The Prince Charles Letters (13 page)

Charles (‘Defender of the Fish’)

Arthur Scargill

National Union of Mineworkers

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

England

20 June 1984

Dear Mr Scargill

Well, I’m afraid neither Mother nor my grandmother are especially fond of you at this moment and if they knew I was writing to you, they’d probably blow their tops – Grandmamma especially, who when your name is mentioned, is apt to resort to the language of the hunt. That’s why I’m currently lying ‘doggo’ in my Palace study as I write this.

But hang it all, in a situation like this it behoves sensible men to put their heads together and see if a solution can be reached! I’m no politician but it does seem to me that your men have been treated in a high-handed manner and I have spoken about this to Mr Thatcher (Mrs Thatcher’s husband) in the hope that he can put in an influential word. That said, have you not asked yourself whether mining is really any sort of way for the human animal to spend his lifespan?

To put it in language you’ll understand, ‘there’s more than one way to make a muckle’. What I mean to say is, if the mines have to close, well, perhaps that’s a blessing for the environment – and what’s more, an opportunity for your members to explore more natural, spiritual forms of energy. I’m talking about chi, ley lines, healing crystals. If they were to decide to transfer to these areas, I myself could certainly provide small grants on a first-come, first-served basis to those of your men willing to wipe the soot from their eyes and see the world for what it is in the New Age.

Yours, in the spirit of Aquarius

HRH The Prince of Wales

The Minister for Architecture

House of Commons

London

England

16 January 1986

Dear Sir

Forgive me for not knowing precisely who you are but with respect, that is not of the greatest importance. The matter I’m touching on is far too important for me to be overly concerned with niceties.

There are a great many of us plain-thinking people who sit in the back of our cars as we trundle reluctantly through the capital city and wonder just who on earth built and commissioned these enormous great slate-grey eyesores, which dominate the London skyline, like so many vertical Bulgarias. The people of Britain are not dead-eyed, robotic rabbits to be herded in and out of dismally lit, polystyrene-ceilinged, strip-lit cubicles. They are not automatons, they are subjects and since no one else will speak out, then it must fall to me.

The soul of England is not rectangular, the spirit of England is not functional, the mettle of England is not stainless steel – indeed this whole ‘modernist’ trend has gone a jolly sight too far. I sometimes wonder if I bang on about this sort of thing too much but my staff who are not afraid to contradict me tell me I do not – so there it is.

Now I am not decrying the twentieth century as a whole. There have been certain advantages, I will concede: dentistry, The Three Degrees and I daresay one or two others. But hang it all, we’ve become so infatuated with our gadgets, our washing machines, our microwaving ovens that hang it all, we’ve lost touch with nature: the trees, the hedgerows, the marshes and thickets, what have you … the stuff of a vanished, merrier, cement-less golden age. Can we not have both Three Degrees and Thickets?

Yours, in harmony with Nature

HRH The Prince of Wales

The Culture Secretary

House of Commons

London

England

22 January 1987

Dear Sir

See here, I wonder if you or one of your top people could help me with something that’s been nagging me for days? It’s this tune that’s been running through my head. I’ve obviously picked it up from the transistor radio or television set. Goes something like this:

Dum-dum, dum-dum, DE-dum, dee-dee, de—dum … tarara dum-dum, de-dum … de DUM DUM (big push, there), dum-dum, dum-dum.

One of my staff suggested perhaps it was from something called ‘Shake’n’Vac’. Is it, do you think? I’d ask my wife but well, she just rolls her eyes and retreats to the latrine whenever I ask a civil question. I’ve had my staff working on it for a week now, but really they have far more important things to do, so I was hoping to offload this one on you. There must still be people from Bletchley – you know, those code-breaker johnnies – on the books. Perhaps you could contact your equal at the MOD and check?

No rush, but it you could get back to me – say, this time tomorrow – you’d have no idea of the service you’d be doing your future king.

