King Charles by Robert Jobson
/King Charles: The Man, the Monarch, and the Future of Britain
By Robert Jobson
Diversion Books, 2019
The US title of Robert Jobson’s 2018 biographical portrait of Prince Charles, King Charles, is enough to give historically-minded Royal aficionados a bit of a pause, since in 2019 Charles is Prince of Wales, and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, could very well occupy the Throne for another decade. Under King Henry VIII, such presumption would have cost its author his life; under Elizabeth I, only slightly less nerve cost a publisher his hand. The book’s UK title, Charles at Seventy, has none of these problems, of course, but an editorial team might have worried that a US audience wouldn’t automatically know who “Charles” is or recognize his famously hangdog face on the cover.
To put it mildly, this note of overreaching presumption continues on the book’s first page, when Jobson, the Royal Editor of the London Evening Standard, extensively quotes from all the positive reviews his book garnered in the UK, concludes “Such positive responses are both humbling and gratifying,” (gratifying no doubt, but obviously not humbling) and proceeds to backbite one critic who dared to pan the book. Not the most auspicious beginning for a book, but neatly in line with the popular image of Prince Charles as being both querulous and thin-skinned.
The occupational title “Royal Editor” is a clear enough giveaway of what readers can expect: access bought with deference. Jobson spent months traveling with the Prince, attending the kinds of anodyne events over which Charles typically presides. These events - dedications, commemorations, charity initiatives - are impossible for even the most skilled writer to render actually interesting; the only possible glimmer of interest they hold is the presence of the Prince himself, which is very much the point. But a courtier like Jobson can’t ever come out and say that’s the point, and the point is dulled in any case by the fact that Charles has been doing this every day, week in and week out, for well over a half a century … that glimmer of interest has been reduced to a faint ember by simple rote repetition.
Apart from the schedule, there is the biography, by now so well-known to Royals readers that even Jobson, a lively enough writer when the spirit moves him, can only hope that concision will ease some of the contempt of familiarity. We get the standard Palace line about the close friendship between Charles and the Queen Mother, a friendship Jobson calls “completely mutual adoration.” Their sense of humor was the same, we’re told, and the Queen Mother “instilled a love of culture in him, taking him to the ballet when he was very young and walking him through the corridors of Windsor Castle explaining all the paintings.” (The Prince’s very obvious lack of interest, let alone love, for “culture” in the last 60 years isn’t alluded to) We get the doomed marriage to Diana Spencer (details of which will doubtless account for most of the book’s attention in the US market, as it did in the UK). And we get stout defenses of Camilla, the Prince’s second wife, who has, we’re informed, “earned her stripes” in the family Firm. “She will, I am told, be deservedly given the correct rank when the time comes,” Jobson writes, employing his surprisingly limited stock of euphemisms for “when the Queen dies.” “Charles will rightly insist on it.” (Apparently, polling indicates the British hoi-polloi prefer “Queen Consort” to “Queen,” although who “told” Jobson how such a thing will be decided is unclear)
King Charles includes all these requisite biological mentions, but the book doesn’t seem to want to be a formal biography. Rather, it’s an extended recommendation for a job Charles can only get when his mother dies. Jobson is forever pausing his narrative to stress that Charles is ready, ready, ready: nobody in the history of England has ever been readier. It’s generally a smooth job, although it fumbles badly in the last half-dozen pages, when Jobson’s assurance about the Prince’s preparation extends to how well he handled a recent state visit made by boorish US president Donald Trump:
There is no doubt Charles is ready for the top job, prepared to put any overt lobbying to one side as the day he ascends the crown draws ever nearer. The Queen has met all the US presidents apart from Lyndon Johnson. For Charles, Mr. Trump’s visit was a landmark moment. He was the first serving American president to meet the prince on such intimate terms. It was undoubtedly a challenge, but one our next monarch rose to with aplomb.
The account includes Trump tweets complete with misspellings and dissociative ramblings, for all the world as if they were the same kind of thing quoted from every other head of state in the entire book. The goal is clear: to keep the focus on Charles the statesman. But with friends like these ...
—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Historical Novel Society, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Washington Post, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.