The Prince Charles Letters (21 page)

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I must admit that I was uncertain of its benefits, though it did appear to work quite effectively as a laxative. On that basis, I agreed to take part in a short promotional video demonstrating the preparation and ingestion of the solution. However, it then emerged that the whole treatment was a ‘prank’ dreamt up by a medical student. Fortunately, news of my involvement was suppressed – not a word about this to anyone, Minister.

This is a cautionary tale. We must beware of bogus treatments, ridiculous placebos that have no effect except in the imagination of pitiful fools, as distinguished from authentic, proven treatments like homeopathy.

Yours, in vigilance

HRH The Prince of Wales

To: Mankind

8 July 2005

This is perhaps the most presumptuous, but perhaps also the most momentous letter I have written in the entire history of my correspondence. But hang it all, it’s one thing addressing this or that man – or, indeed, woman or boy! When does one ever address Mankind, that transcendent human entity to which we all belong? And that is what I propose to do here.

Mankind, I have been worried about you for a long time now. In body, you seem fit enough, though our forefathers might be struck by our increased circumferences, a world in which a Harry Secombe-type physique no longer seems quite out of the ordinary, to be singled out for decades of comic treatment. Your soul, however, is shrivelled as an old, dried-out bladder. What is to be done? Fresh air, I suppose; a reconnection with soil and the natural rhythms of nature. Perhaps. For you to adopt the ways of the Kalahari Bushman, with an ear to the ground and the decrees of the true earth long suppressed by the cacophony of heavy machinery and the clever, but misguided diktats of the intellect.

Yes, that’s it! Live the lives of Bushmen. Pots, grubs, spears, and so forth … Cast aside your washing machines and music decks. That, ultimately, should be your goal. Make that your aim, mankind, all of you, in time! How I envy the Africans in particular, who are closer to this ideal than any of us. I shall observe your progress from Highgrove with great interest and frequent encouragement.

Yours, in solidarity

HRH The Prince of Wales

To: The IOP (Institute of Physics)

76–78 Portland Place

London

England

16 April 2007

Gentlemen (and ladies, should that be appropriate)

For centuries, physicists have striven to grasp that holiest of grails, one which would satisfy all our energy needs in a stroke – the perpetual motion machine. And now, working in my potting shed with the assistance of selected members of staff, I can announce that I feel sure I’m on the cusp of what would be the greatest scientific discovery of the age.

I have enclosed a diagram of the device: it consists of a ping-pong ball proceeding down a descending arrangement of slides, finally returning to a point directly below where it began its journey. But how to return it to that point? I suggest a column of water in a glass tube, which the ball enters before floating up to the top, thereby placing it in a position to resume its circuit. Perpetual motion!

There are just two snags – how to get the ball to enter the column of water, and once it’s floated to the top, impelling it to start sliding down the slide again. At the moment, it requires a couple of nudges for the perpetual circuit to work. It stymies me, but hang it all, gentlemen, that’s how close we are – just nudges away from freedom from our dependence on fossil fuels, oil and nuclear energy! I’ve practically done all the work and I leave it for you boffins to simply provide the final push over the ‘top’. These are exciting times, are they not?

Yours, in soaring optimism

HRH The Prince of Wales

Professor Brian Cox

University of Manchester

Manchester

England

18 January 2011

Dear Professor Cox

I’ve been greatly enjoying your series on the BBC and admire the way you bring science into the home of the everyday ‘fellow’. I don’t know if you’re the right person to whom to address this brainwave I’ve had, but I suppose you’d be kind enough to pass it on if it’s not your ‘department’ because that’s literally what I’m talking about – brainwaves.

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time simply thinking and I hate to think it’s just being frittered away. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks a lot – thousands, millions of us do. Is there not a way of harnessing all that mental energy and putting it to some positive, practical use? I was thinking of some sort of hat lined with tin foil, remotely connected to a small grid. I’m sure my cogitating on a single afternoon would be enough to power a domestic vacuum cleaner for at least half an hour’s ‘hoovering’. We can put a man on the moon, surely we can place a tin-lined hat on his head? You manufacture it using your ‘know-how’, Professor Cox, and I’ll wear it.

Yours, in the hope of things getting better

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Cook

Chairman

British Homeopathic Association

Hahnemann House

29 Park Street West

Luton

England

10 February 2011

Dear Mr Cook

Congratulations! As people slowly come to realise the real answer to what ails us lies beyond science, medicine and knowledge, homeopathy is making headway into the NHS and becoming increasingly accessible to all. On Charing Cross Road, where once were bookshops, are now outlets offering New Age remedies, potions and crystals – this is progress.

With this boom, however, lies a danger: you must have read recently of the attempted suicide of the daughter of pop singer Billy Joel, who took an overdose of homeopathic medicine. Somehow she survived, but we must be alert to the dangers of our young people abusing homeopathic products, either for ‘kicks’ or some self-destructive purpose.

To avert this peril, I would be glad to present a Public Information film, warning young people against homeopathy misuse. To make the piece more harrowing, it would help if you could furnish me with case studies – there must be hundreds of them – of people who have made themselves ill (or even died) through overdosing on homeopathic pills.

