Robert Jobson - Our King: Charles III The Man and the Monarch Revealed

Robert Jobson is a No.1 international bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He co-authored the 2002 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling book Diana: Closely Guarded Secret with the princesss personal protection officer, Inspector Ken Wharfe.

Jobson has written several other acclaimed books about the British royal family, including Charles at Seventy, The Royal Family Operations Manual and Prince Philips Century 19212021.

He has reported on the British royal family since 1991 as royal correspondent for British newspapers including the Sun, Daily Express and currently the Evening Standard. He was the recipient of the London Press Club Scoop of the Year award in 2005 for his world exclusive revealing the engagement of Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and was dubbed The Godfather of Royal Reporting by the Wall Street Journal in 2011.

Jobson is Royal Editor for the Australian breakfast show Sunrise on Channel 7, as well as a contracted royal contributor for Good Morning America on the US network ABC. He regularly appears on British television and royal documentaries as a royal expert.

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First published in 2023 by John Blake Publishing

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78946-704-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78946-706-2

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-78946-707-9

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Queen Elizabeths was a life well-lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today.

KING CHARLES IIIS FIRST SPEECH ON 9 SEPTEMBER 2022, IN WHICH HE REFERENCED HIS LATE MOTHERS PLEDGE TO THE PEOPLE OF ALL COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES IN 1947 THAT: MY WHOLE LIFE WHETHER IT BE LONG OR SHORT SHALL BE DEVOTED TO YOUR SERVICE.

I set out to write an authentic and honest portrayal of our King, Charles III. A deep-thinking, spiritual man, he is not only a worthy recipient of the Crown, but an anchored monarch we are blessed to have in these times of uncertainty. He is not cynical but intuitive, instinctive, and perhaps a little sentimental and overemotional at times. Mostly, he is somebody who cares very deeply about those he serves: in the UK, the realms and the wider Commonwealth, and the planet on which we all live, today and for the future. He may have been born into a family with huge wealth and privilege, but he has always tried his best to justify that good fortune by working tirelessly to improve the lot of others less fortunate than himself.

He would be the first to admit he is not perfect, far from it. He can be obsessive, a little eccentric, and he does have a short fuse, but his temper is invariably short-lived. Prince Harry writes in his controversial memoir Spare that when his father watched the BBC news on television, he would often end up throwing the remote control at the screen out of frustration.

A passionate, driven man, he has a great love of the arts, too of books, Shakespeare (his favourite is Henry V), and J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter, of the Goons, the poetry of Dylan Thomas, the music of Bach, Hubert Parry and Leonard Cohen; of art, particularly the work of Johan Joseph Zoffany, and the classical architecture of Rome, Christopher Wren and, more recently, Quinlan Terry. He loves to wake up and literally smell the roses, due to his heightened sense of smell.

It seems to me a little absurd for an author to write a fair and contemporaneous biography about a living person without having met them, or at least watched them at close quarters. It is different for historians, for, short of inventing a time machine, what other options are open to them apart from digging deep and relying on the source material they unearth? But it is implausible for a biographer to claim to have some idea of a persons real character from only second-or third-hand accounts.

In the writing of this book, I have been privileged to have had access to the King and several of those in his circle. I have been able to observe closely what he does now, as King, and what he did as heir to his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II. In my thirty-three years as a journalist covering the British Royal Family, I have also been fortunate to be honoured by my peers for my work: I was the recipient of the London Press Clubs prestigious Scoop of the Year award for breaking the story that Charles would marry Camilla in the London Evening Standard in 2005, and the following year at the British Press Awards I was highly commended in the Hugh Cudlipp Award for excellence in popular journalism.

During my work as a royal correspondent, I have met and chatted with the King on numerous occasions when I have chronicled the Royal Family and as I have followed him at home and abroad. In February 2015, Charles and Camilla visited the Evening Standard offices, which were then in Kensington, west London, and a year later he also collected a special Londoner of the Decade award at the Evening Standard Progress 1000 party honouring the capitals innovators, which was held at the Science Museum. It was an idea that I had put to the deputy editor, Ian Walker, and I was on hand as the newspapers owner Evgeny Lebedev presented the prince with the special front page. Charles jokingly described it to me as one of your better front pages.

More importantly, I have been granted interviews with the King twice, when he was the Prince of Wales, to discuss issues that he is clearly passionate about. On both occasions he was gracious and generous with his time, and candid in what turned out to be two meaningful and enlightening conversations.