10/2/2023 0 Comments Charles prince of wales 1623His father James I and VI had been toying with the idea of a Spanish match for his son since as early as 1605, despite the profoundly divisive ramifications such a policy would have in the face of the determined 'Puritan' opposition in parliament, committed to combatting the forces of international Catholicism at every opportunity. It appears he eventually realized his folly.In the spring of 1623 Charles, Prince of Wales, the young heir to the English and Scottish thrones donned a false wig and beard and slipped out of England under the assumed name of John Smith in order to journey to Madrid and secure for himself the hand of the King of Spain's daughter. In trying to get his side of the story out and understood, Prince Charles had damaged his relationship with his family and tarnished his public image. In retaliation, she leaked photos to News of the World showing her and Charles happily playing on a Bahamian beach during a trip to Eleuthera in 1982. I’ve never made any comment about any member of the family in 40 years and I’m not going to start now…If I wasn’t occupying the position I do, I would feel very free to discuss this, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to give my views.”Īccording to Brown, Diana also fought back against Dimbleby’s claim that Charles never loved her. “You’ll just have to read it and make your own conclusions. Philip was particularly furious and uncharacteristically responded when confronted by the press about the autobiography, according to United Press International: “I’ve never discussed private matters and I don’t think the queen has either,” he said. “When asked about the controversy, the Queen Mother signaled her disdain with a wave of her hands and exclaimed, ‘That Jonathan Dimbleby!’” Bedell Smith writes. “As a little boy,” Dimbleby wrote, Charles was “easily cowed by the forceful personality of his father.” Charles revealed his cold, lonely childhood, during which he was a magnet for ridicule, including from his father, Prince Philip, who was presented as an abrasive bully. On a personal level, the effects were also devastating. According to Kelley, The Sun conducted a telephone poll, and the results were dire: Two thirds of the respondents said they thought he was unfit to sit on the throne. Public opinion was also firmly against Charles becoming king. It is bleak irony that the man who would be king has himself contrived to provide the greatest impediment to his ever ascending the throne.” “The ‘authorized’ biography of the Prince of Wales is a disaster for the queen, the duke, the House of Windsor, and all who sail in that leaky barque. “They’re tolling the bells at Buckingham Palace,” The Guardian wrote. In her review for the Los Angeles Times, “The Bottom of the Royal Barrel,” critic Margo Kaufman eviscerated both Dimbleby’s autobiography and Morton’s sycophantic follow-up, Diana: Her New Life, while Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote, “If you didn’t know the names of the famous ex-couple portrayed in these two books, you’d think they were just another pair of guests on Oprah or Donahue: victims of dysfunctional families and a bad marriage, who are given, alternately, to bouts of self-pity and New Age searches for meaning and self-esteem.”īut more ominously for the crown, the press also started to question Charles’s fitness to be king. The Guardian called it “a foolish and sorry authorized version,” and the Daily Mirror labeled it “the prince’s crowning act of treachery.” Reviews of the autobiography were scathing, as its contents were called the whining complaints of an out-of-touch, privileged man. According to Dimbleby, once they were married, Charles discovered his young wife was a bulimic who indulged in “self-pity” and mercilessly ridiculed him. In the book, Dimbleby described Charles as “an individual of singular distinction and virtue.” He also claimed that Charles had been pressured to marry Diana by his father, and would have been happier as a bachelor if he had not had to produce an heir to the throne. In addition to sitting down for private interviews, Charles had given Dimbleby access to his numerous diaries and letters. “Absent Dimbleby,” Brown posits, “Diana would have never planned her retaliation by agreeing to give an incendiary, irrevocable interview to Martin Bashir of the BBC’s Panorama program.”īut worse was to come on November 4, 1994, when Dimbleby’s authorized Charles biography, The Prince of Wales: An Intimate Portrait, was published. While headlines around the globe screamed that Charles was indeed an adulterer, his estranged wife, Diana, began to lay the groundwork for her controversial 1995 tell-all interview with Martin Bashir, who, it was later discovered, used forged documents to obtain the interview.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |