Prince Charles attends RAF College Cranwell parade

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Last week, more details concerning Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s royal tour of Canada were announced. Charles and Camilla are set to visit the Commonwealth realm from May 17 to 19, in celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The heir-apparent has taken on more responsibilities within the Firm since the monarch reduced her duties amid health concerns last year.

While Charles is said to now have a close affinity with his mother, it is widely believed that the pair had a distant relationship when the Prince of Wales was growing up.

Royal expert Mr Hodgson, who wrote the book ‘Charles: The Man Who Would Be King’, even claimed that Charles was “horrified” when the Queen did not stay up to congratulate him after he delivered a 1969 speech to mark his investiture as the Prince of Wales.

Charles delivered the historic speech in Welsh, at a time when an anti-English sentiment in the country was especially high.

Mr Hodgon told Express.co.uk: “The Queen and Prince Charles were perhaps ‒ it was different in those days because people were sent to boarding school from the age of seven.

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“The fact is I don’t think the Queen was ever a cuddly mother with Charles or Anne.

“When he got back from his tour of Wales, when he became Prince of Wales, he was horrified to find that they’d all gone to bed and the Queen hadn’t stayed up to congratulate him on this splendid success.

“There was always a bit of a gap there, while it’s a well-known fact that Prince Charles and Prince Philip were not particularly close in their relationship.

“However I have no evidence to suggest that he doesn’t love his mother very much, and no evidence to suggest he doesn’t love his father.

“He was the person to go and see Philip in hospital on the last occasion he was in hospital.”

That said, Mr Hodgson acknowledged the particularly distant relationship Charles had with his parents growing up.

The expert continued: “Prince Philip’s favourite child was Edward; the Queen’s favourite child was Prince Andrew.

“Charles really was looked after very much by the Queen Mother and Lord Louis Mountbatten.

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“They were his mentors. The Queen was a young Queen and always away.

“Prince Charles and Princess Anne were pretty close and they grew up largely without their parents.

“And later on in their late thirties and early forties they had their last two children and they were doted on much more.”

Growing up, Charles, who is the heir-apparent, endured a complicated relationship with his parents, claimed royal biographer Mr Dimbleby.

In 1992, when the Prince of Wales had just separated from Princess Diana, he spoke to Mr Dimbleby for an authorised biography, ‘Prince of Wales: A Biography’.

The book painted a picture of a boy who rarely saw his parents and was miserable after being forced to attend the same strict boarding school as his father, Gordonstoun.

Mr Dimbleby said that Philip was often away on overseas duty during the first two years of Charles’ life.

However, when he returned Charles was regularly pushed to tears as his father berated him for a “deficiency in behaviour or attitude”.

Mr Dimbleby claimed Charles was “easily cowed by the forceful personality of his father.”

Friends who spoke with the Prince of Wales’ permission even claimed Philip was “belittling” and “bullying” to his son.

Others suggested that Philip was concerned about his son’s vulnerability and so was merely attempting to “toughen him up”.

According to Page Six, at age 20 Charles was asked whether his father had been a “tough disciplinarian” and if he had been told to “sit down and shut up.”

Charles replied: “The whole time, yes.” 

In Mr Dimbleby’s autobiography, the Prince of Wales also described his mother, the Queen, as “not indifferent so much as detached” during his childhood.

During Charles’ upbringing, Philip had been designated the head of the family by the Queen, who was preoccupied with her royal duties.

Writing in Vanity Fair in 2017, royal expert Sally Bedell Smith claimed: “Charles was hemmed in by high expectations and scrutiny from the start ‒ unlike his mother who had 10 relatively carefree years of childhood.”

Ms Bedell Smith added: “The lack of tactile connection was achingly apparent in May 1954, when the Queen and Prince Philip greeted 5-year-old Charles and 3-year-old Anne with handshakes after an absence of nearly six months on a tour of Commonwealth nations.

“Martin Charteris, Elizabeth’s onetime private secretary, observed that Chalres ‘must have been baffled by what a natural mother-son relationship was meant to be like.”

Philip responded on behalf of the Royal Family to a number of the claims made in Mr Dimbleby’s 1992 book.

Speaking to The Telegraph he said: “I’ve never discussed private matters and I don’t think the Queen has either.

“Very few members of the family have.”

Of course, Charles has endured a tense relationship with his own son Prince Harry after the Duke of Sussex made claims against the Royal Family and his father’s parenting style in a number of high profile interviews.

Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast Harry said: “It’s a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on anyway, so we as parents should be doing the most we can to try and say ‘you know what, that happened to me, I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.”

‘Prince of Wales: A Biography’ is written by Jonathan Dimbleby and published by William Morrow and co. You can find it here.

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