With the Prince of Wales marrying the true love of his life, this Saturday, I thought it might be an appropriate time to acknowledge this remarkable man, and wish him, and his bride, well for the future.
There is would seem to be something about this man's open and self-effacing personality that, along with his position and status, really seems to raise the hackles of some people and cause them to treat him with an acid vehemence which is quite out of proportion to the nature of any perceived misdemeanour. Every minor indiscretion or slightly unusual pronouncement is treated as material for the grossest hilarity and unkind satire.
I am perplexed about what it is exactly that he has done, said or achieved that causes so much self-righteousness and sheer nastiness from so much of the public media. This media, and I am thinking especially of the tabloid style of journalism in the UK, is not a media that most of us would trust or defend, yet a good many would seem to allow such strident nonsense to cloud their personal judgement of this man. I am almost tempted to say "unfortunate" man, except that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he remains extremely rich and lives a pampered life. But in the sense that his birth and position were not of his choosing, and that still, in his mid fifities, he is not able to have any of the sort of freedoms that most of us take for granted, that he is in the public domain whether he likes it or not, and he is the victim of much unwarranted criticism and calumny, he is unfortunate. What other man in the world, in his mid-fifties for goodness sake, has had to delay for so many years his marriage to the women he so much loves, because his parents, the country's institutions and a mean-spirited public disapprove?
I also feel intense annoyance with the media's behaviour to and attitude to Camilla. What has this women done too to deserve the opprobrium of all these sanctimonious gits (that's a good English word I don't think I've used in the past) who write their pathetic columns in their pathetic papers and magazines. She fell in the love with the heir to throne. Obviously a major crime, unless one is shy, and pretty. Due to a bit of characteristic Charlesian dilly-dallying he missed an opportunity for some peace and happiness. But that's life, it happens. It was very sad for both Charles and Diana that the promise of their fairy tale wedding was not to be sustained. But it wasn't a complete disaster either. I think at first they probably did love each other, each in their own way, and they had the passion and the foresight to become parents to two fine young boys. And both seem to have made a reasonable fist of bringing up two lads with some sense and some spunk. Diana became a goddess though, and for a mere mortal, that is asking for trouble. So she died and the goddess was transformed into a saint. Well that's asking for trouble too. She certainly wasn't a saint, but she was beautiful, sexually alluring, and she did her best in the circumstances to create some meaning to her life, her campaign against land-mines, for instance. But she was a frail creature, fated to fulfil a role and destiny not unlike that of Marilyn Monroe's.
Camilla is not Diana. That's a comfort. She isn't beautiful, glamorous or sexy, but we aren't marrying her. She and Charles seem to be great companions, and that is what is important to them, and what should be important to us. All those outward and superficial characteristics that became manifest in Diana are not part of Camilla's way of being. Neither should they be, there are many much more important attributes that Camilla obviously has. It's just that in the shallow and superficial society in which we live Diana's attributes seemed important and Camilla's don't. But that says a good deal more about our society than it does about Camilla. And of all the professions that cultivate and sustain this society, the tabloid press must take the medal. Charles was right about that, though less wise to be heard to say it.
So when things started to go wrong in his marriage, Charles sought solace and comfort from his intolerable situation with the one person he really could be himself with, but who became his lover and his future second wife. Diana sought solace with a succession of lovers and a jet-setting life style, that eventually brought her to her tragic end in an ugly concrete hole in Paris. Neither Charles nor Diana were the partner that each should have been, certainly, but neither were they that much worse than countless others caught up in a their own relationship problems and fights. And again that slimy, smug, and salacious press pursued this poor women and had a large role in killing the very object that they had a major hand in creating.