Yours, with great urgency

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Cook

Chairman

British Homeopathic Association

Hahnemann House

29 Park Street West

Luton

England

16 February 2011

Dear Mr Cook

According to my records, I have yet to receive a response concerning my public information initiative to combat the widespread phenomenon of homeopathic overdose. I assume you must have entire cabinets dedicated to files of recorded cases. It might be that you consider the photographic evidence of victims, convulsed by the excess of active ingredients in the average homeopathic pill, to be too grisly for Royal eyes to behold but don’t spare me, I am not squeamish! On the other hand, please don’t ‘swamp’ me. Just send me a dozen or so of the most really, really appalling cases.

Yours &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

John Cook

Chairman

British Homeopathic Association

Hahnemann House

29 Park Street West

Luton

England

22 February 2011

Dear Mr Cook

I just had a member of my staff call your offices concerning the photos I requested, only to be informed there are no recorded cases whatsoever of death by homeopathic overdose. Either this was due to a faulty telephone line, or it strikes me we have been astoundingly lucky so far. Perhaps a Guiding Hand of some sort has averted the worst?

Even so, we must not be complacent. May I suggest we use ‘human guinea pigs’ on which to test the effects of homeopathic medicine taken to excess? In line with American practice, perhaps we could take some of Britain’s most hardened criminals, the ones serving life imprisonment, and give them the choice between serving out their sentences in full or being set free, if they agree to be experimented on with excess doses of homeopathic remedies, with the lethal risk that entails. About eighty or ninety such men would give a broad sample base, I’d suggest. Shall I inform the Home Secretary or shall you?

Yours &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

God

Heaven

Within and Without Us

12 June 2011

Well, God (or Jahweh or Allah, or however you prefer to be addressed)

I trust You don’t mind my corresponding with You like this. A bit silly, You might think, but although You know all things and know what I’m about to write, I’m going to write it anyway. You see, I find that I can best gather and arrange my thoughts set out in the epistolary form – I expect Your St Peter and Paul felt the same way. I’ve tried praying but as well as hurting the knees like the dickens, I find I get a bit tongue-tied. I don’t really know what to say to You.

Plus, and I don’t mean this as any sort of carping criticism, when I have prayed the rate of return hasn’t been all that I might have desired. You may well remember, I expect You do, that I prayed very hard to You in my Gordonstoun days – some of them were a bit silly, like the plague of boils I requested to be visited on Tubby Southbridge, the boy who led the delegation that forced me to drink the contents of my own inkwell through a stripy straw. I can understand Your vetoing that one. But then, on those long, sleepless, lonely nights, praying that Mummy and Daddy would the next morning come bowling up in the big car and whisk me away from that ghastly, fiend-filled Caledonian chamber of sado-masochistic misery, back to tea and hearth and Nanny – did You hear me, I wondered? I have to believe You did.

All water under the bridge, I suppose. Anyway, the reason I’m writing is this. It used to be commonly believed that the Monarch of England was divinely appointed. Not so widespread nowadays, that idea, but in the spirit of Pascal, I always think it’s worth hedging one’s bets. So, given you’re divine and I’m next in line to be appointed, I was wondering – suppose You were to send me a sign, via Nature, giving me either the thumbs-up or thumbs-down as regards my future prospects on the throne?

What I have in mind, Sir, is this. Among my most favoured hounds is my basset Woodrow, who out of affection and respect for his age, I allow to sleep in front of the fireplace in my study. Every afternoon, when I come in to attend to my correspondence, he’s in the habit of sitting up and barking enthusiastically at me. There follows a bit of give and take before the both of us settle down again: myself to my letters, Woodrow to his slumber.

What I propose is that tomorrow afternoon, in the midst of our give and take, I ask Woodrow the direct question: ‘Will I be King?’ At this point, Almighty God, I invite You to use him as a vessel through which to express Your will: either have him bark the word ‘Yes!’ or, should You will it, ‘No!’ For me, that would settle the matter once and for all, though I am sufficiently sceptical about both the Gentlemen of the Press, to say nothing of certain members of my own family, to suspect my explanation of Woodrow’s declaration would not settle the matter for them. Let us therefore keep this between ourselves.

As for this correspondence, I shan’t be so daft as to send it out via Royal Mail. I propose, with respect, to throw it on the fireplace in that it may be reduced to ashes and send smoke ascending up the chimney – and symbolically, up into the skies and Heavenward. Assuming You exist (and I believe You do), would You look out for something like this or have one of Your angels keep watch for it? These are deep theological waters.

Most respectfully yours

HRH The Prince of Wales

To God

Heaven

Within and Without Us

13 June 2011

I thought I’d send You a follow-up letter. I listened most anxiously to each of Woodrow’s barks this afternoon. Mostly it was his usual, common or garden ‘woof’, but he did at one point yelp something out of the ordinary. I took the precaution of ‘tape recording’ proceedings and playing it back, it sounds like he was saying, ‘Trout!’

Trout? Is there some sort of symbolism, fish-related perhaps, which I should divine in this? After all, one thinks of Jesus and His Disciples as ‘Fishers of Men’. Perhaps if you could have Woodrow bark, either in the affirmative or negative, the same time tomorrow afternoon then I would have something to reflect deeply upon.

Yours &c

HRH The Prince of Wales

Copyright

First published in 2011

by Aurum Press Ltd,
7 Greenland Street,
London NW1 0ND

This ebook edition first published in 2011

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© David Stubbs, 2011

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