Good morning, and if you’re in the UK, I hope you’re having a nice bank holiday. In five days’ time, 71 years after he became heir to the throne and seven months after he became king, Charles will finally be crowned. First Edition is getting in early to mark the occasion with 71 facts about the monarch – the breathlessly awaited successor to the 70 facts about the Queen we brought you to mark the platinum jubilee last year.
After compiling it, I still can’t decide whether to think our new king is a hopelessly self-pitying and pampered snob, or the captive of a decrepit and inhumane system who deserves our compassion. Maybe it’s both. Read on to make your own mind up, and to learn about his favourite loo paper, his disastrous prep school football season, and how to perfect your impression by saying “ears”. And don’t miss the first of a five-part investigative miniseries drawing on the Guardian’s recent Cost of the crown project on Today In Focus. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Benefits | Millions of UK households are collectively missing out on at least £19bn a year in unclaimed welfare benefits, at a time when many are struggling with rising living costs, according to new estimates. A study by the consultancy Policy in Practice found that some families could be forgoing as much as £4,000 a year.
Sudan | Sudan’s rival military forces have accused each other of violating a fresh ceasefire as the deadly conflict rumbles on for a third week despite warnings of a slide towards civil war. Both sides said a formal ceasefire agreement that was due to expire at midnight would be extended for a further 72 hours.
Labour party | Keir Starmer has personally defended Labour’s attack ads that accused Rishi Sunak of not wanting to see child abusers jailed. Starmer dismissed the idea that the ad was playing on racist tropes about grooming gangs.
Islamic State | Turkish intelligence forces have killed Islamic State’s leader, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, in Syria, Turkey’s president has said. IS selected al-Qurashi as its leader in November 2022 after the previous leader was killed in an operation in southern Syria.
Cancer | Doctors, scientists and researchers have built an artificial intelligence model that can accurately identify cancer in a development they say could speed up diagnosis and fast-track patients to treatment. The AI tool can identify whether abnormal growths found on CT scans are cancerous and performs more efficiently than existing methods, a new study said.
In depth: From ‘excessively shy’ boy to mediocre student to monarch-in-waiting
1. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace on 14 November 1948 at 9.14pm, by caesarean section, after a 30-hour labour. His birth was the first of a senior member of the royal family not to be attended by a senior politician – to ensure that the newborn was a genuine descendant of the monarch – since the 17th century.
2. Philip was not present, and at one point, went to play squash. He is said to have declared that his son looked like a plum pudding.
3. At his christening, Charles was doused with water from the River Jordan. In 2021, when Charles visited the supposed site of Jesus’ baptism on the banks of the river, he was given vials of the water for use in future royal christenings.
4. When Charles was one year old, the Queen and Prince Philip spent Christmas in Malta, where Philip was stationed with the Royal Navy. Charles stayed with his grandparents at Sandringham; his parents missed his first steps and his first teeth.
5. Charles’s first word was said to be “nana”, addressed to his nanny, Mabel Anderson.
6. 71 years ago, when his grandfather died and his mother became queen, Charles became heir apparent at the age of three. He held that title for 70 years – longer than anyone else.
7. As male heir, Charles began receiving the equivalent of £209,000 from his estate. Since then, he and the Queen received payments equivalent to more than £1bn from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which run portfolios of land across England, a recent Guardian investigation found.
8. When Winston Churchill met him shortly before his fourth birthday, he observed: “He is young to think so much.” Catherine Peebles, Charles’s governess, said that he was “hypersensitive, lonely, excessively shy and given to quiet pursuits like reading and painting”.
9. After a six-month separation from the Queen and Philip on a royal tour in 1954, Charles and his younger sister Anne were greeted by their parents with handshakes.
10. Charles said in 1969 that as a child he first “thought of being the proverbial engine driver or something. Then I wanted to grow up to be a sailor … and, of course, a soldier … When I started shooting, I thought how marvellous it would be to be a big-game hunter. I went from one thing to the other until I realised I was rather stuck.” He added: “It’s something that dawns on you with the most ghastly, inexorable sense. I didn’t suddenly wake up in my pram one day and say ‘Yippee,’ you know.”
11. Charles was the first future monarch to be sent to school rather than being educated by private tutors. He was dispatched to Cheam school to board at the age of eight, where a British Pathé newsreel said “his rank will count for little in the rough and tumble democracy of playground and dormitory”.
12. He was said to have little aptitude for sport, but in his last year captained the football team, which scored four goals in the season, and conceded 82. The school newspaper said that “Prince Charles seldom drove himself as hard as his ability and position demanded”.
