William's Princess

‘Ultimately I think journalism gets measured by the quality
of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics
associated with us, but, is it good news quality information
that defines who somebody is?’
BOB WOODWOOD, REPORTER

Wednesday, 9 February 2005, 2:43 p.m. ‘ Get yourself to a phone box and call me back. It’s urgent.’
There was no need to ask who it was. I recognised the
caller’s voice instantly and I knew from the tone that it was
serious. From the regular, irritating beeps on the line I knew
that the caller was inside a public phone box. Even members
of the British royal family have been famously caught out
making indiscreet telephone calls on mobiles. It happened
to both the Prince and Princess of Wales when they spoke
too freely to their lovers on mobile phones. They could only
watch as the resultant royal scandals, Camillagate and
Squidgygate, rolled excruciatingly across the front pages of
the tabloid press. My ‘deep throat’ contact, an impeccable
inside source, was not that naïve.
The source knew that the only way to defeat anyone intent
on listening in to private conversations, whether they are
spooks working for the intelligence services or investigative
journalists, is by a phone box to phone box call. It is utterly
untraceable and totally deniable.
It was a cold, clear afternoon. I was travelling in the back
of a black London taxi when that telephone call cut across
my day. I had been on my way to meet an old contact at the
Wolseley, a smart new restaurant frequented by film stars,
writers, actors and those with the wealth, or the expense
accounts, to be seen there. But in an instant everything was
put on hold. I was in Piccadilly, at the heart of London’s
busy West End. I told the cabby to pull over at the first public
phone box he could see. I knew every second counted. I had
to make that call. I had to know what my contact was so
eager to tell me.
Typically, almost laughably, the first telephone I tried was
out of order. After what felt like an age I eventually found
one that worked. And what I was told astounded me. It was
sensational; the journalistic scoop of a lifetime and a story
that would change the face of the monarchy forever.
Philip Graham, who published the Washington Post for
nearly two decades, described journalism as the ‘first
rough draft of history’. As I absorbed what I was being told
I knew that history was unfolding on that crisp afternoon
in London.
My source was curt and to the point: ‘Three things: HMQ
[Her Majesty the Queen] is seeing the PM [Prime Minister]
on Friday, topic for conversation is the PoW’s [Prince of
Wales] wedding. She has agreed he can marry his lady. They
will do it on 8 April at Windsor Castle.’
As I scribbled the information in longhand in my red
notebook I could hardly believe it. This was the biggest story
of my life, the culmination of a decade and a half of
reporting on Britain’s first family for various news and
broadcast organisations from all over the world.
If I had learned anything during that time it was that the
British royal family are fiercely protective of their personal
lives. It is their territory, their domain and they do their own
announcements. It almost defied belief that the news that
the heir to the throne was to remarry and that the bride was
to be the woman who had been his mistress, on and off, for
the best part of three decades, had seeped out of the family’s
control and into my notebook. This was a bombshell.
It was a story that would bounce around the world as soon
as it was known. And I could only hope that I could hold
onto the scoop without anyone else getting the information.
It was going to be a long 24 hours. To my surprise I was calm,
calmer than I could ever have imagined. The same source
had led me to believe that this marriage was on the cards
some six weeks earlier. But it was not enough.
On 14 December 2004 I had already written a report in
London’s Evening Standard – a respected 179-year-old
newspaper with a pedigree for accuracy and a fast
turnaround of stories – revealing that Charles believed
himself free to take his long-term mistress as his wife. A few
ill-informed columnists poured scorn on the notion: they
may have had access to only second- or third-hand
information but that did not stop them knocking my story
and pontificating on it.
When I spoke to my good friend and mentor Ian Walker,
the assistant editor and head of news operations at the
Evening Standard, he rightly said that we could not write
another story suggesting a future marriage between the
couple without hard evidence. No matter how deep my
source’s conviction that a decision to marry had been taken
we needed more. We needed something specific. We
needed a date. Now, incredibly, I had it.
It was without doubt the biggest story of my career. The
future king was to marry his former mistress – and I knew
about it even before Her Majesty the Queen had formally
informed the Prime Minister. This was what it was all about;
the reason why journalism is a vocation and not just a job.
I flagged down a taxi and telephoned Ian. He was the only
person I could truly trust professionally with a story of this
magnitude. I had worked with him for many years at my
previous newspaper, the Daily Express, and there is an old
Fleet Street expression: ‘Once an Express man always an
Express man.’ It was never truer than in this case. It was too
late, just, for the story to make the last edition of the Evening
Standard. Besides, this had to be carefully thought through.
Ian would recognise that and would know how to handle it.
In Hollywood movies featuring journalists and
newspapers it always seems so simple. The anxious, selfdoubting
reporter gleans the information and runs to a
telephone box to file his copy down the line. In barely a
breath his scrambled words are assembled on the page and
the finished article with his or her name proudly by-lined at
the top goes to press. Another exclusive is secured.
