Prince of Wales Charles - Charles at Seventy: Thoughts, Hopes & Dreams

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to lifes morning.

C ARL J UNG, S WISS PSYCHIATRIST AND PSYCHOANALYST, 18751961

I n his seventieth year, His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, has travelled hundreds of thousands of miles around the world on official business, from the tiny Lady Elliot Island, the southernmost coral cay of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, to the former New Hebrides colony, now Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, where the indigenous Melanesian people honoured him with the title paramount chief. In that time, too, he has carried out hundreds of public duties representing the Queen in his role as heir to the throne, meeting presidents and princes as well as ordinary people going about their daily lives on visits to villages, towns and cities across the UK and the Commonwealth.

On a visit to the Caribbean, he toured Antigua and Barbuda and the British Virgin Islands, where the Queen is head of state, as well as the former crown colony Dominica, to see for himself the destruction caused by Caribbean hurricanes Irma and Maria, which he described as utterly devastating. In Europe, too, he visited Ireland, France and Greece on overseas visits that further cemented Britains ties with our closest neighbours in this uncertain post-Brexit Europe. A few months before the start of his seventieth year he conducted a major tour of the Commonwealth on behalf of the government to Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and India, and, before that, to Romania, Italy, Austria, the Papal See and Malta. In that time, too, it was confirmed he would be the next head of the Commonwealth, and it is now assured that he will succeed his mother, the Queen, in that non-hereditary role when the time comes.

His increased workload sees the prince regularly working fourteen-hour days and he carries out more than six hundred engagements a year at home and abroad; and increased responsibility means he is much more than a deputy, stepping up to stand in for the Queen. As we approach the end of 2018, a more accurate description of Charless role is Shadow King, as it is he, not Her Majesty, who is now doing most of the heavy lifting for the monarchy at home and abroad while representing Elizabeth II, who turned ninety-two in April 2018.

The Queen has not travelled on long-haul flights since her visit to Australia in 2011. Her last state visit overseas was to Germany in June 2015. The previous year she paid a state visit to France and went by Eurostar. She now restricts her journeys to short flights, away-days by royal train, commercial railway or car all within the United Kingdom.

Her once ever-present liege man, her loyal consort and husband of more than seventy years, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh (who turned ninety-seven in June 2018) has effectively retired from public life having, as he put it, done his bit. With perfect timing, he walked off the royal stage in a summer downpour on 2 August 2017 at Buckingham Palace, doffing his bowler hat as he departed. He marched off the forecourt as the Plymouth Band of the Royal Marines played For Hes a Jolly Good Fellow. As he went back inside he made one of his trademark quips, joking with two Royal Marine corporals, who had run 1,664 miles over 100 days as part of the 1664 Global Challenge (which recognised the year the Royal Marines were founded in 1664), that they should be locked up for the corps fundraising efforts. It was certainly the end of an era. His departure from public life, however, marked a new beginning for his son the Prince of Wales. With his father no longer ever present at the Queens side, Charles would now be the lead man in the unfolding royal story.

Throughout the princes milestone seventieth year (and several months before that, in fact), I have accompanied him at home and abroad, as he crisscrossed the globe on official business, joining him aboard royal jets and following him in support helicopters as he ventured deep into rainforests and other remote regions. I was there, too, at his early seventieth Birthday Patronage Celebration in the immaculate gardens of Buckingham Palace, and also enjoyed conversations with him, aboard a royal jet and at royal receptions overseas, as well as being his dinner guest at Dumfries House, an eighteenth-century Palladian country house set on a 2,000-acre estate in Ayrshire, Scotland.

I have enjoyed tea and conversation with the prince, too, at his beloved country estate, Highgrove House, his private residence, also built in the late eighteenth century and situated southwest of Tetbury, Gloucestershire. I have been invited to a tour of the gardens, where in the Orchard Room he joked of his backyard, by which he meant the magnificently cultivated Royal Gardens at Highgrove (they are well worth seeing, and are now open to the public on select dates between April and October each year). It has been a lifes work and clearly reflects the deeper side of the man. The garden at Highgrove really does spring from my heart and, strange as it may seem to some, creating it has been rather like a form of worship, he wrote in an introduction to a book about the estate published in 1993.

I was the only British journalist present at the Cotroceni Palace on 29 May 2017, when Prince Charles was formally welcomed to Romania by President Klaus Iohannis, and he seemed baffled that there was no photographer present. The Romania head of state pointed out his official photographer, while Charles looked around for a UK photographer, but our pool man had failed to show, so he pointed at me saying, Well, hes been following me around the world for thirty years. Its not quite that long, I mumbled, not knowing if a response was invited or if it was best that I say nothing in response, although I suspect the latter. Later at a reception, after he had joined in with a troop of Romanian dancers earlier in the day of engagements, he joked that he would quite like Romanians dancing in all the costumes at his seventieth birthday party.

As a result of devoting so much time to following, observing and chronicling what the prince has done publicly over eighteen months or so, I have been able to watch our future king with a discerning eye as I have scrutinised him at close quarters. I note what the prince does on a daily basis when on overseas tours and how he meticulously prepares for and goes about his business. Despite the fact that I have reported on the British Royal Family as a Fleet Street correspondent for national newspapers for nearly three decades, even for me, refocusing the lens and not just looking for the daily story or news photo-opportunity, but trying to see the bigger picture, has been an illuminating experience. Only when you take time to do that do the dots in the bigger picture join and the integrity and passion of the man emerge.