13. Charles was then sent to Gordonstoun school, where, at age 14, a trip on the “school yacht” to the Isle of Lewis led to him and a group of other boys taking refuge from tourists in a bar. He was seen ordering a cherry brandy by a tabloid journalist. His personal security officer was fired by the Metropolitan police as a result.
14. At Gordonstoun, Charles was ostracised by his fellow pupils, who made “slurping” noises at anyone who was friendly to him. He wrote in a letter home: “It’s such hell here, especially at night … The people in my dormitory are foul. They throw slippers all night or hit me with pillows or rush across the room and hit me as hard as they can, then beetle back again.” He reportedly later referred to the school as “a prison sentence” and “Colditz in kilts”.
15. Prince Philip laughed out loud watching his 17-year-old son play Macbeth (above) in the school play, later telling a tearful Charles that he “sounded like the Goons”. Charles also played the cello, and although he said he was “hopeless”, he gave recitals at local aristocrats’ homes.
16. Despite his unpopularity he was made head boy, and given his own room in the apartment of the art master.
17. In 1967, despite mediocre A-level results of a B in history and a C in French, he was given a place at Cambridge without sitting the exam. He was driven to the university in a bright red Mini. He lived in unusually nice rooms for a first year student; they were decorated by the Queen’s tapestry maker.
18. Time magazine reported that at a university ball in 1968, he “unbent sufficiently, as one observer put it, ‘to seem intent on kissing an attractive blonde named Cindy, even in the fast dances’.” That was Cindy Buxton, the daughter of a birdwatching companion of his father’s. Charles also attended a pottery class at night, and played for the university polo team.
19. He became the first heir to the throne to be awarded a university degree – a 2:2 in history. “This boy has come out with flying colours,” the master of Trinity College, Lord Butler, said. “We think it was rather remarkable that he could get a good degree, considering all his other duties.”
20. When he met Camilla Shand in the summer of 1971, she is said to have introduced herself by saying: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-grandfather – so how about it?”
21. In The Palace Papers, Tina Brown writes that Camilla was said to have urged the sexually “diffident” Charles to “pretend I’m a rocking horse”.
22. They fell in love, but were separated when Charles joined the Royal Navy. Some attributed their separation to his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten’s advice that only a virgin could marry the future king: he wrote that “it is disturbing for women to have experiences if they have to remain on a pedestal after marriage”. He also said: “I believe in a case like yours that a man should sow his wild oats before settling down.”
23. In 1974, an Observer journalist said to Charles: “The Queen is still a youthful monarch. It looks as though you will have to spend many years as Prince of Wales,” and asked: “Should monarchs reign until death? Is there a case for retirement?” Charles replied: “No, I certainly don’t think monarchs should retire and be pensioned off … The nature of being a monarch is different. There’s plenty I can do.”
24. In the same interview, Charles said that he hoped to encourage greater tolerance of diversity, saying: “The more people understand about the background of the immigrants who come to this country, the less apprehensive they would be about them. To get on neighbourly terms with people of other races and countries, you’ve got to get more familiar with them. Know how they live, eat, work, what makes them laugh. And their history.”
25. Charles has written the forewords to at least 31 books. The first was a compilation of Goon Show scripts by Spike Milligan, published in 1974. He later became patron of the Goon Show Preservation Society.
26. In 1975, when being installed as Great Master of the Order of the Bath, he sported a moustache that made him look exactly like Terry Thomas.
27. Charles had been advised by Mountbatten that “for a wife he should choose a suitable and sweet-charactered girl before she meets anyone else she might fall for”. In 1977, when he was 29, he met the 16-year-old Diana Spencer.
28. Tina Brown writes that in 1980, Charles and Camilla kissed at length in front of her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, himself a serial adulterer, at a polo ball hosted by meat fortune heir Lord Vestey. Andrew said: “HRH is very fond of my wife, and she appears to be very fond of him.”
29. In the same year, Charles published a children’s book, The Old Man of Lochnagar. At one point, the old man meets the “king of the Gorms”, who has a “peculiar rubber mat” fastened to his bottom to “prevent him slipping off his throne all the time”.
30. Under pressure to marry, Charles proposed to Diana in February 1981, just before she went on a trip to Australia: “I thought ‘Well I’ll ask her then so that she’ll have a chance of thinking it over’,” he said. Asked if they were in love in a broadcast interview, Charles said: “Whatever ‘in love’ means.”
31. Diana later said they had met 13 times when Charles proposed. In the Guardian, John Ezard and Alan Rusbridger reported that Harold Brooks-Baker, managing editor of Debretts, said that Diana “descends five times from Charles II. Four times on the wrong side of the blanket and one on the right side. He had a large number of bastards.”