Yours, maddened

HRH The Prince of Wales

The Culture Secretary

House of Commons

London

England

23 January 1987

Dear Sir

Still not heard back from you regarding this tune. Bureaucratic backlog, I suppose – something must be done about that. It’s still buzzing around in my head and bugging me like the Dickens.

In order to move forward with this, I’ll be dispatching one of my staff down to the Commons to call in at your office in person after she’s finished here. I’ll brief her by humming the tune to her and she will hum it to you, then we can go ahead on that basis and resolve this once and for all. If you could arrange that she gets the necessary clearance, I’d be most grateful.

Yours, no less maddened

HRH The Prince of Wales

Nicholas Edwards

Secretary of State for Wales

House of Commons

London

England

22 February 1989

Dear Mr Edwards

What with its slate mines, singing, hills, striking rain-gauge readings and vales, Wales really is most terribly interesting. But it seems Wales has got down at heel. As its prince, I feel a responsibility to buck it up a bit. Hang it all, something has to be done otherwise it’s in danger of bringing up the rear among the Home Nations, sort of shambling along with a rope around its neck.

So, how are we going to bring Wales up to scratch? I’ve jotted down a few ideas:

• 
The language: I’ve had a stab at it, but it’s quite fiendish. I suggest we simply get rid of, say, 30% of the consonants and replace them with vowels. Which consonants and vowels in particular and whereabouts you swap them around, I’ll leave to you to sort out.

• 
The coal mines: Let’s reopen a few but none of your new technology. Let’s get back to the days of steam power, ventilation furnaces, pit ponies, pick axes, canaries – closer to nature. Yes, it was dangerous, but how much more dangerous to lose your national soul, dammit?

• 
The rarebit: Is this an animal? Perhaps you could check, because if it is, I suspect its stocks are dwindling faster than those of the Dartford Warbler.

• 
Singing: Welsh people don’t sing as often as they used to, in my experience. What can be done to correct this?

Yours, in Welshness

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Prescott

House of Commons

London

England

20 February 1998

Dear Mr Prescott

I’d like you to offer my apologies once again for mistaking you for one of my catering staff – a lot of the fellows who work in this capacity hail from northern climes, this being the source of my blunder. I’ve done it before, I know, and I shall doubtless do it again, but this makes it no less regrettable.

I must commend you, while I have your ear, for the terrific work you’re doing in the regions. In the hurly burly of modern life we rather tend to take places like Grimsby for granted, but there’s never any chance of that when the likes of you are ‘in the chair’. I listen to you and at once I think to myself, ‘Grimsby’. For this, and for having ascended from such humble origins, you must be ‘reet proud’ of yourself, old chap!

Yours, in (non-political) comradeship

HRH The Prince of Wales

Stephen Byers

Secretary of State for Trade and Industry

House of Commons

London

England

30 December 1999

Dear Mr Byers

Well, the new Millennium is almost upon us and if many of the newspapers are to believed, a certain poetic justice is about to be served in that the vast banks of computers which shore up our modern lifestyle are about to plunge us back into the year 1900. Fascinating … H.G. Wells couldn’t have made it up.

I have taken my own precautions. In secret, I have had several of my best men working round the clock to dig me an underground shelter on my grounds at Highgrove, lined with aluminium and stocked with tinned foods, utensils, changes of clothes and even a makeshift convenience. It is there that I propose to ‘sit out’ the chaos likely to ensue the moment Big Ben strikes twelve. I have extended an open invitation to my family to join me, but they have simply issued me with what in effect amounts to the ‘raspberry’. And so, it will be just myself, alone, and four members of my staff (Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles has an invitation to join me, too).

Upon re-emerging, it may well be that life as we know it has been utterly transformed, and not necessarily for the worse. This computer glitch will have catapulted us back to a fairer, less industrialised era, in which men are closer to the soil. Society may have to be re-thought, rebuilt from the bottom up, from scratch. Of course, it will be agreed that the first thing we will need is a monarchy, which is why I’m going to such lengths to ensure my own self-preservation. It may be that I am one of the last men of the old world still standing, but the human cornerstone of a coming New Age. I find that I am strangely calm, all things considered.

