they were met with catastrophe
Author: Peter Frankopan
"The Earth Transformed" reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development — and demise — of civilizations across time.
Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history.
Frankopan shows that when past empires failed to act sustainably, they were met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, the book will radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.
What We Are Reading Today: The World at First Light
- In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance
Author: Bernd Roeck
The cultural epoch we know as the Renaissance emerged at a certain time and in a certain place. Why then and not earlier? Why there and not elsewhere? In The World at First Light, historian Bernd Roeck explores the cultural and historical preconditions that enabled the European Renaissance.
Roeck shows that the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, including the science of the medieval Arab world, played a critical role in shaping the beginnings of Western modernity.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Task’ by David Badre
Why is it hard to text and drive at the same time? How do you resist eating that extra piece of cake? Why does staring at a tax form feel mentally exhausting?
From making a cup of coffee to buying a house to changing the world around them, humans are uniquely able to execute necessary actions.
How do we do it? Or in other words, how do our brains get things done? In “On Task,” cognitive neuroscientist David Badre presents the first authoritative introduction to the neuroscience of cognitive control—the remarkable ways that our brains devise sophisticated actions to achieve our goals.