32. In an eight-page supplement the day before the wedding in July 1981, the Guardian published pictures of 14 of his alleged ex-girlfriends.
33. Their wedding at St Paul’s Cathedral was attended by 3,500 people, with 600,000 spectators lining the route of Diana’s procession, and an estimated television audience of 28m in the UK and 750m around the world. Diana’s dress had a 25-foot (7.6 m) train made of ivory taffeta and antique lace. There were 23 official wedding cakes; a slice of one was preserved and sold for £1,850 in 2021. The royal biographer Hugo Vickers wrote in a diary entry on the day: “The Royal Wedding is no more romantic than a picnic amid the wasps.”
34. When Prince William was born in 1982, a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said he “cried lustily”. The Guardian reported that when Charles was told a crowd outside the hospital had chanted “Nice one Charlie, let’s have another one,” he laughed and replied: “Bloody hell, give us a chance.”
35. When Charles was made president of the British Medical Association in 1982, he made a speech setting out his belief in alternative medicine, and criticising “the deeply ingrained suspicion and outright hostility which can exist towards anything unorthodox or unconventional”. A four page supplement in the Evening Standard promoting unproven cures for cancer appeared in his name a few days later.
36. Charles’s belief in unproven treatments was attributed to the man he was said to view as his spiritual mentor, Laurens van der Post, who was later disgraced by the revelation that he had fathered a child with a 14-year-old girl when he was 46. Van der Post persuaded Charles to record his descriptions of his dreams, which were then subjected to Jungian analysis.
37. For the six weeks before the birth of Prince Harry in 1984, Diana later said she and Charles “were very, very close to each other … the closest we’ve ever, ever been and ever will be. Then suddenly as Harry was born it just went bang, our marriage, the whole thing went down the drain.”
38. According to Charles’s biographer Sally Bedell Smith, Charles and Camilla’s affair resumed in 1986. Diana told her biographer Andrew Morton that she confronted Camilla in 1989. She claimed Camilla said “All the men in the world fall in love with you, and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?” She said she replied: “I want my husband.”
39. After encouragement from van der Post, Charles talked to his plants. He said in 1986 that “they respond, I find” and that his fruits and vegetables were “a damned sight bigger because I instructed them to be”.
40. In the same year, Charles travelled to the Kalahari desert with van der Post, where he felt he saw “a vision of earthly eternity” in a herd of zebras. He then travelled to the Outer Hebrides and spent three days living in a modest cottage, where he planted potatoes and helped mend fences to learn more about crofting. The Sun covered the visit with the headline: “A LOON AGAIN: HERMIT CHARLES PLANTS SPUDS ON REMOTE ISLE”.
41. Morton’s book, published in 1992, revealed excruciating details of the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage. They separated formally later that year. In 1993, a recording of a conversation between Charles and Camilla, in which he said he would like to be reincarnated as her tampon, caused a sensation. An Italian newspaper referred to Charles as “Il Tampaccino” when reporting the story.
42. In 1993, Charles took the lead in planning a new development, Poundbury, on Duchy of Cornwall land, according to the principles of architecture and urban planning he advocated. In 2016 the Guardian’s architecture critic Oliver Wainwright wrote that while it had long been mocked as a “feudal Disneyland”, “strip away the fancy dress and you find a plan that far exceeds the sophistication achieved by any modern housebuilder”.
43. In a biography written by Jonathan Dimbleby with Charles’s blessing, Dimbleby wrote: “Prince Charles is far more aware of the prospective burdens of kingship than its pleasures.” Charles told him: “The difficulty is most of the time not feeling that one is worthy of it, inevitably.”
44. Charles admitted to the affair with Camilla in a 1994 interview with Dimbleby. He said he had been faithful “until [his marriage] became irretrievably broken down”.
45. A book by Tom Bower said that Charles, a keen watercolourist, tried to swap one of his paintings for a work by Lucian Freud in 1994. “I don’t want one of your rotten paintings,” Freud is said to have replied.
46. After Diana’s explosive interview with Martin Bashir in 1995, the Queen sent letters to Charles and Diana advising them to divorce. Last year, after new revelations cast doubt over how Bashir secured the interview and amid briefing that Charles was angry that clips from the broadcast were still shown, the BBC promised never to air it again.
47. When Charles and Diana finally divorced the next year, they agreed a settlement which saw her receive a lump sum of £17m – equivalent to £41m today – as well as £400,000 a year. They signed non-disclosure agreements prohibiting any discussion of the divorce or their marriage.
48. A poll published by the Guardian in 1995 found that 49% of British people expected to see the end of the monarchy in their own lifetimes.
