Prince William missed out on the Royal
celebration of the year on his 18th birthday
because he was revising for his exams.
Hundreds of guests gathered at Windsor Castle
for the glittering ball on Wednesday to mark
five millennium milestones and 260 years of
royalty.
While William buried his
nose in his books at
Eton College, the
Queen Mother, who is
100 on 4 August was
the toast of the
evening.
But the Royals and
their 700 guests also
raised a glass to
Princess Margaret, who
is 70 on 21 August, the
Princess Royal, who is
50 on 15 August and the Duke of York, who
was 40 on 19 February.
Prince William, the only one actually
celebrating his birthday on the day of the
event, missed out to revise and rest for his
History of Art A level exam on Thursday.
He plans a private party for his friends later
this month.
Guest list
The Windsor Castle party got under way with a
dinner for about 80 of the Royals' immediate
friends.
European and Scandinavian royalty, from
Spain, Belgium and Norway, were on the guest
list, including ex-King Constantine of Greece,
who now lives in Hampstead, north London.
The dinner guests were joined later by about
700 others for a drinks party in the castle's
magnificently-restored Saint George's Hall and
adjoining rooms.
The Gramophone big
band serenaded the
Queen Mother with her
favourite tune "A
Nightingale Sang in
Berkeley Square"
before the Chance
group played the Tina
Turner hit "Simply the
Best" for the younger
royals.
The guest list was of
keen interest to royal
watchers.
Duke of York's ex-wife Sarah was at the party,
joining a Royal family get-together for the first
time since her divorce four years ago.
Camilla Parker Bowles, the Prince of Wales's
partner, was not invited to the important
family occasion even though she had appeared
with Prince Charles at a semi-official function
on Tuesday evening.
Her former husband Andrew Parker Bowles, was
a guest of the Princess Royal.
"Queen Mother's speech"
Celebrations to mark the Queen Mother's
centenary year continue later this summer.
The Sun reports that she is to make a live
television address to the country during the
birthday pageant.
An informal 60-second speech to say thank
you to all her wellwishers will be broadcast on
ITV on 19 July, the paper says.
It is believed the Queen Mother will speak from
a dais in Horse Guards Parade, near
Buckingham Palace, where 13,000 guests are
expected.
William's future in the media spotlight seems
certain now that he has turned 18 and finishes
at Eton College after his exams.
The prince, who has postponed using the HRH
title in favour of just William, has said he feels
uncomfortable with the public and media
attention focused on him but recognises it is
something he will have to get used to.
The BBC paid their own tribute to William's
birthday by playing "God Save the Queen"
before the early morning news - an honour
normally given only to the most important
royals.
~*~
A royal appeal draws the belles to
Shoreditch(Electronic Telegraph)
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
MODERN culture throws up the oddest ideas and last night it brought the
oddest couples out in support of the contemporary arts in London.
In the East End, in the increasingly fashionable
Shoreditch, the Prince of Wales and Camilla
Parker Bowles, for whom there are obstacles to
becoming a legal couple, stepped out together for
the opening of the new headquarters of the Prince's
Foundation, his new vehicle for championing his
ideas for modern architecture.
The Duke and Duchess of York, no longer
formally a couple, led 400 guests at a fund-raising
gala - to which Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, also
officially an ex-couple, had been invited - at the still
fashionable Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park to
celebrate its 30th birthday. Following the
spectacular opening of Tate Modern, the two events cemented the
celebrity-pulling power of modern art.
The Prince's fund-raising dinner was in part a thank-you to people who
support the foundations in Britain and the United States. In the US, it backs
charitable issues and in Britain architectural and environmental causes. This
event drew Donatella Versace, Elle MacPherson, Joan Collins, Sir Richard
Branson, Joan Rivers and Valentino Garavani, the founder of the Valentino
fashion empire.
The Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles arrived in the same car. Mrs Parker
Bowles, who smiled broadly, was wearing a pale pink embroidered full-length
evening gown, believed to be by Versace. The appearance of Mrs Parker
Bowles was part of a concerted campaign by St James's Palace to gain public
acceptance for her.
At the Serpentine, the Duke and Duchess of York sat down to dinner with a
guest list that included Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, Yasmin Le Bon,
Viscount and Viscountess Linley, Stella McCartney, the Oppenheims,
Palumbos, Rothschilds and Saatchis.
Tables for the Serpentine anniversary dinner cost £10,000 each and the
gallery, once closely associated with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, was
hoping to raise £250,000 to split between itself and a charity, the UK
Children's Cancer Study Group. Recently modernised with £4 million from
the lottery, the gallery receives little subsidy and must raise £1.2 million a year
to keep open.
The Prince of Wales's dinner was held in a converted warehouse where his
foundation will run courses on all aspects of town planning. The Serpentine
guests ate in a marquee designed by the modernist architect Zaha Hadid and
were treated to a 10-minute comic monologue by the Hollywood actor Steve
Martin, a member of the fundraising committee.
