No one writes about the royals as Tina Brown does. The award-winning journalist, who has been editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, wrote The Diana Chronicles in 2007—an instant bestseller. Her latest book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil, is a sequel. In an exclusive interview with Mandira Nayar in July, she looks deep into the psyche of the royals.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
You have said that the British will not know what it is to be British without the queen. We are almost at the end of an era. What next?
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It is actually a very perilous time for the monarchy. The great thing about the queen [is], while all the madness happened with her family, she was always the still centre of the storm. It was always ‘everything would be okay ultimately,’ because she was there to keep calm and carry on. Now things are very fragile, but we will not have her to keep calm and carry on, because she is not in good health.
People are poised for what is known as Operation London Bridge, which is the code word for when the queen finally does leave us. There is a big sense of anxiety about that and a desire for Prince Charles to be buffed up and strengthened in his whole persona. Just when that is trying to happen, it was suddenly revealed that he took suitcases of cash from a UAE dignitary. [Though] it was not for himself but for his philanthropy, it makes people concerned about his judgment again, and about how he is going to
manage.
There is [also] anxiety about how they are going to keep Prince Andrew quiet. In medieval days, Andrew would have been banished to some castle in Scotland or beheaded. But where do you stash a very healthy 62-year-old man who hasn’t got the memo that nobody wants to see him anymore? There he was, on the day of the Order of the Garter ceremony, the most dignified ceremony at Windsor Castle, trying to push his way in, until Prince William and Charles put their foot down and said, no, he can't be there.
So you get a sense of a lot of perilous stuff happening behind the scenes. [But] the fact is that there isn't a great movement to get rid of the monarchy. But I don't think that Britain would tolerate a weak or disreputable monarch. In past centuries, it hasn't really mattered. But it would matter now. We have had 70 years of an unblemished record of the queen. No one is going to put up with anything less.
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Q/ The queen has represented a sense of integrity. With Boris Johnson, there is disillusionment.
A/ You could not be more right. The most poignant example of that was the imagery of the queen sitting alone at her husband's funeral. It was a tiny little funeral, because she was so dutifully following Covid rules. That very night before Boris Johnson had hosted a bibulous party at Downing Street breaking all of his own Covid rules. It was such duality, and it was interesting that the only person who got booed at the Platinum Jubilee was Boris Johnson. That really says a great deal.
Q/ You have this great imagery of Charles as the man who has been in the waiting room for so long. As you said, there is a Calamity Jane sort of thread that runs through his life. Like when he was going to marry Camilla.
A/ Even the pope died on his wedding day! One of the things that Charles likes to say about himself, which sums him up, is: Oh, just my luck. Nothing ever goes according to plan for Charles. When he sets foot abroad, hoping that he is going to get publicity and plaudits for his environmental agenda, one of his children does something catastrophic at home. Actually, in this last instance, he has had luck for the first time in his life, because the cash being delivered to him in Fortnum & Mason bags for his foundation was dominating the news.
Q/ I think the heroine of this book really is Camilla.
A/ Right. I became very fond of Camilla in the course of this book. She is humorous, gracious, strong, salty, robust. And she just simply gets on with it. In a way she resembles the queen. She doesn't complain, she doesn't explain. She has had worse press than anyone could possibly imagine. The press have called her old hag, old witch, old bag, old trout. In fact, she often signs her letters to Charles ‘Your devoted Old Bag’. She has been called an old bag so many times, but she laughs about it. I am sure it has caused her some pain. But she has just got on with it. And there is something very appealing about that.
There is a lot that people love about the British character in Camilla. She is absolutely a quintessential, keep-calm-and-carry-on kind of a woman. And she does it with a great sense of humour. She laughs and laughs, and being in her company is always a lot of fun.
Q/ You also talk about the calming effect she has on Charles.
A/ Actually, I call her the horse whisperer of his emotional needs. [But] she knows how to get in tough love when necessary. She will say, ‘for goodness sake, give me that drink, I'll do it. Don't ask the butler to do it.’ She is very forthright, but he takes it because he knows it is done with a lot of love.
Q/ When Charles becomes king, do you think Diana will hang around as a ghost, in a way, because she was so loved?
