A GREATER LOVE by CHRISTOPHER WILSON : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles

 

The subtitle "20 year affair" makes this book seem hopelessly dated. 

The author, for instance, doubted that there would ever be a divorce. Christopher Wilson published A GREATER LOVE in 1994,  when Princess Diana was still alive.

 

But the perfect title for what I was looking for in a book about Camilla and Charles drew me to read it anyway.

 

This is the portrayal of Camilla, that helped answer for me "What did he see in her?" especially when the competition, so to speak, was the famous, extremely popular, Diana, Princess of Wales.

 

In this book we learn that Camilla was educated at Bumbrells and then transferred to London, to the Queens Gate school in South Kensington which "provides the wives for half the Foreign Office" and was known as "Milla."  She wasn't an academic, no more so than Princess Diana.  Both women would be considered high school drop outs in America, but she excelled in fencing and horseback riding.  In the summer of 1964 she left school and traveled to Switzerland and Paris to be "finished" with school, and made her debute to society in March 1965 when her parents had a cocktail party for her in Knightsbridge.   She was seventeen years old.

 

When exactly did Charles and Camilla begin their mutual adultery?

Some say it was in early 1980.  Camilla's husband's work took him out of the country and there was an encounter that Wilson's says is true that made the papers.  At the Circencester Polo Ball, they sat at the same table, and spent the whole evening dancing with each other and French Kissing.  Andrew Parker-Bowles was there to see this display of who-cares-who-sees-us affection.  He was said to have remarked "HRH is very fond of my wife and she appears to be very fond of him," but was actually quite shocked.  When the cat's away the mice will play...

 

No doubt Camilla was in on the process of Charles finding a suitable royal wife, and may have earnestly tried to advise Diana on how to handle Charles, but after some time it was Camilla who was the official hostess of social occasions.

 

Once the "Open Secret" of Charles and Camilla's relationship was understood, according to Wilson, both the Queen and the Queen Mother knew about it.  Diana's notion that there were three people in her marriage was correct but the idea that she was completely innocent of what she was getting into is controversial.  In this book we learn that Diana's mother was against the marriage, that her grandmother warned her against marrying into the royal family, that her family, after a report of a blond spending the night with Charles on a train, put Diana's virginity into question, felt the need to speak out to defend her, and that Charles had dated Diana's sister, who also had bulimia.

 

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