11 April 2013
The presence of the Queen and Prince Philip at Lady Thatcher’s funeral on April 17 offers a good excuse for Prince Charles to stay away. Clarence House confirms neither he nor the Duchess of Cornwall will be attending. There was no love lost between the heir to the throne and the former PM.
Thatcher only mentioned Charles once in her tome The Downing Street Years, with regard to a proposed trip by him and Diana to Japan. His own authorised biography by Jonathan Dimbleby records that Thatcher found it necessary to send in senior Foreign Office administrator David Wright to sort out the mess of Charles’s private office and help him put his affairs in order. It fell to her successor John Major to sort out the mess of Charles’s private life.