A/ The ghost of Diana was beginning to settle but now we have in Prince Harry another flame thrower, just like his mother. When he throws his bombs, I no longer think that Diana's ghost has been exorcised. He uses Diana as his standard bearer of grievance. People say Diana would be pleased with the way Harry has rebelled and left. I don't think that is true. Although she was such a bomb thrower, she was also a monarchist. She would not have left the royal family if she had not got divorced. She found the palace maddening and stuffy and oppressive, but she also understood what monarchy gave her. She understood that when she shook hands with the Aids patient, without gloves, in the walkabout in Middlesex Hospital in London, in the early 80s. That gesture had its potency because she was the Princess of Wales, because she was royal. She never gave up Kensington Palace, she did not flee the country and go and live in California or Paris. She stayed very firmly in Kensington Palace, and always felt that being royal was a quintessential part of her identity, an essential part of her ability to make change.
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Q/ What role do princesses actually have is a question that keeps coming back.
A/ It does keep coming back. Because, the family is human, and women of spirit and passion come into the monarchy and are unmanageable as they are in any family. Princess Margaret was a rebel, she wanted love, she felt ill used by having not enough to do. But Diana was a transformational presence, she really did have a vision of what she wanted to do, and proceeded to do it. And, in a way, changed the face of monarchy forever by her humanitarian gifts, and her desire to show what she could do with this extraordinary position. Instead of just doing kind of retail walkabouts, and going to various countries and shaking hands, she turned each of those moments into something of an enormously different level.
Q/ Yes, a different level.
A/ A completely different level. And so she is not an easy act to follow, because she was also such a tremendously interesting mixed bag; not everything admirable about her. In this book, much more than in The Diana Chronicles, I have tried to talk about the impact that Diana had as a mother on her boys, and how it was not all good.
The boys lost their mother at 36; she was a wonderful, beautiful, loving, caring mother. But she also caused them a lot of pain. She did those TV interviews where she went public with her affair with James Hewitt, where she denigrated their father. These boys had to watch this on television, and they were at school being teased. It was a tremendously painful thing for them.
Q/ You bring that out quite wonderfully, and painfully, when you talk about Prince William, how she calls him her wise man.
A/ This is the irony. He was such a judicious young man that she came to depend on him very much, as a sort of replacement husband sometimes. She would bring him into press meetings. She brought him to lunch with the tabloid flame thrower Piers Morgan, who was anathema to the royal family. It is inconceivable today that Princess Kate would do that with any of her children; she would feel it is a reckless, crazy thing to do. But Diana did these things. And people forget the effect that must have had on William as he sat there, while she talked to Piers Morgan about her affair. It was extraordinary.
Q/ While William found a way to deal with the pain of watching his mother unravel, Prince Harry was very disturbed.
A/ What I found in my reporting, actually something I did not realise, was that the family were very much aware of Harry's fragility, for a very long time. They knew that there were real problems with Harry. It was one of the reasons why he was so keen to go into the army. While in the army for 10 years, he was immensely supported, protected. He was a superb soldier and he loved it. He felt the protection, the privacy that you get by being part of a military team, treated like everybody else, and shielded from the press. He was more at home on the frontline in Afghanistan, than he was being photographed coming out of nightclubs; he felt that this was his manly fulfilment. Harry proved that he was a leader of men in the army; he was very successful in the army.
It was actually a tragedy for Harry that he had to come out of the army. Everyone in the family was very nervous when he came out of the army because they knew that he was a bit of a ticking time bomb.
In Eton he used to get into fights. He should not have been at Eton because academically he found it very, very hard to keep up. He felt secondary, all the time, to William who was able to keep up. William was no academic star, but he was fine academically.
So the family understood that Harry was fragile. From the time he was an adolescent, he had tabloid reporters stalking him, hacking his phones, the phones of his girlfriends. It was just hideous what they were doing to him. Having lost his mother in that press car chase in the Paris tunnel, it left him with a residue of enormous anger. Every time anyone from the press emerged from the shadows with a camera, he would go absolutely ballistic. His girlfriends found it maddening. One guy with a camera would come out, and Harry would just do a U turn in the road and just squeal back to his apartment, his little house at Kensington Palace, and order in pizza. That was it, no more going out. He would be in a sulphurous mood for the rest of the night.
Q/ While Harry hates the press, his life now depends on [limelight].
A/ This has baffled his family. Nobody thought that he would go off and live a life of a celebrity, sort of instagrammer, in Montecito. They thought he would be off in the country, probably farming in Scotland or in South Africa, where he would be off the grid, almost. He right now has reality show cameras in his house in Montecito. No one expected that; there is an enormous sense that he has gone off the rails. And more important, Harry is now writing a memoir, which has upset the family; it is hanging over them. They don't know who he is going to blame or trash. There is a great fear that he will lay into Camilla, his father and his brother. No one expects him to say anything amiss about the queen.
Q/ He has been playing $20 million, so he is going to need a tell-all.