So what has Charles done to deserve all this undeserved abuse? Here are some things that he has said, with references on the internet to the full text (some on the Prince of Wales' own site)
On architecture and urban design
As important as creativity is in all aspects of life, I simply do not see why it should be used as an excuse to sacrifice literally thousands of years of continuity with tradition in the process. In this regard, the desperate obsession with being "modern" seems rather old-fashioned after all Modernism is only a style. But why can't we be obsessed with being, above all, "human?" That way, I believe, lies true modernity since the process of life itself involves a subtle balance between the past and the future. Most of us need roots and a sense of belonging in order to feel some degree of security and meaning. Our built environment best enshrines that psychological need in a physical form. And in a world dependent on technology, surely we need a contrast in our surroundings that reflects our innate humanity and not just a continuity of the DVD player or the laptop computer?
There is plenty of scope, then, for the creative mind in applying the principles of traditional urbanism to contemporary human needs. Creativity is important, but it is not a trump card.
This speech is particularly relevant to us in New Zealand as it was made last month to a meeting here in Wellington, at the Launch of the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol. Is there anything particularly contentious here, in need of ridicule or abuse? The whole speech can be read
here.
Prince Charles gave one of the five Reith lectures in 2000. I have already mentioned this lecture series in my page on euthanasia. The lectures in 2000 were concerned with sustainability. But again, the poor chap, what an absolute bollocking he got from all sorts and sods. Scientist wrote polite but quite scathing letters about it in the papers. I think they were being over-sensitive. In fact if you read a transcript of what he actually said, I can't find that he is anti-science, or that he was in any way trying to denigrate science - he was trying to add something to science. He said that human kind has a special kinship with the planet and nature because we are part of it - that there is a spiritual connection between each of us and everyone else on the planet, and to nature and the planet itself. That this spiritual connection is something separate from science, but which could help guide us in our use of science to help us solve our future problems. That there should, in each of us, be a spiritual value, or natural concern for others and the world, which is so deep that it alone should be sufficient to motivate us to do more than we are. I can't help but think he is right, though many would criticise this as some sort of vague pantheistic, new age philosophy, and people have indeed said this. But to say this is anti-science is nonsense. He wrote this talk whilst in retreat in a remote Greek Orthodox monastery in Greece. I think it says something basically good about this man that he can take time out from his hectic life to live simply, even if only for a week, and give some thought about our human relationships, each to the other, and to the planet that sustains us. Whereas 90% of the population give it no thought at all.
There is a transcript
here, and you can download the lectures in Real Audio. (If you have a Mac, get a free programme called "Wire Tap" and you can record the lectures to your computer)
I haven't read or heard the other lectures, as I wanted to get this page done before the royal wedding, but I will, (and later too I would like to acknowledge Pope John-Paul's life and death).
This is the start of his talk:
Like millions of other people around the world I've been fascinated to hear five eminent speakers share with us their thoughts hopes and fears about sustainable development based on their own experience. All five of those contributions have been immensely thoughtful and challenging. There have been clear differences of opinion and of emphasis between the speakers but there have also been some important common themes, both implicit and explicit. One of those themes has been the suggestion that sustainable development is a matter of enlightened self-interest. Two of the speakers used this phrase and I don't believe that the other three would dissent from it, and nor would I.
Self-interest is a powerful motivating force for all of us, and if we can somehow convince ourselves that sustainable development is in all our interests then we will have taken a valuable first step towards achieving it. But self-interest comes in many competing guises - not all of which I fear are likely to lead in the right direction for very long, nor to embrace the manifold needs of future generations. I am convinced we will need to dig rather deeper to find the inspiration, sense of urgency and moral purpose required to confront the hard choices which face us on the long road to sustainable development. So, although it seems to have become deeply unfashionable to talk about the spiritual dimension of our existence, that is what I propose to do.
For heaven's sake, what's wrong with that? He goes on later:
The idea of taking a precautionary approach, in this and many other potentially damaging situations, receives overwhelming public support, but still faces a degree of official opposition, as if admitting the possibility of doubt was a sign of weakness or even of a wish to halt "progress". On the contrary, I believe it to be a sign of strength and of wisdom. It seems that when we do have scientific evidence that we are damaging our environment we aren't doing enough to put things right, and when we don't have that evidence we are prone to do nothing at all, regardless of the risks
Isn't he right?