Everything goes without a hitch. The reality is rarely so
straightforward.
Ian had arranged to meet me in a bar around the corner
from the Evening Standard’s offices in Kensington. When the
veteran newsman arrived he looked tired. Hardly surprising,
given that he had been at his desk since 5:00 a.m. that
morning heading the team of reporters tasked with pushing
through the day’s news agenda.
With his dry humour Ian joked: ‘I know something’s up,
you’re drinking coffee. What’s happening?’
I cautiously spelled out what I knew in a whisper and Ian’s
reaction mirrored my own: a mixture of elation and anxiety
in almost equal measure. We both knew that the next few
hours would be an exhilarating but enormously stressful
time. If we put the information to the Prince of Wales’s press
office team, headed by former Financial Times journalist
Paddy Harverson, there was a good chance that it would leak
and blow my scoop. It wasn’t worth thinking about.
‘We just have to hold our nerve and go with it,’ Ian said.
I agreed. The source was rock solid and my gut feeling was
that its information was correct. But both Ian and I were
acutely aware of how disastrous it would be if we went ahead
with a story of this significance and it was officially
rubbished.
‘If this is wrong I suppose we’re both screwed,’ I joked,
knowing full well that we would have to fall on our swords.
There could be no doubt about that. But if we simply sat on
the story and it was subsequently announced by the prince’s
press team at Clarence House, then we would be both
damned professionally – and rightly so.
Our minds made up, Ian and I walked back into the
newsroom. The editor, Veronica Wadley, was sitting at the
backbench – the rank of desks that during production time
is the nerve centre of any newspaper. It is where pages are
drawn, headlines written and instant news judgements
made. Veronica’s deputy, Ian MacGregor, was nearby so we
asked them both for a meeting in the privacy of the editor’s
office.
For the second time I spelled out what I knew and
reiterated the fact that I trusted the source implicitly
The editor, the first-ever woman editor at Associated
Newspapers, listened intently. She was relaxed, buoyant
even, at the prospect of breaking a great scoop.
‘The source is solid?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Let’s go with it,’ she said decisively.
She was unequivocal. The decision had been made. But
even as I had confirmed my confidence in both the story
and the source, with each ‘Yes’ I felt a nervous, nagging grip
in my stomach. That flicker of doubt was only exacerbated
by Ian MacGregor’s half joking, grim-faced enquiry: ‘So
you’re sure it is 8 April – not 1 April ?’
It may have been said in jest, but it only added to the selfdoubt.
I knew in my heart of hearts that this story was not an
elaborate April Fool’s wind-up, but I still had to inwardly
struggle to hold my nerve.
‘What if the source had been fed this information to catch
a mole?’ I thought rhetorically as I walked out, but said
nothing. Instead I headed straight for the privacy of Ian
Walker’s small soulless and windowless office, sat at his desk,
switched on his computer terminal and started to write. In
journalism, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen
Goodman, there is always a tension between getting it first
and getting it right. As it transpired, I had ticked both boxes.
The following morning the billboards on news stands
across London declared: ‘EXCLUSIVE: CHARLES TO WED CAMILLA’, as the first edition of the Evening Standard went to print. It was the first time a newspaper, and not Buckingham
Palace, had revealed that a royal wedding was to take place.
The story bounced Clarence House into an ill-prepared
damage limitation exercise. In the weeks that followed the
extent to which my revelation had caught them off guard
became woefully apparent. The newspaper announcement
marked the beginning of a torrid time for Clarence House
officials, whose grasp on the finer points of arranging this
particular royal wedding was exposed as being tenuous at
best – if not incompetent.
The legality was questioned, the impossibility of a church
wedding turned Camilla into the House of Windsor’s first
‘town hall bride’, and for a while in the early spring of 2005
barely a day passed without the revelation of some apparent
oversight, error or miscalculation by Prince Charles’s team.
It was not long before the wedding plans were being
dismissed as ‘a right royal shambles’.
And, while palace officials struggled to pull together the
chaotic arrangements, they were forced to address a
question they might rather have ignored: ‘What did Prince
William and Prince Harry think of the wedding?’ Especially
Prince William.
As the older of the boys, and the one most physically like
his late mother, William was the de facto spokesman for
both brothers. His blessing was the one that mattered most.
The official line was that both boys were ‘delighted’ at their
father’s happiness. But after more than 15 year reporting on
royal affairs I have learned to be wary of official lines. Sure
enough, privately, their mood was more one of ‘acceptance’
than undiluted joy at the prospect of having Camilla as their
stepmother.
But it was not until the end of March, seven weeks after I
had broken the story, that we got a chance to judge their
reaction for ourselves. At an official press call in Klosters,
the ski resort in the Swiss Alps where William and Harry
were holidaying with their father, William was asked how he
felt about the wedding. ‘Very happy, very pleased,’ he said.
