The Duchess: The Untold Story – the explosive biography, as seen in the Daily Mail. Penny Junor
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company. They did; they became lifelong friends – but never in a romantic way. Lucia has repeatedly been credited with being the Prince’s first lover but this could not be further from the truth. She already had a serious boyfriend, the man who is now her husband, Juan Luis Ossa Bulnes, and they have children and grandchildren together in Chile. Charles is their eldest son’s godfather.
Lucia’s parents went back to Chile in November 1970, after Salvador Allende became president, bringing in a Marxist government and bringing an end to her father’s time at the embassy. It was a difficult period for her but because of the political uncertainty, she stayed on in London to fend for herself, living at Stack House, a block of flats in Ebury Street, Belgravia. She was on the first floor and her neighbour in the flat below was Camilla Shand, then sharing with her friend the Hon. Virginia Carington, whose father was the Conservative politician Lord Carrington.
Lucia and Camilla already knew one another socially – they moved in the same circles – but as neighbours they became good friends and Camilla took Lucia under her wing. They were in and out of each other’s flats every day, borrowing clothes, going to the same parties and dances – and at weekends Camilla would take Lucia down to her parents’ house in the East Sussex countryside. Lucia spent that first Christmas with the family and woke up on Christmas Day, as all the young did, to a pillowcase full of presents at the end of her bed, delivered by Father Christmas. And downstairs there were more presents. Every time she went, she was made to feel at home; they were always welcoming and generous to friends, and with her own parents so far away it meant a lot. One of her most treasured memories was asking Camilla’s father, Bruce, about the Second World War, whereupon he described to her some of the experiences that led to his capture by the Germans. He went on to write a book about it, Previous Engagements, published in 1990, but at the time his family had never heard him speak about it.
Camilla was dating Andrew Parker Bowles, and Lucia inevitably knew all about him. They had first met in March 1965 at her ‘coming out’ party as a debutante – a cocktail party for 150 people given by her mother at Searcy’s, a smart venue behind Harrods in Knightsbridge. He was twenty-five and a rather beautiful officer in the Household Cavalry; she was seventeen but remarkably self-assured. She was good company, well read and intelligent – but neither university nor serious work had ever been in her game plan. She wanted nothing more than to be an upper-class country wife with children and horses and an enjoyable social life.
Being a debutante is a custom long gone – some would say mercifully – but the upper classes once used to launch their seventeen-year-old daughters into society in the hope of finding them an eligible husband. For the season, a year, they partied seamlessly night after night, weekend after weekend. Each party was a concentration of privilege and titles, all chronicled in two glossy magazines, Tatler and Queen. The highlight, and the glitziest of the lot, was Queen Charlotte’s Ball, a huge charity event held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, a confetti of conspicuous wealth. And if nothing else, that season ensured these young women would have connections and invitations for life. The men were known as ‘debs’ delights’ and while the girls could only do one season, the boys – so long as they were bachelors – could carry on reaping the benefits of other people’s hospitality year after year. All they needed to ensure the invitations kept coming was access to the right kit – namely a white tie – and an ability to charm the mothers.
The whole thing dated back to 1780 when King George III held a ball in honour of his wife, Queen Charlotte, to celebrate her birthday and to raise money for the maternity hospital which bears her name; the centrepiece was a large cake. It became an annual event at which several hundred nubile girls were formally presented at court – and it was held at Buckingham Palace until 1958, when the Duke of Edinburgh pointed out that the whole thing was ‘bloody daft’ and his sister-in-law, Princess Margaret, said that ‘every tart in London was getting in’. By the time Camilla came out, Queen Charlotte’s Ball was held at the Grosvenor House, and the ‘Queen’ to which the girls were presented was nothing more regal than a giant cake.
Andrew was a debs’ delight par excellence. One of his partners in crime was Nic Paravicini, a fellow officer and polo-playing friend who later became his brother-in-law and business partner, being married to Andrew’s sister, Mary Ann. The couple subsequently divorced, but Andrew and Nic remain good friends. Footloose and fancy-free in those early days, and based with their regiment at Knightsbridge Barracks, they were geographically at the centre of all the action, and were two of a kind. Andrew was charming, smooth talking and debonair, and thanks to his Army training and riding he was slim and fit in every sense of the word. All the women were after him, some of them married – and he knew it, and reaped the benefits. He was one of the most attractive young men on the deb circuit, and a good catch too: he has noble blood coursing through him and connections with royalty going back generations. His parents, particularly his father, Derek, were close friends of the Queen Mother and in 1953, at the age of thirteen, he was a page boy at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Camilla may have had a boyfriend at the time of her coming out party – she was hugely popular with boys from an early age – but she noticed Andrew that night, and he her.
Soon afterwards he disappeared to the other side of the world to be aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Bernard Fergusson. They didn’t meet again until 1966, at a dance in Scotland, shortly after his return. She was looking very pretty, as usual, and the centre of attention, as usual, so he went over to her and simply said, ‘Let’s dance.’ They danced, and she fell in love. It was the beginning of a long and torturous romance – torturous because she became a puppet on a string. He was hugely fond of her, and she was nominally his girlfriend – she spent innumerable weekends with him at his parents’ house near Newbury with all his siblings and their friends, but he couldn’t resist other women, and what was particularly hurtful was that many of them were her friends.
Occasionally she retaliated. One night she spotted Andrew’s car parked outside the flat of one of her best friends, so she wrote a rude message in lipstick on the windscreen and let all the air out of his tyres. But curiously, for such a strong, confident and intelligent woman, she put up with his behaviour – possibly because as well as being strong and confident, she has also always been determined and stubborn, and once she had made her mind up that she wanted to marry Andrew, nothing was going to stop her.
Lucia decided her friend needed to meet the Prince of Wales, who had no satisfactory girlfriend, and so she contrived to introduce them to one another. It happened on an evening in 1971 when Lucia and the Prince had arranged to go out together; she told him to come early, she had ‘just the girl’ for him and described Camilla as having ‘enormous sympathy, warmth and natural character’. Charles had recently been in Japan and had brought a present for Lucia, a little box, and knowing he was to meet her friend Camilla, he’d brought a gift for her too. As Lucia made the introductions she joked, ‘Now you two be very careful, you’ve got genetic antecedents’ – referring to Alice Keppel, Camilla’s great-grandmother, who had famously been a long-term mistress of King Edward VII, Charles’s great-great-grandfather. ‘Careful, CAREFUL!’
In Lucia’s first-floor flat that evening, there was an immediate attraction between the two of them and an instant rapport; Charles loved that she smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things he did. He also liked that she was so natural and easy and friendly, not in any way overawed by him, not fawning or sycophantic. He was very taken with her and after that first meeting he began ringing her up. Then they met and he continued to feel easy in her company. But it was a busy time for him and he was seldom at home.
Charles was young and shy, only twenty-two, and in the midst of intensive military training. He had just qualified as a jet pilot with the Royal Air Force, and was about to embark on a career in the Royal Navy. He loved flying – he had taken it up at university and had a natural aptitude for it – but the Navy was a family tradition, and boats were deemed safer for the heir to the throne than jets, so that was where he was ultimately headed. He passed out of RAF College at Cranwell having earned his wings in just under five months – rather than the normal twelve – with the highest commendation, and having won membership of the exclusive Ten Ton Club by flying at more than 1,000 mph. He was in the back seat of