And that this is why we should seek to work with the grain of nature in everything we do, for the natural world is, as the economist Herman Daly puts it - 'the envelope that contains, sustains and provisions the economy, not the other way round.'
Admittedly this is not his original idea, but at least he recognises and can use it. And of course, it is self-evidently correct.
As an example of working with the grain of nature, I happen to believe that if a fraction of the money currently being invested in developing genetically manipulated crops were applied to understanding and improving traditional systems of agriculture, which have stood the all- important test of time, the results would be remarkable.
I think he's right here too. Of course he was criticised for this, scientist and agronomists said that this wouldn't feed the world's population. But we know that much modern agricultural practice is unsustainable - soil erosion, desertification, salinisation, loss of diversity and over-dependence on oil. That certainly won't feed the world's population sustainably, and wasn't that what the talk was about?
I won't keep quoting, just read it for yourself.
There is an interesting, and kindly, critique of the Prince's lecture at
this site.
This is a more barbed, socialist criticism. It seems strange to me that Prince Charles, who in some ways has quite socialist leanings, has some of his harshest critics in this wing of politics. You might think that such people would be the first to be concerned about the environment. But then he represents all those things that no self respecting true socialist can stand, privilege, wealth, green wellies and hunting. He is criticised for travelling on some rich person's yacht, yet I haven't met that many socialists who aren't prepared to take a lift in someone else's car.
And
here's an open letter from Richard Dawkins, doyen of Darwinists and wonderful writer of books about this subject, most of which I have read. (
The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene) and others. Here is great intellect, certainly much more so than Prince Charles, but then Charles himself would be the first to admit this, and in doing so would become rather wiser than some of his critics, who's knowledge and intellect might be boundless but who's self-knowledge leaves something to be desired. However, to continue, much as I admire Richard Dawkins, I can see the point here that Prince Charles was trying so hard to make in regard to science. When Dawkins says
It may sound paradoxical, but if we want to sustain the planet into the future, the first thing we must do is stop taking advice from nature. Nature is a short-term Darwinian profiteer. Darwin himself said it: "What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature." It is impossible to know what Dawkins actually means by this. But having thought about it, and taking the words at face value, I think Dawkins undermines the whole point of his letter and hands Charles all the ammunition he needs to support his thesis. I would suggest to Charles that he might think of writing a book and entitling it
The Blind Scientist. What does anyone reading this think?
Prince Charles recently visited New Zealand, where he visited the Royal Albatross colony near Dunedin. Here he made a heartfelt
speech at the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head, New Zealand, Sunday 6th March 2005.This is part of what he said:
Their plight should remind us of the ultimate fragility of all the migratory species not least the swallows, swifts and house martins that mark the great cycle of the seasons and the mysterious, inner unseen urge that compels such creatures to follow, with unerring accuracy, the timeless patterns of movement around this globe. They are now dependent upon our whim yes, our whim.... I have always felt that if their wanderings should cease through man's insensitive hand and that magical moment of a swallow's first arrival (or an albatross's return) disrupted forever, then it would be as if one's heart had been torn out. If this were to happen and we are rapidly approaching the very real possibility with all twenty-one species of albatross then we would sacrifice any claim whatsoever to call ourselves civilised beings. We will have violated something profoundly sacred in the inner workings of nature, and our descendants will pay dearly for the consequences of this and other acts of short-term folly.