A/ He is not being paid $20 million to talk about his life in the army, for sure. They should pay him to withdraw it, because I don't see how the family can really deal with yet another round of toxic revelations from Harry.
Q/ You wrote a lot about Meghan.
A/ Meghan was utterly deluded about what she thought being married to Prince Harry was. Harry is number six on the royal call sheet. He is quite low on the pecking order. Megan just had not done her homework. She said on Oprah [show], ‘I didn't do any research.’ You bet she didn't. I wish she had been able to read my book before she boarded the plane for England. She really did believe it was going to be fairy castles. She was going to be Princess Diana, travelling the world as the big humanitarian princess, in a kind of combination of Angelina Jolie, Diana and Michelle Obama.
She found herself, in the end, unable to have a voice. That was one of her great complaints. But when you marry into monarchy, it is a bit like a secular version of taking the vow—you are supposed to represent the country and keep your private opinions to yourself. That is the exact opposite of what Meghan wants. I can see how frustrating that was, for a very accomplished career woman with an agenda.
She was stuck as well in what she saw as a kind of underfunded operation. She wanted more staff, a much bigger platform, she did not even have a grand house. For the first year, they lived in the middle of Nottingham Cottage, which is a little like Harry's bachelor apartment.
Q/ She thought it was going to be a Disney version.
A/ The press in England are very, very tough. They were racist when the news of her was first covered. There was definitely tabloid, misogynistic, racist colouring to the coverage. Then she enraged the press, too, by accepting private plane trips to stay with Elton John. She didn't go to the Balmoral to stay with the queen; she turned down that invitation.
Q/ In some ways all of them are actually looking for approval.
A/The Windsors are a fascinatingly dysfunctional family. When Meghan talked about all these difficulties with the family, I thought to myself, ‘try marrying into the Ambani family’. I am not suggesting there is anything particularly bad about that. I just think that probably it is not easy for an American girl married in the Ambani family, just as it is to marry into the Rupert Murdoch family or the Rothschild family. These big dynastic families are very difficult places to inhabit.
I don’t think the Windsors are that different from from any of these kinds of families. To survive in them, you have to be willing to drink Kool-Aid and decide, ‘I am going to learn the rules, and play them to my best advantage.’ And that is what Kate has done.
Kate is one of the most amazing figures in this entire story, this girl from an affluent middle class family in the country. When she married William in 2011, people said how will this go, how she will ever adjust to becoming the future queen. Well, now, people say, how would the family survive without [her].
Family has turned out to be very, very important yet again. Kate's family is a very solid family, just as Camilla's family is. This critical thing you have to have, to be able to live and survive in these situations, is your own support system. Camilla’s support system was a very, very loving family and siblings.
Kate's family has been a remarkable ring of steel around her. Her mother, Carol, was one of my favourite characters, because she is the archetypal, managing mother. Without being heavy-handed, she has helped to guide and steer and shield and encourage and push to get Kate where she is. She is Kate's confidant, which means that secrets don't end up in the press. Her two siblings have been immensely loyal. The Middleton family should get their own Nobel Prize for just creating a situation where the monarchy can survive. That is what Kate has had from that background. It has made her a very stable, composed individual.
Q/ What do you see when Charles becomes king?
A/ Charles is obviously a transitional monarch. We don't know how short his reign will be. But he is stepping into the role at a time when his own passions—organic farming, climate, the endangered and such—are also those of the nation and of the world. He was immensely prescient about it all. And that sense gives him a kind of stature. So he can be a great convener. I think he will use his position as king to bring together people who share like-minded views about the environment and about youth unemployment, which he cares enormously about.
He is going to have to downsize as well. He is already talking about making Balmoral a museum of the queen. He doesn't want to live there. He prefers Burke Hall, which is the house far on the estate that used to belong to the Queen Mother. He is very happy there. His reign ought to be about preparing things for William. If he can do that successfully, and then step out, things will be fine. Depends how long it goes on.
Q/ There is the love story of the queen and Prince Philip. She went against convention, followed her heart.
A/ It was one of the few times that the queen decided that she was not going to listen to anybody. This was a great marriage; it had its problems. Philip did have something of a roving eye, but he was absolutely devoted to serving her, to being the consort and the spouse that she required. And he kept her real. That was the best thing he did for the queen. He was funny, abrasive, often did very embarrassing or politically incorrect things. But he kept her real. She knew he would always tell her the truth. And he did. He vowed to be her liege lord, who would serve her, and he did right to the end. It is a very moving story, because she adored him. In his own way he was devoted to her.