To boost funds, the gallery auctioned gifts donated by supporters. Most
spectacular was a new cream-coloured Mini decorated by Damien Hirst with
his famous Spot motif. Diana, Princess of Wales helped to put the Serpentine
on the map. In 1994, on the night the Prince of Wales confessed on television
to his affair with Mrs Parker Bowles, the Princess showed her independence
by appearing for photographers at a Serpentine party wearing a black
cocktail dress.
Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the Serpentine, said last night that the British
had finally learned how to mix art and glamour.
~*~
Ascot doffs its hat to Countess's
new jewels (UK Times)
BY ALEX O'CONNELL
ASCOT'S fashionistas, who are usually preoccupied with
ladies' headwear, found their attentions drawn yesterday
to the Countess of Wessex, who arrived in a dazzling set
of new jewels.
The Earl of Wessex and his wife celebrated their first
wedding anniversary on Monday and yesterday bets were
being placed on whether the Countess's diamonds and
pearls were a present from her husband.
Resting just above the line of her bodice, the necklace
encompassed three strands of pearls and two interlinked
love hearts encrusted with diamonds. The same hearts
were on a brooch pinned to her cream suit jacket.
Diamond tear-drop earrings hung from her lobes.
The couple spent their anniversay at Bagshott Park, a
romantic Victorian mansion in Surrey, and royal insiders
believe that the Earl may have chosen that evening to
present his wife with an anniversary present.
As she posed for pictures yesterday she glanced down at
the necklace with a glint in her eye, suggesting it was its
first public outing. Buckingham Palace was unable to
confirm where the jewels came from. A spokesman said:
"Nobody knows. The only people who know will be
them."
Whereas the Earl and Countess arrived in a private car,
the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales,
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess
Margaret were driven up to the Royal Enclosure in
horse-drawn carriages.
The Queen Mother looked radiant
in a turquoise outfit, and the Queen
had chosen an eye-catching lime
green suit and matching hat.
Princess Margaret, in peach,
stepped out of her carriage unaided
and walked confidently showing
little sign of the foot injury that left
her debilitated for so many months.
The Princess Royal arrived alone
on foot through the public gates.
Wearing a lemon suit and white hat, she strode forcefully
towards the betting stands.
Catching the eyes of Ascot's more traditional devotees
was Melissa Hartman, 25, a music graduate from Brixton,
South London, whose dress tested the usual fashion code.
A long burgundy linen creation with a large hole around
the stomach exposed her navel and a cannabis leaf tattoo.
The tattoo was eight years old, she said, and the dress
had been designed about the same time by her friend
Karen Dykema for a fashion degree show. Miss Hartman,
who works at Brockbank, the insurance underwriters, in
London, said: "I'm not worried about wearing it. It did not
even cross my mind that it was risqué."
Other guests included the socialite Ivana Trump, who
arrived fashionably late in a light-coloured Thierry Mugler
suit and a hat by the milliner Deida Acero. The Rolling
Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood brought his 22-year-old
son Jesse, whose relationship with the model Kate Moss
ended recently. Speaking for the first time about the affair,
which began in January this year, he said: "It's been six
weeks since we split up but we are still very good
friends." Before going out with Miss Moss, Mr Wood had
a four-year relationship with the aristocratic model
Jasmine Guinness.
Other racing enthusiasts included the former royal nanny
Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who looked motherly in a navy blue
suit and wide-brimmed straw hat. Also present were Sir
Clement Freud, Sir David Frost and his wife Lady Carina,
Andrew Parker Bowles, former husband of Camilla, and
Anthea Turner, the television presenter.
~*~
The battle of Wills (UK Times)
The aplomb with which Prince
William has handled the press
and TV coverage of his 18th
birthday bodes well for his
dealings with the first of the two
many-headed national
institutions - the media and the
monarchy - which are going to
haunt his life.
William is "grateful to the
media," he said, for helping to
protect his privacy at Eton.
Those are four words which
have never issued from his father's lips - even in the good
times, when a sycophantic Fleet Street boosted the
monarchy through the serial weddings and births of the
1980s, before Charles's infidelity to Diana, Princess of
Wales, sparked the subsequent royal implosion.
Charles has hated the "reptiles" of the press since he was 14,
when a freelance journalist caught the under-age prince
ordering a cherry brandy in a Scottish pub. So doubly good
for William to set aside the petty squabbles over isolated
incidents, the referrals to the Press Complaints Commission,
the overprotective protests of St James's Palace, and muster
the courtesy to express his no doubt sincere gratitude.
William is already showing signs of his mother's media savvy
without his father's lifelong rancour. If the same tentative
"truce" holds while he is at university, and he is left alone to
"concentrate on my work and enjoy being with my friends
without being followed by cameras", many of the bruises left
by the manner of his mother's death will have healed by his
21st birthday, when he will formally be launched upon public
life.
If William has learnt anything from his mother's example, it is
that he will need the media quite as much as they need him.
The art of public relations is a busy two-way street.