Can any sane person find any fault with this? It is an urgent and deeply felt appeal to the world. Read the whole speech. But he can't get it right, here's what
Grahame Lee, whoever he is, had to say about Prince Charles:
Charles has not changed. He is still an intellectually challenged buffoon who assumes the God-given right to spout nonsense on every subject under the sun. What has changed is that society has taken on board the kind of mysticism and suspicion of science that made Charles a laughing stock in the 1980s. And with his views covering everything from birds to buildings, from the proposed European defence force to GM crop trials, it looks like the prince will be an albatross around our necks for some time to come.
So this is what makes you sound off about Prince Charles, because he dares to make a heartfelt plea for one of the most magnificent species on the planet, which our species has brought to the edge of the abyss of perpetual extinction ? What intellectual and spiritual vacuum possesses the person who wrote this pathetic insult to a concerned human being?
Here is an extract from a recent
article published last year in the Daily Telegraph in the UK:
(Writing about overfishing) ....
For instance, only recently the EU has purchased fishing rights as far away as the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, as it has done from West African nations desperate for foreign currency. But these arrangements appear to allow the EU fleets, which have wiped out stocks in most of their traditional fishing grounds, to harvest the fisheries of other nations on the same unsustainable basis. In the process they risk destroying the long-term capacity of some of the world's poorest people to feed themselves.
Read the article for yourself. It is well written, properly researched, clear, specific, honest and unarguable. Yes, Prince Charles is not an intellectual giant, but if he can write so clearly about these important matters then he is performing an important function, but much more than that, he is using what intellect and influence he has for the greater good of humanity, and our planet.
This is from 1970 in a talk to to "The Countryside in 1970" conference
.....the Prime Minister has already been criticised for making speeches about pollution when he should be building more houses. But this is not the point. Conservation or problems about pollution should not be held up as separate concepts from housing or other social schemes. 'Conservation' means being aware of the total environment that we live in. It does not mean simply preserving every hedgerow, tree, field or insect in sight, but means thinking rationally and consciously just as much about the urban environment as about the countryside. It should mean for instance that care is taken in housing programmes to see that people are provided with a home and not just a 'house'. All too often the architect seems to forget that a town or a street is made up of individual people and families who happen to have been flung together, and usually the designer is never obliged to inhabit the ecological niche he has created for other people. The word ecology implies the relationship of an organism to its environment and we are just as much an organism as any other animal that is often unfortunate enough to share this earth with us.
It is interesting that he said this 1970, at the age of 22, when most of his age group would be more concerned about the local football team or pubbing with their mates, and that his concern with the urban environment was evident even then, long before it became more a matter of public interest. It is only now, 35 years later, that in New Zealand we are just starting to take some note of those principles that he was formulating all those years ago. If we had taken note then, much of the destructive vandalism inflicted on the city of Wellington at that time might have been avoided. In regard to urbanism, New Zealand's record is almost uniformly abysmal.
Yes, Charles hasn't changed, and that's to his credit. Sometimes I think his most vociferous critics would prefer Prince Charles to a be playboy waster, swanning around in some superyacht and with a bevy of beautiful women to keep him company. That would fit in better with their inbuilt prejudices. That he likes hunting proves he is a toffee nosed nineteen-hundreds throwback. You may not agree with hunting, but I doubt whether many of his critics would have the sort of physical courage and skill required to guide half a ton of pounding flesh at 30 mph over the countryside and four foot fences. That he is a normal, physically active, intelligent (but not intellectual), sensitive man, concerned for his and our place on the planet, seems to escape the mean intellects and spirits of his worst critics.
And
this is an extract from his famous and controversial speech at the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Royal Gala Evening at Hampton Court Palace, 30th May, 1984
Instead of designing an extension to the elegant facade of the National Gallery which complements it and continues the concept of columns and domes, it looks as if we may be presented with a kind of municipal fire station, complete with the sort of tower that contains the siren. I would understand better this type of high-tech approach if you demolished the whole of Trafalgar Square and started again with a single architect responsible for the entire layout, but what is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.