49. Charles owned a 1987 Aston Martin V8 Vantage Volante, which he was given by the emir of Bahrain on a state visit. It was customised to include a leather-trimmed sugar-lump jar for Charles’s polo ponies in its glove box. Charles sold the car in 1995 and gave the £110,000 proceeds to the Prince’s Trust. The Guardian recently estimated that his current luxury car fleet is worth about £6.3m.
50. In his recent memoir Spare, Prince Harry remembered that when he was growing up, his father would perform headstands in his bedroom each morning in an attempt to relieve neck and back pain caused by years of playing polo. Clad only in his boxer shorts, Charles would yell “No! Don’t open! Please God don’t open!” if anyone approached the door to his room.
51. After Diana’s Paris car crash in 1997, Charles broke the news to Harry in his bedroom. He called him his “dear son” and put his hand on his knee but did not hug him, Harry said in his memoir.
52. Harry also said that Charles kept a teddy bear which he had had since he was at Gordonstoun which had “broken arms and dangly threads”. Harry wrote that the bear “expressed eloquently, better than Pa ever could, the essential loneliness of his childhood”.
53. In 2002, after the death of the Queen Mother, Charles flew to Greece to stay at a monastery on Mount Athos for three days. He travelled with a butler and 43 pieces of luggage.
54. In 2004, Charles was reported to have said: “Nobody knows what utter hell it is to be the Prince of Wales.”
55. He once gave Ozzy Osbourne, a recovering alcoholic, a bottle of scotch as a get-well-soon present after Osbourne fractured his collarbone.
56. Harry said in Spare that Charles’s preferred personal scent was Eau Sauvage, which he would “slather” on “his cheeks, his neck, his shirt”. He said it was “flowery, with a hint of something harsh, like pepper or gunpowder”.
57. Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005 clashed with the Grand National, which was therefore delayed by 25 minutes. Shortly after the ceremony, the Queen stepped into a sideroom at Windsor Castle to watch the race. She also left the reception to watch it again. Her wedding present for the couple was a broodmare.
58. Since his mother died, Charles has made £2.3m from selling her horses at auction.
59. Honours given to Charles during his lifetime include Sash of Special Category of the Order of the Aztec Eagle in Mexico, Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum in Japan, Grand Commander of the Order of the Lion in Malawi, and Knight of the Order of the Elephant in Denmark. He also received a special award for the promotion of gardening from the Garden Media Guild in 2011.
60. In 2015, after a 10-year legal battle, the Guardian published some of the “black spider letters” – named for his handwriting – Charles sent to ministers. Among many other suggestions, he wrote to then-environment minister Elliot Morley in 2004 saying that he hoped “illegal fishing of the Patagonian toothfish will be high up on your list of priorities because until that trade is stopped, there is little hope for the poor old albatross”.
61. The law was subsequently changed to provide an absolute exemption for the monarch and all heirs to the throne from freedom of information requests.
62. A Sunday Times report last year revealed that in 2015 Charles was given €3m cash in a suitcase and Fortnum & Mason carrier bags by the former prime minister of Qatar. The money was then deposited into the accounts of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.
63. Tom Bower’s biography claimed that Charles made five outfit changes a day, and travelled with his own orthopaedic bed and toilet seat as well as a supply of Kleenex Premium Comfort loo paper. Clarence House made no comment.
64. In 2019, Josh O’Connor took on the part of Prince Charles in the Crown. He said that to perfect the voice, he said “ears” instead of “yes” and spoke through his teeth. He also said that he drew on Charles’s habit of checking his cufflinks and pocket square every time he gets out of a car.
65. Charles’s personal fortune has been estimated by the Guardian at around £1.8bn. He receives around £86m a year in public funding, and is technically due another £250m under the terms of a 2011 funding settlement, but has signalled he does not want the extra money. After the death of the Queen, he paid no inheritance tax on her fortune.
66. Paul Powlesland, a barrister who was threatened with arrest for holding up a blank piece of paper in Parliament Square in protest at coverage of the Queen’s death which he viewed as “over the top and mawkish”, also hopes to protest at the coronation. Patrick Thelwell, a student who threw five eggs at the new king (but missed), and said that people around him said “Kill him, kick him to death”, was found guilty of threatening behaviour and banned from carrying eggs.
67. A wreath of flowers, leaves and herbs, some from Charles’s own gardens at Highgrove and Clarence House, rested on his mother’s casket at her funeral with a note that read: “With loving and devoted memory, Charles R.”
