The Duchess: The Untold Story – the explosive biography, as seen in the Daily Mail. Penny Junor

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      Charles had been heartbroken when he lost Camilla, but however strong his feelings for her, life had to go on. He was a romantic, but he was not the first man to have been disappointed in love and not the first to have had to learn to live with it. He was young, he was attractive, he was eminently eligible and he took out a succession of pretty girls, some of them suitable, some not – and some too sensible to want a future under the spotlight. He proposed to Amanda Knatchbull. Mountbatten had been urging his granddaughter on Charles since she was a teenager, but they knew each other too well. She turned him down. He wasn’t surprised; he knew that any girl he married would have to make huge sacrifices. Even those he dated risked having their past raked over in the tabloids. The press were obsessed by his love life: they chronicled every sighting, every dinner date, every holiday companion, every girl who showed up to watch him play polo. One newspaper exclusively reported his engagement to Princess Marie Astrid of Luxembourg, whom he had never even met.

      He hated it. He resented the intrusion and he despaired of ever finding someone. He knew she would have to meet the strict and increasingly rare criteria his position demanded. More than a decade after the advent of the contraceptive pill and the era of free love, the pool of unmarried, aristocratic Anglican virgins available was diminishing by the day. In 1975, he had said, ‘I’ve fallen in love with all sorts of girls and I fully intend to go on doing so, but I’ve made sure I haven’t married the first person I’ve fallen in love with. I think one’s got to be aware of the fact that falling madly in love with someone is not necessarily the starting point to getting married.’ But he had made the mistake of saying he thought thirty might be the right age to settle down. As he approached the magical age, the scrutiny and the madness and his despair intensified.

      If he was seen with women married to his friends, however, or old girlfriends who were now married, no one seemed to turn a hair. Not unlike in Edwardian times, they slipped beneath the radar, and although the press had their suspicions about some and were certain about others, they never pursued them in the way they pursued single women. One of those was Dale (later Lady) Tryon, a vivacious Australian he’d met at a school dance at Timbertop in Australia when they were both seventeen. He’d nicknamed her Kanga. She was the daughter of a rough and ready Melbourne printing magnate, so she was rich but not marriage material. She moved to London and in 1973 married the merchant banker Anthony Tryon, one of the Prince’s oldest friends and sometime financial adviser. He was ten years older than Dale, a far more sober character who would become the 3rd Baron Tryon. His father had been Keeper of the Privy Purse, a key member of the royal household and, like Andrew Parker Bowles, a page boy at the Queen’s coronation. Charles became godfather to their elder son, also named Charles, born in 1976. They had another son and two daughters. As well as a house in London, they owned a 700-acre estate in Wiltshire and rented a fishing lodge in Iceland. Charles was a frequent visitor to all three. Dale called him the ‘Bonny Prince’ and whenever he telephoned to say he was on his way to see her, she cleared the house.

      One year, Anthony had gone ahead to Iceland with a mutual friend, Timothy (later 5th Baron) Tollemache. Dale and the Prince flew separately in an Andover of the Queen’s Flight and were so engrossed with each other in the private compartment, where they had asked to be left undisturbed, that they failed to notice the plane had landed at Reykjavik and that outside a red carpet and a civic reception awaited, complete with Icelandic military band. Kanga kept their affair secret from no one and had an open line to Nigel Dempster, the Daily Mail’s famous gossip columnist, who was a fellow Australian. She started up a fashion label in 1980, selling one-size-fits-all dresses, and constantly promoted them and herself by selling stories about her royal connections.

      In the end this was her undoing. Charles started ignoring her, and she became almost demented with the pain of losing him – and she hated Camilla, whose star was in the ascendant. ‘Kanga adored him,’ says a close friend in the fashion industry who helped launch her brand. ‘Whenever he rang the office she would disappear. She was very funny and completely outrageous and unbelievably naughty sexually. When she was nice she was fantastic and when she was nasty she was horrendous. She was like a spoilt child, living on the edge, everything was extreme and there was always drink in the equation.’

      Camilla was none of those things. Charles spent many a weekend with the Parker Bowles family. It was inevitable that they would continue to see one another. They had so many friends in common, and they went to so many of the same sporting and social gatherings. And, of course, there was polo. Charles and Andrew still played in the same team and were friends, and since a lot of the matches were held in the Wiltshire/Gloucestershire area, it was logical for Charles to stay the night at Bolehyde, when as often as not Camilla would get together a party of his friends for dinner. Because of Andrew’s royal links, there were often invitations from the Queen and the Queen Mother as well as from the Prince himself. The couple went to stay at Sandringham and Balmoral, they went racing at Ascot and Cheltenham, and they were always invited to the lavish parties the Queen Mother used to throw at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park or to her Scottish homes, Birkhall and the Castle of Mey, way up in the north. Andrew was a great favourite of the Queen Mother, and she approved of his new wife. So did the Queen; Camilla got on famously with Elizabeth. Their mutual love of horses and dogs was a winning formula.

      When Tom was born, Andrew and Camilla asked the Prince to be their son’s godfather, which further cemented the relationship between them all. The christening took place at the Guards Chapel, and they specially arranged the date to fit in with the Prince’s naval schedule so he could be there. Charles left the Navy in 1977 having commanded his own ship, HMS Bronington, hunting mines in the North Sea. It was the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and the beginning of his full-time royal duties.

      It was also the year he dated Diana’s eldest sister, the fiery, red-haired Lady Sarah Spencer. They had met at Windsor Castle, whither she’d been invited by the Queen for Royal Ascot. The Parker Bowleses had also been invited – Camilla was pregnant with Laura for most of that year. And it was while Charles was shooting at Althorp, the Spencer family’s estate in Northamptonshire, in the autumn, that he first consciously met Diana, who was just sixteen and home from boarding school. She said later, ‘I kept out of the way. I remember being a fat, podgy, no make-up, unsmart lady but I made a lot of noise and he liked that and he came up to me after dinner and we had a big dance … for someone like that to show you any attention – I was just so sort of amazed. Why would anyone like him be interested in me? And it was interest.’

      That was the moment when she first started to dream about marrying the Prince of Wales. Her sister’s relationship with Charles came to an abrupt end. ‘He is fabulous as a person,’ announced Sarah, ‘but I am not in love with him. He is a romantic who falls in love easily … Our relationship is totally platonic. I do not believe that Prince Charles wants to marry yet. He has still not met the person he wants to marry. I think of him as the big brother I never had … I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love, whether it was the dustman or the King of England. If he asked me I would turn him down.’