That last line has become one of his most famous (and infamous) utterances. I can vividly recall the surprise, horror and righteous ire of the architectural community - if a spit and a fire were available, he would have been cooking and if Donald Rumsfeld had been around at the time, his shock and awe would have been a bonfire night banger. He went on later to state that modern architects had inflicted more damage on our cities than had the Luftwafe (in his book,
A Vision for Britain). Again, this would strike a sympathetic chord with most of the populace, but to the modern architect it was as if he was demeaning their virility or saying they were vulgar (they were the latter, I'm not sure about the former) .
It took years for the fuss to die down. Yet he was right, using his status, what ever you think of this, to express the feelings of a very large number of his mother's subjects - that modern architecture was aggressive, brutal, antisocial and down right bloody ugly.
Here's how he ended his speech
Goethe once said "there is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste". In this 150th anniversary year, which provides an opportunity for a fresh look at the path ahead and in which by now you are probably regretting having asked me to take part, may I express the earnest hope that the next 150 years will see a new harmony between imagination and taste and in the relationship between the architects and the people of this country.
His sense of self-deprecation is typically Charlesian. And he judged the mood pretty accurately too, a great number of the audience took real offence and were very angry and this anger lasted years and years. But you know, it was the anger of a self-righteous, self-serving and smug profession, not used to having their profession and their judgement questioned so publicly. But since then, some architects have had to come round to a more holistic and dare I say it, traditional, viewpoint. A few architects were happy to accept this, and in fact had already done so, but they were very much the minority, but it has taken a long time to turn round others. There still exists a strongly entrenched attitude in the profession that doesn't agree with this new urbanism, which is basically what we are talking about. And when you look at the new (ie less than forty years old) buildings in Wellington, it looks as if this architecture has yet to reach these shores.
National Gallery Extension
Here's a
link to a Guardian article about British architecture twenty years after this carbuncle speech. An interesting take on what Charles' actual architectural legacy is.
An he can still cause
controversy. A summary of his so-called "turd" speech, about skyscrapers in London.
Click
here to find an article chronicling some of Prince Charles's ups and downs in regard to urban planning.
Here's a
site with really strong support for Prince Charles, a comment (blog) from an architect sympathetic to new urbanism.
It is actually very disturbing to learn in this blog, and I have no reason to doubt its authenticity, that every single architectural school in the UK now teaches modernist architecture. The only one that didn't was the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture. This institute, now called the Prince of Wales School of Architecture, and taken over by modernists, now teaches modernist architecture. Read the blog, it is short, succinct and rather worrying.
On
this page, Dr Nikos Salingaros says that Prince Charles will be remembered as one of three key figures who will influence architecture in the twenty-first century, and continues by stating that Prince Charles has been extremely courageous in standing by in what he believes in. "The Prince of Wales sounded a clear warning, but, as is the case with every prophet in history, he has been ridiculed". (Dr Salingaros describes himself on his home page as Urbanist and Architectural theorist, professor of mathematics and artist.
Just one more site about his architectural interests, a
review of Prince Charles speech and its effect, modernist architecture, urban sprawl and new urbanism. It makes the point, that although many cities in Europe are wonderful, human places, there are the sprawling outskirts that are just as bad as those in America.
The Prince of Wales has his own internet site
here, and it describes his various activities and work and play. One cannot but be impressed by the number of activities that he has managed to pack in during his life. There is information about his numerous charitable activities, which have been of immense value. There is also a list of speeches that he has given over the years which I have made use of above.
So who is Prince Charles? He is certainly a man of many parts. There is something of the Rennaisance man about him, but that is perhaps overstating things. I suspect some would say he is a rich dilettante. But this would be unfair, he has been committed to the causes he espouses all his life, that is not being a dilettante. Perhaps he fits the classic mould of the rich, somewhat eccentric and paternalistic upper class of England, noblesse oblige, and all that - but that is too is to sell Charles short. I can think of someone last century who came from a highly privileged upper class English background, who had many different interests, including gardening and painting, who wrote books and was for a time languishing in the wilderness, a prophet in his own country. His name was Winston Churchill.
