and heart-throb HRH had decided to skip the Oxbridge university route and would head to St Andrews in Scotland instead.
Adios to the possibility of years of languid punting and declaiming Shelley and hello to four years of rugger scrums and lukewarm refectory tatties! After the St Andrews news broke, enrolments at the university jumped nearly 50 per cent.
In 1957 a knobby kneed Charles became the first future monarch to be educated outside the home, first attending Hill House School in Knightsbridge, being dropped off via royal chauffeur every day Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were hailed for the modernity of their approach. Until now, Eton, Williams’s alma mater had seemed like a shoe-in, not least because it’s a ten minute drive from the Waleses’ Adelaide Cottage home. So too has it been turning out Prime Ministers famed intellectuals and Fulham real estate agents since it was founded in 1440 by Henry VI. columnist Richard Eden who has reported that the princess has been spied back at her old school, Marlborough College, with speculation that the Waleses might send their son there.
Look, I know, sending him to Marlborough is not exactly sending him to the local Slough comprehensive and wherever the prince goes, he is unlikely to ever rub shoulders with tradies kids’ or anyone who does not have an intimate knowledge of the slopes of Verbier. The school is clearly trying to modernise – it now has a feminism society and marks black and LGBTQ+ history months. So, how is this all going?quoted one alumnus, Felix Kirkby, 21, who went on record to say of the institution’s attempt at a cultural shift, “Horrible. It’s destroying its reputation.” To say that Eton seems culturally preserved in aspic is unfair to gelatine everywhere.
The boy will one day have to serve as a unifying figure for, by then, probably more than 100 million Britons who will come from an incredibly varied range of ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. How can he even remotely be adequately prepared for such a momentous task if he goes to a school where ‘diversity’ equates to boasting some boys whose families ski in Italy?