This week I have been working with the great Dame Judi Dench. We have been rehearsing a song by Noël Coward for a show we are doing together at the Royal Albert Hall next Friday. Judi met Sir Noël not long before he died in 1973. What she remembers best is his amused smile and the strong scent of the fragrance he wore. Whenever I think of him, I recall his wise advice to anyone confronted with unfair criticism: ‘Rise above it.’ I hope that is what the King is going to do in the face of the bewildering brouhaha that has come with the publication of Omid Scobie’s book Endgame. Charles is not a racist. Not remotely. Anyone who has spent any time with him over any number of years will tell you that. I don’t know if Scobie-Doo has met him. In fact, I am not sure who he has met. As a fellow royal biographer, I have encountered quite a few senior royals and their staff and none that I know seems to have met Scobie either. Where is he getting his material from and why is the press giving it quite so much attention? From what I have read of Endgame, it feels a bit like the more recent episodes of The Crown: smoothly done, but full of wild surmise, hearsay and hunches.
One of the book’s least convincing assertions is that the Prince of Wales is impatient to be king. There is no evidence for that – and, given the impressive longevity of Charles III’s parents, no prospect of it soon either. I get the impression that our 75-year-old sovereign is just hitting his stride and quietly bubbling with ideas and plans that will keep him busy well into his nineties.
All my role models are of riper years.
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