A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.
The Prince of Wales on a proposed extension to the National Gallery, speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, 30 May 1984
Charles III
parents: Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
date and place of birth: 14 November 1948 at Buckingham Palace
wives: Lady Diana Spencer (divorced 1996); Camilla Parker Bowles
dates of marriage: 29 July 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral (Diana); 9 April 2005 at Windsor Guildhall (Camilla)
children: William, Prince of Wales; Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
reign: from 8 September 2022
date of coronation: 6 May 2023 at Westminster Abbey
Charles Philip Arthur George was born at Buckingham Palace on 14 November 1948, when his grandfather George VI was on the throne. He was three when his mother became queen and he became heir apparent, and he held that position for seventy years, longer than anyone in British history. At her coronation in 1953 he watched from a box in Westminster Abbey between his grandmother and his aunt Margaret.
Education
His parents decided that he would be the first heir to the throne to go to school rather than be taught at home by tutors. He went to Hill House in London and then Cheam in Berkshire, and at thirteen his father sent him to his own old school, Gordonstoun, on the Moray Firth. Its regime of cold showers, early runs and outdoor hardship suited Philip but not his shy, sensitive son, who was bullied there and later called it "Colditz in kilts." He found happier times at Timbertop, the outback campus of Geelong Grammar School in Australia, where he spent two terms in 1966.
In 1967 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read archaeology and anthropology, switching to history, and in 1970 he became the first heir apparent to earn a university degree. In between he spent a term at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, learning Welsh before his investiture as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle on 1 July 1969, a ceremony watched on television by millions and protested by Welsh nationalists. He then trained as a jet pilot in the RAF and served in the Royal Navy, finishing in 1976 in command of the minehunter HMS Bronington.
The Prince's Trust
He used his navy severance pay, about £7,400, to set up the Prince's Trust in 1976 to help disadvantaged young people start businesses and find work. It became the largest of his many charities and has helped more than a million young people. Over the following decades he founded or backed hundreds of other charitable causes, from heritage crafts to rainforest conservation, and in 1990 he founded the Duchy Originals food company, built on his organic farm at Highgrove in Gloucestershire.
Diana
Charles met Camilla Shand in 1970 and they fell in love, but he was not ready to marry, and while he was at sea she married Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973. As he entered his thirties, the pressure on him to find a wife grew. In 1980 he began courting Lady Diana Spencer, the nineteen-year-old youngest daughter of Earl Spencer, whom he had met when she was sixteen. They became engaged in February 1981, after only about a dozen meetings. Asked in the engagement interview whether they were in love, Diana said "Of course," and Charles added, "Whatever 'in love' means." They married at St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July 1981, watched by an estimated 750 million people around the world. You can read about the wedding on our page on famous royal weddings.
They had two sons, William in 1982 and Harry in 1984, but the marriage failed. Charles went back to Camilla; Diana suffered from bulimia and depression and had affairs of her own. In 1992 Andrew Morton's book Diana: Her True Story, written with Diana's secret cooperation, laid out her unhappiness, and in December the Prime Minister announced the couple's separation. In a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994 Charles admitted he had been unfaithful once the marriage had "irretrievably broken down." In her own Panorama interview the following year, Diana said, "there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." The Queen urged them to divorce, and they did so in August 1996.
A year later, on 31 August 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris. Charles flew to Paris to bring her body home. The public grief, and anger at the royal family, fell hardest on him, and for years afterwards polls showed many people wanted the crown to pass straight to William.
The Prince with Opinions
Charles did not accept that the heir to the throne should keep his opinions to himself. In 1984 he attacked the planned extension to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square as a "monstrous carbuncle," and the design was dropped. He championed traditional architecture, wrote a book, A Vision of Britain, and built Poundbury, an experimental town extension outside Dorchester, from 1993. He warned about pollution, plastics and climate change from the early 1970s, when few public figures did, and he was mocked for talking to his plants and farming organically long before both became fashionable. He also wrote many letters to government ministers on subjects from farming to the equipment of the armed forces. When the "black spider memos," named after his handwriting, were published in 2015 after a long legal battle, they showed a prince lobbying ministers persistently on the causes he cared about.
Camilla
After Diana's death Charles and Camilla, who had divorced her husband in 1995, slowly made their relationship public. They were first photographed together in 1999, and on 9 April 2005 they married in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall, followed by a blessing in St George's Chapel. Camilla took the title Duchess of Cornwall. She won over much of the public over the next seventeen years, and in February 2022 the Queen announced that it was her "sincere wish" that Camilla should be known as Queen Consort when Charles became king.
King
Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral on 8 September 2022, and Charles became king at seventy-three, the oldest person to succeed to the British throne. The Accession Council that proclaimed him met at St James's Palace on 10 September and, for the first time, was televised. He made his first address to the nation on 9 September and pledged himself to "uphold the Constitutional principles at the heart of our nation." His elder son William became Prince of Wales.
The coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 6 May 2023, the first in seventy years. It kept the ancient core of the service, the anointing with holy oil behind a screen, the crowning with St Edward's Crown, and the enthronement, while shortening the whole and making room for other faiths and for the languages of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Stone of Scone, which Edward I had taken from Scotland in 1296, came down from Edinburgh Castle for the occasion. Camilla was crowned queen beside him.
In February 2024 Buckingham Palace announced that the king had been diagnosed with cancer and would pause public duties for treatment. He returned to public engagements that spring. For the monarchs who came before him, see our list of the kings and queens of England.
Link/cite this page
If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.
Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "King Charles III" https://englishhistory.net/20th-century/king-charles-iii/, September 30, 2026