Yours, as New Dawn breaks

HRH The Prince of Wales

The Secretary of State for Education

House of Commons

London

England

16 October 2000

Dear whoever you are (I apologise – I’ve been gardening, not had time to check).

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about expanding the number of places available to our young people in higher education. On the face of it, this all seems well and laudable but when we dig a little deeper – as I have been this morning – is it really what my old second-form master at Gordonstoun would have described as the ‘desideratum’? Aren’t there too many people going to university? They’re talking about 50% of all young people – is that not rather high?

I suppose it piques me because I’m rather proud of the fact that I went to Cambridge and attained a degree, as did my brother Edward – two from the same family is quite some achievement, particularly in this ‘meritocratic’ age. I feel my achievement is being cheapened, however, when in this day and age any Tom, Dick or Darren can stroll into one of our major seats of learning and acquire some spurious degree in ‘Media Studies’ – hang it all, in my day that meant reading the
Beano
!

Could not these youngsters instead take up work in areas such as agriculture, which I feel is much ignored? Get back to the land, learn how to thatch a cottage or twine a haystack, the sort of vital skills that will be key if we are to move forward into the twenty-first century – the countryside? Perhaps these young people could find, and in time, know their place there?

Yours

HRH The Prince of Wales (Oxon)

John Prescott

House of Commons

London

England

12 January 2001

Prescott,

Can I distract you momentarily from the Affairs of State and ask you to settle a wager? Is it possible for a man to have a Yorkshire accent and yet not be a socialist? Do please get back to me as soon as possible, as five pounds is riding on this.

Yours, in urgency

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Prescott

House of Commons

London

England

18 May 2001

First, you have a bucket of water thrown over you by members of some ‘punk rock’ group at a pop music awards ceremony. Then you find yourself pelted with eggs by some beefy rustic type in the shires and you respond with your fists in a pugnacious, if not entirely ministerial manner.

As Shakespeare wrote: ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will’. I wonder if there’s a divinity that shapes your particular rough-hewn ends? I mean, it seems as if you’re fated to suffer these episodes. They never seem to happen to Blair, or Harman, or Straw – or the rest of your brigade. Do you think in some way God himself has a hand in these incidents, that they are part of a larger plan in the scheme of which you are, not to be disrespectful, nought but a lump of rude clay to be flung to whatever fate the Deity requires of you?

These are deep thoughts, I agree. I trust they are of help to you as you nurse your bruised knuckles and irritably wave away the press cuttings brought in by your private secretary for your attention.

Yours, in sympathy

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Prescott

House of Commons

London

England

21 May 2001

I don’t seem to have received a reply to the letter I sent you two days ago. I expect you’re busy on the campaign, but just to let you know, the question enclosed in my letter wasn’t intended as a ‘rhetorical’ one. It did require an answer. I’d be grateful to have your response at any time that suits you within the next seventy-two hours.

HRH The Prince of Wales

Jonathon Porritt

Friends of the Earth

26–28 Underwood Street

London

England

28 January 2002

Porritt,

I hate to tear you away from your vital work but I must tell you about a dream I had. I was yomping through open fields with a couple of hounds when I found a clearing and came upon a large assembly of people. And would you know it, each last one of them was holding a length of string and attached to those lengths of string were inflatable effigies of myself. I don’t know what they were doing – unfortunately, my man chose that moment to wake me up. What can it mean?

Inflatable Prince Charleses! Perhaps the dream was some sort of message from the untapped, subconscious realm of the mind, where things make more sense than can possibly be grasped intellectually. On that basis I’m having a few dozen commissioned – life-size, as in the dream, and kilted; durable but biodegradable material, naturally. Question is, what’s to be done with them? They’ll be there, but what good purpose can they serve? Any thoughts? It all feels like a metaphor for something or other, but I can’t think what.