The potential darling of raincoat reporters and purple-prose
pundits, picture editors and paparazzi, William will prove the
hottest media property of the 21st century. There is every
sign that he will have the nous to use this to his personal
advantage.
His life has been a master-class in how (and how not) to
handle the inevitable - and justified - popular demands on
those in positions of unique, if unearned privilege. Since his
birth, he has been regularly wheeled on by his parents for
photo opportunities, which often wound up on their
Christmas cards, portraying the useful (if, as it turned out,
false) image of an uncomplicated happy nuclear Royal
Family.
Was this public relations or parent-child exploitation? There
can be a thin dividing line between the two, on which
William's life is uncomfortably perched. A week after taking
The Mirror to the Press Complaints Commission for
reporting a sporting injury to one of his sons, Charles
prefaced a public speech with some light-hearted remarks
about their accident-proneness.
The heir to the throne can't have it both ways, as he is slowly
and painfully learning in the matter of his
mistress-turned-consort (whom he will inevitably have to
marry or give up if he wants to be King).
Charles belongs to a generation of royalty bred to think that
it can have everything both ways. William is more a child of
his times. In this as in media matters, he has a chance to learn
from his father's many mistakes. Thus far in his young life, off
to a flying start in the goodwill stakes, the teenage prince has
made just one conspicuous error. In true
chip-off-the-old-block style he flaunted his foxhunting, in
defiance of public opinion and government policy - an act of
"arrogance", as The Daily Express yelled, which presaged
an abrupt end to his media honeymoon if he shows such
contempt for hoi polloi again.
While haughty indifference to public opinion has always been
Charles's fatal flaw, the precise opposite was the secret of
Diana's huge popular success.
William, of all people, well knows which of his parents
effortlessly won their media feuds. For all Diana's tantrums
with the press, she proved her own best public relations
adviser, blessed with a canny instinct for using the media to
her own ends: those well-timed speeches, for instance, that
knowingly upstaged her husband's, or those poignant
"postcards home" from the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal,
craftily signalling her loneliness within that overcrowded
marriage.
If Diana was winning the media battles, Charles and the
status quo were always bound to win the constitutional war.
William, too, has the might of the Establishment on his side.
But the toughest moments of his life so far, apart from his
mother's death, must have come when both his parents
chose to confess to adultery on global TV. Both interviews
badly backfired.
It is to be hoped that William never needs to resort to such
grandstanding.
There were times during his schooldays when William
dreaded his mother's visits to Eton, so uncomfortable was he
with the flotilla of press swarming around her as inevitably as
corgis around his granny. So it is again reassuring that he has
looked the camera in the eye and made his peace by treating
its inevitable interest in his 18th birthday with such easy
charm.
"I haven't really thought about that," his constant refrain in
answer to polite, pertinent questions, bodes well for a new
era of royal discretion, after years of the Windsors invading
our privacy by revealing far more than we wanted to know.
Blessed with his mother's good looks, William can go a long
way by barely opening his mouth. In the interim, he must
ensure that all dalliances with nubile young maidens take
place far from the prying lenses of money-hungry paparazzi.
While he is at university, and hoping to keep those prying
lenses at bay a while longer, William must also take the
chance to think through the Royal Family's symbiotic
relationship with the media, self-styled tribunes of the people,
reflecting the huge public interest which will attend his every
move - and justifiably so as long as the world's richest family
continues to choose to live at public expense.
With subsidy goes accountability. This is a truth his father has
never been able to grasp. In time, of course, if William is
really The Times's "young man epitomising modern Britain",
his smartest move would be to dispense with the Civil List
and live off his family's vast inherited wealth.
Then he could deal with the press on his own terms. In the
interim, some assertion of independence from the apparently
protective, but in truth Macchiavellian, tentacles of the St
James's Palace machine would be a very healthy sign.
There are already indications that he and Harry to some
extent feel used by their father - in his private war with his
parents over Camilla, for instance. Who authorised the
release of the news that William had met and "approved" his
father's girlfriend, the woman who ruined his mother's life?
Does Charles even begin to see how exploitative that is - far
more so than any trivial titbit he has referred to the PCC?
Charles's spinmeister Mark Bolland has established his job
security with his boss by making himself indispensable to
Mrs Parker Bowles.
The recently departed press secretary, Sandy Henney, was
visibly uneasy with Bolland's use of the children, and known
to be looking for an excuse to leave.
As William watches his father take on his own parents
(keeping his sons away from their grandmother, for instance,
as at Easter, until she showed some sign of relenting over
Camilla), he will learn that it is well within the rules of the
royal game to take the occasional anti-parental stand.
Press and people alike wish him well, and will soon learn not
to believe everything his father's office says he is thinking,
about Camilla or whatever else.
Some Spencer assertion of his own adult identity - pointing
out, for instance, that parental exploitation is as unwelcome
as unwarranted press intrusion - would prove the best
possible start to his potentially charmed life as a Windsor.