Nothing about Camilla Shand’s beginnings seemed destined to end on a throne. Girls like Camilla were expected to marry well, breed enthusiastically and spend their days running ramshackle houses and, for most of her life, she did just that. “She didn’t stand out in any way,” a teacher once said. “There was nothing special about her.” But this apparently unremarkable upper-middle-class girl had a youthful dalliance, which became an extramarital romance and ultimately, in middle age, the enduring love story of two lives, with Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Lord of the Isles and heir to the throne. Sometimes, she once observed, you have to stick your head above the parapet. Ironically, she never wanted to. Somehow, she ended up
HILARY ROSE
The real Queen Camilla and the love story behind the throne
How did a posh good-time girl become the most important person in the King’s world? As Charles and Camilla celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary, Hilary Rose looks at how a scandalous affair turned into an enduring passion
Queen Camilla, 77. “She has no desire for position or power. She is as unlike Mrs Simpson as you could be”
MAX MUMBY/GETTY IMAGES
The Times
PROMOTED CONTENT