‘It will be a good day.’
This press call become infamous due to Prince Charles’s
ill humour and the curmudgeonly aside in which he
referred to the press as ‘You bloody people’. He also unfairly
singled out the unfortunate BBC correspondent Nicholas
Witchell for personal criticism, calling him an ‘awful man’,
gloriously unaware that his muttered remarks were being
picked up by the remote microphones placed in the snow at
his feet. It was a gaffe more befitting of his father Prince
Philip and it overshadowed everything else about the day –
almost. News never stands still and even on the eve of
Charles and Camilla’s marriage Prince William found
himself asked by a television journalist in the pack if another
royal wedding was on the cards: his own perhaps? William’s
upbeat mood changed. He almost visibly stiffened. Now his
private life was the focus of attention and he did not like it
one bit.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m just gagging to get back
on the slopes.’
The press call was over. The issue of William’s relationship
with girlfriend of two years Kate Middleton had been sidestepped.
But the question had been asked and already a new
agenda was flickering into life that would not be so easily
extinguished.
But all this was yet to come.
On that February day when I broke the story of Charles
and Camilla’s engagement it was the source of the leak that
preoccupied palace officials and press rivals alike. A fingerpointing row broke out over who had leaked the
information to me. At one point it was even bizarrely
suggested in print that Tony Blair’s spin-doctor in chief,
former Daily Mirror political editor Alistair Campbell (a
despised figure among some senior political journalists),
was behind it. When pressed on this issue during a regular
Downing Street lobby briefing, the prime minister’s official
spokesman, Tom Kelly, insisted that the leak was nothing to
do with Mr Blair. It was, he said, simply ‘an Evening Standard
royal scoop’ after an inquiry by the paper’s political editor
Joe Murphy, who left the briefing immediately to file the
telling comment (to the sound of playful jeers from his rival
journalists in the room).
And it was a scoop that forced the hand of the heir to the
throne. Some would later claim that the announcement was
always destined to have been made that day. But royal diaries
of engagements are well structured and consummately
planned months, even years, in advance and for that reason
alone this claim could not have been true. On the day I ran
the story and the palace was forced to issue a formal
announcement the queen was officially opening a museum
in Westminster in honour of Sir Winston Churchill. Prince
Charles was also carrying out an official engagement in the
City of London. There is no way that either the monarch or
her son would have undertaken these engagements on such
a momentous day; nor for that matter would they have
committed to public engagements that could have left them
exposed to what could have been a hostile public response.
As it was, when the prince walked into the engagement at
Goldsmiths’ Hall, a stone’s throw from St Paul’s Cathedral
where he married Diana 24 years earlier, he looked a little
sheepish as members of the public and media shouted their
congratulations. The royals hate these exposed situations.
‘Thank you very much. You’re so kind,’ he said as he
walked inside. When asked how he felt about his wedding,
he replied, smiling: ‘I’m very excited.’ His words were in
sharp contrast to his infamous response of ‘whatever love is’,
when asked if he loved Diana when their engagement was
announced in February 1981.
On the morning that the Evening Standard ran the story
Buckingham Palace, according Charles’s friend and
biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, had been ‘bounced’ into
issuing a formal announcement.
The wording was simple: ‘It is with great pleasure that the
marriage of HRH the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker
Bowles is announced. It will take place on Friday, 8 April
2005, at Windsor Castle.’
The location was, of course, subsequently changed to
Windsor’s Guildhall, followed by a service of dedication and
pray officiated by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan
Williams. The ceremony date was also changed to 9 April to
allow Prince Charles to attend the funeral in Rome of Pope
John Paul II. But with this short official confirmation of my
story a wind of change swept through the palace corridors of
power. A brave new monarchy was about to emerge from the
lengthening shadows of the latter part of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth II. And with the so called ‘Camilla problem’ on
the cusp of resolution the focus of attention, within palace
walls and beyond, would fall more insistently on Prince
William: the second-in-line to the throne and the next
Prince of Wales who would be tasked with taking a royal
bride.
As a footnote, later that year at the London Press Club
Awards I was presented with the coveted Scoop of the Year
award by the Leader of the Opposition, the Right
Honourable David Cameron MP. Professor Donald Trelford,
former editor of the Observer and the club’s chairman,
described the story as a ‘real jaw-dropper’. It was an honour
to be selected by the judges of the 122-year-old Fleet Streetbased club. At the British Press Awards 2006 my royal
wedding exclusive story was shortlisted for two awards:
Scoop of the Year and the prestigious Hugh Cudlipp Award
for excellence in popular journalism, dedicated to the
memory of the late campaigning Daily Mirror editor. The
citation read: ‘This was the first time a newspaper, and not
Buckingham Palace, revealed a royal wedding was to take
place. The use of insider sources and the decision to
“publish and be damned” make this story stand out.’