68. New research shared with the Guardian and published last week revealed that Charles’s direct ancestors bought and exploited enslaved people on tobacco plantations in Virginia in the 17th century. Earlier this month, in response to the Guardian’s reporting, Charles signalled for the first time his support for research into the links between the British monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade.
69. Only three in 10 Britons think the monarchy is “very important” today – the lowest proportion on record. But a recent YouGov poll found that 58% of the public preferred the monarchy to an elected head of state.
70. Plans for the coronation have been under way for years under the codename “Operation Golden Orb”. No budget has been revealed, but it has been estimated that it will cost between £50m and £100m. It has also been reported that Charles wants it to be “in line with his vision for a smaller, more modern monarchy”, with 2,000 guests against the 8,000 that attended the Queen’s coronation and a shorter service. That event cost £912,000 in 1953 – £20.5m today.
71. Charles will leave the ceremony wearing the Imperial State Crown for the first time. It is 12 inches tall, and decorated with 3,165 diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls. The centrepiece is the Cullinan II diamond. When craftsmen first attempted to cut it, the first blow broke the knife.
What else we’ve been reading
Fans of Chicken Shop Date will find much to enjoy in Laura Snapes’ Saturday magazine profile of Amelia Dimoldenberg, whose awkward celebrity interviewing style casts her as “a successor to Paula Yates, Ruby Wax and Popworld-era Simon Amstell”. “I never think about their nerves,” Dimoldenberg says, on a visit to Madame Tussauds. “I’m too wrapped up in mine.” Archie
A fascinating Steve Rose profile of Duwayne Brooks, who – 30 years on from the racist murder of his friend Stephen Lawrence – is running for mayor of London: as a Tory. Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
Eva Wiseman reflects on the “bloodless, grandly bland, dreary” nature of “stealth wealth” as a fashion choice for the very rich. “The stealthiness of the fashion, its blank quality, works as a sort of invisibility cape, armour or magic spell, allowing the very rich to march cleanly through walls of tax, war or morals,” she writes. Archie
“Kendall has secured his own downfall”: ICYMI, the Guardian ran a selection of readers’ predictions on how Succession will end. Hannah
Steve Chamberlain spoke to the artist and writer Andy Field about his new book that delves into the importance of random encounters in our day to day lives. In creating public spaces that are frictionless, Field argues, we lose something important: “Encounters force empathy”. Nimo
Sport
Premier league | A late comeback from 3-0 down to 3-3 by Tottenham Hotspur was thwarted after Liverpool’s Diogo Jota (sitting above) pounced in injury time to secure a 4-3 victory. Meanwhile, Bournemouth beat Leeds 4-1, Manchester City beat Fulham 2-1, Manchester United beat Aston Villa 1-0, and Newcastle beat Southampton 3-1.
Snooker | Mark Selby made the first ever maximum break in a World Snooker Championship final as he reeled off the final three frames of an exhilarating opening day to trail Belgium’s Luca Brecel 9-8 overnight at the Crucible.
Formula One | Sergio Pérez won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to close the gap on his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in the championship race to six points. But Pérez’s victory was overshadowed by a near-disaster when Esteban Ocon’s car sent people standing in the pit lane scattering as he arrived for a late tyre change.
The front pages
“Households missing out on £19bn in benefits” – that’s the Guardian’s front-page lead today. The Daily Express has “Shocking: 1.3m hit by state pension errors”, while the Daily Mail says there are “One billion reasons to be cheerful”, claiming the coronation will boost the economy by that many pounds. “Sunak eyes more Help To Buy” says the Times, while the Daily Telegraph has “Cancer nurses on strike for first time”. On the latter, the i says “Striking nurses warn Sunak to improve wage offer or face more walkouts”. “Wills: heirs to you both” – the Daily Mirror says the heir will pay tribute to Charles and Camilla in a “heartfelt speech”. The top story in the Financial Times is “US bank First Republic nears collapse as Munger warns over ‘bad loans’”.
Today in Focus
Cost of the crown part 1: valuing the royal family
In the first part of an investigative miniseries into royal wealth, Maeve McClenaghan sets off on the trail to uncover how much public money is spent on the Windsors – and what they do in return.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenes
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Like many retirees, Diane and David Rowsell were looking forward to being “busy doing not much” when they gave up work. However, as they explain in the Guardian’s latest A new start after 60 column, David’s role as a school governor showed them the extent of hunger in schools – and kickstarted a new mission. The Rowsells started The Collective Sharehouse in 2020, which now supports over 100 families with food and a multitude of other services, including IT classes and art projects. The local community has supported them, providing donations but also giving their time to volunteer. “It never fails to amaze me – the generosity, the time, the effort …” says Diane.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
