Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 4, 2017

This is an excellent biography - thorough and balanced - of now-King Charles from his birth in 1948 to 2017. On the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's recent passing, I wanted to learn more about the new king. What was most interesting to me was reading about the projects and interests Charles pursued during his long and impactful tenure as Prince of Wales. All of his efforts as an entrepreneur and in preservation are interesting, and many of these were prescient. Charles is so much more than the way most Americans know of him in relation to his unhappy first marriage. Bedell Smith's well-researched biography of Charles tells me that he will be a good monarch. God save the King!

What is most riveting for me is how hard he works on his causes while spinning his wheels. Because he is both spoiled and thin skinned, he cannot stand to have around him anyone who disagrees with him or has an idea different from his own. He surrounds himself with sycophantic courtiers who flatter him and agree with anything he does or says. A characteristic that even a 19 year old Diana recognized. He lives lavishly, finds even first class seats on a commercial BA plane "uncomfortable". Camilla will not accompany him unless they travel by private plane. He takes a mind boggling array of baggage as well as his own chef and organic food even for a weekend at someone's estate which he will not share with any other guest at the dinner. His many interests, most notably Architecture, organic farming, and the environment, he has supported with multiple charities which often overlap. He is constantly raising money for them through the means of promising dinners at Buckingham Palace, or St. James Palace as well as as promising that a wife can sit next to him if the the amount of the donation is high enough. He spends a majority of his time on these charities which are part of the Prince's Trust. While not involved with that, he writes long letters to ministers in whatever government that is in power. Education without the classics is another bee in his bonnet and he writes about that to the minister of education time and time again. According to this author, the charities, over 100 of them, are redundant, poorly managed and waist much of the money given to them through bad management and too much staff. He does not want to hear about that and anyone who tries to tell him bad tidings about such things will be fired or ignored. He is also vulnerable to an aide ratting on an advisor who has served the prince for years, who then gets fired often with no pension or thank you from the prince for his/her loyal service. Early in the book, when discussing the divorce from Diana, one of his aides describes him as not really "marriage material" because of his selfishness, spoiled background, and his intension to do what he pleases when he pleases. That makes him blind to other's needs, emotions or interests. He also needs a lot of time alone and tends to have a depressive state of mind.Camilla is able to navigate this minefield, because she did not have to bear his children or need him to be a father, and she has kept her house so she can spend lots of time at home with her grandchildren and old friends away from his moodiness. He can't stand little children messing up his house so she sees them at her house where she can be her famously messy self. He is just as fastidious about his appearance as he is about his house. He can have his alone time while she has her family time. If he gets too "woe is me", his valet calls Camilla to come over and cheer him up.One objection I have is that he is obviously a man of impeccable manners, kindness when he feels like it and he does love his sons even if sometimes in a rather remote way. That part of his personality is not explored. Her in this book he is a bonafide eccentric who is much less effective than he could be if he ever listened to those who tell him the truth. Unfortunately, he spent too much time with his grandmother who lived very lavishly in an old fashioned way. He is the creature of that upbringing which seems to have given him a way of life that few in the 21st century can relate to. And perhaps that is the reason he is not very popular. In fact I was startled by the description of his life style and his hypocrisy about the environment and other matters he is so passionate about..

A well-written and beautifully researched book which falls apart the minute Charles marries Diana. Up to that point, the author does an excellent job of painting Charles with warts and all; the minute Diana enters the picture, the whole idea of journalistic impartiality goes straight out the window because as far as this author is concerned, EVERYTHING is Diana's fault. You come away with the impression that poor Charles was forced by his family to marry a desperate, devious, immature nutcase who spent the next ten years trying to ruin his life simply because she could. Charles' ongoing affair with Camilla is dismissed as something he basically had to do because his wife was a complete raving loony and it was the only way he could find any happiness at all. Short shrift is given to the fact that from the outset, Diana was made aware of the fact that her fairytale prince was desperately in love with someone else and didn't even particularly like her; the author even bemoans the fact that she banned Camilla and Andrew Parker-Bowles from palace guest lists, which seems pretty reasonable to me. The author maintains this view even in cases where other reliable sources disagree (for example, this book insists that Charles and the Queen were in complete agreement that he should take the royal flight to Paris to retrieve Diana's body and that the royal standard should be draped over her coffin; other sources have said, for years, that Charles had to argue with the Queen to get her to agree to send the royal plane and that she thought Diana should not have a state funeral at all.) Since his marriage to Diana was an event that still has repercussions in the life of Charles and the country, you'd think the author would have been a little more balanced. After Diana is dispensed with, Camilla is painted as wonderful, funny, smart, loving, warm, and sensual -- colors so glorious that you'd think she was the Queen Mum, except that the author continually makes reference to Camilla's "incredible sex appeal," which...okay? In sum, if you really dislike Diana, read this book. If not, read this book with a very large grain of salt.

The book is reasonably well written, and if we can believe the resources, then all I can say is thank God I wasn’t born into the Royal Family. It has to be the most dysfunctional, insensitive and callous family of the past century. Philip is a bully, the Queen is void of any compassion, emotion, and feeling for her children and Charles is an obstreperous misfit who spent his childhood as a quivering mass of insecurities and grew into an arrogant snob devoid of any kind of open-mindedness to any opinion contrary to his own. Woe to the poor courtier who begs to differ with with this rigid, narrow-minded malcontent. I paid little attention to his marriage to Diana, but was surprised to learn she had the symptoms of being bipolar, among a rash of other self-absorbed psychoses. They were the couple from hell and deserved all the agony they inflicted on each other. Willliam, Kate and Harry hold some possibility for a new kind of Royal Family. Elizabeth, Philip, Charles and Diana didn’t contribute much more to humanity than a blueberry stain on a tablecloth.