Prince Charles is a father, farmer, gardener, visionary, town planner, conservationist, writer, lecturer, patron, commentator, broadcaster, benefactor, artist, traveller, developer, serviceman, parachutist, jet pilot and a polo playing, hunting, skiing, fishing, shooting and hunting man. But much more than this he is a man born to wealth and privilege, constrained by circumstance and tradition, who has developed a more distinct understanding, it seems to me, about the true nature of humanity and its relationship to this world, and of our relationships each to the other, than most so-called experts, commentators and politicians. Of course he is more complicated than that, and there will be times that what he feels or says differs from things he said previously, or things he has previously done, or don't comfortably fit with his wealth and status. But that's what it is to be human. It is a humanity that he has demonstrated in the upbringing of his boys, in whom he has put in a lot of effort - he appears to have a comfortable relationship with them that many fathers would envy. It is also true that were he to be the supreme intellect of the age, he would still attract abuse because of who he is and what he represents. But surely we can see past this and see him as a basically decent and sensitive man who is trying to make his own peace with himself and his world.
As you might have read on this internet site, there is a revolution coming, and if we all sought to understand something of what people like Prince Charles are trying to tell us, and in Charles's case for most of his adult life, we would be a lot better for it. As it is, I fear that understanding is still absent from most of the population. It might be some justice then, that it will likely be his worst detractors, those with little sympathy for who he is and the warnings he is sounding, who will be the most surprised and least prepared for the changes that are coming. Although Prince Charles's spirituality is religious, he does acknowledge spirituality without religion and in his sympathetic efforts to understand many other religions and cultures, he also seems to be very aware that the details of this spirituality are manifest in many different ways, but that at the deepest level they are one and the same thing. He illustrates very well something I talked about in my article on euthanasia, and that is that deep spiritual understanding of what it is to be a human being, as an individual but living in a society of which one is an inextricable part, and a world which sustains us. As I stated, this spirituality could be literally part of our physical make up, and it is not beyond reason to suspect that evolution put it there for a very good reason - this thought doesn't seem to have occured to Richard Dawkins. Prince Charles is telling us that we neglect that side of our being at our peril. I agree.
This is the first known picture of Charles and Camilla together, how looking at this makes me seem old, the years spinning around so fast. Neither Charles nor Camilla could have been in the slightest aware of what these years would come to hold for them. Even as I write this, I hear that many Britons are experiencing some schadenfreude in the fact that the couple's wedding plans have been subject to so many setbacks - what a sorry and uncharitable bunch of churls. I was planning to return back to the UK later this year, and if that truly represents a widespread attitude in the UK, I don't think I'll bother. However, I am sure it doesn't, I have more faith in my old countrymen. I hear also that Charles has been self-pitying and unhappy, perhaps he is, I don't know, but doesn't it occur to some people that he may be just a bit depressed or stressed? And if he is, is that surprising and wouldn't any one with an ounce of sympathy understand this? If there is any justice in the world, Charles and Camilla will be able to enjoy each other's company after their wedding in the simple and untrameled way that has been denied them for so long. And if people still believe in fairytales, it is this relationship that could become one - in a hundred years from now, Charles's and Camilla's story will be seen for what it is, one of the true love stories of our time.
So here's to you Charles and Camilla - we (I am including my wife, Tess, who is not a monarchist, but certainly feels that Prince Charles should be left alone and allowed to enjoy his life) will be drinking a toast to you both. I don't know how much we will see of your wedding here in New Zealand. I wish you well, and I am sure that all worthwhile fellow human beings, royalist or not, will celebrate your happiness on Saturday. You make a wonderful couple, and you both seem so happy in each other's company. After all the stress and trials of the previous years, may each other's company sustain and comfort you. Just don't fall off that bloody horse and break your neck.
