When you grow up among the British aristocracy, especially fifty years ago before social media and the internet, you become privy to an extraordinary amount of gossip concerning the Royal Family.
As a schoolboy at Eton in the early 1970s, I lived virtually next door to the Royal Family. Windsor Castle stood across the river from Eton, and royalty was part of the landscape around us.
The Queen was a familiar presence around Eton and Windsor. The relationship between the College and the Royal Family stretched back generations.
Eton itself was a very different institution then. The old British class system was alive and well. The sons of aristocrats, politicians, diplomats and extremely well-connected families lived together, ate together and talked together.
And believe me, boys talked.
We heard what fathers said, what mothers whispered, what uncles knew and what supposedly happened behind the enormous doors of Britain’s great houses.
Some of it may have been true. Some was undoubtedly nonsense. Some remains impossible to establish even today.
But these were the stories we heard.
MOUNTBATTEN AND CHARLES
Lord Louis Mountbatten was one of the most powerful establishment figures of his generation and an enormously important influence upon the young Prince Charles.
Mountbatten was Charles’s great-uncle and mentor—not, as is sometimes claimed, his godfather.
I remember hearing at Eton disturbing rumours about Mountbatten’s private life and his alleged interest in young males. Years later, allegations about Mountbatten and boys would surface publicly in books and historical records.
There was another rumour that I specifically remember hearing during my Eton years: that Mountbatten’s extraordinarily close relationship with the young Prince of Wales was unhealthy.
Let me be absolutely clear: I cannot prove that allegation and I do not state it as fact.
What I can state is that I remember hearing the rumour at Eton approximately half a century ago.
That distinction matters.
PRINCE PHILIP
Then there was Prince Philip.
Stories about Philip’s alleged infidelities seemed endless. I even remember gossip concerning a woman at Dolphin Square, where my father had a flat.
Again, I never witnessed an affair and cannot establish that one occurred. I am describing the stories circulating within the society around me.
The public saw the handsome Duke of Edinburgh walking dutifully beside the Queen.
Privately, people told a considerably more colourful story.
THE QUEEN AND LORD PORCHESTER
Even the Queen was not immune.
One persistent piece of gossip concerned her exceptionally close friendship with Lord Porchester—“Porchie”—her childhood friend, racing manager and fellow horse enthusiast.
The scandalous version went considerably further. People whispered that their relationship was romantic and even suggested that Prince Andrew was Porchester’s son.
People pointed to supposed physical resemblance as though they were conducting DNA tests with their eyes.
There is no established evidence proving that extraordinary paternity allegation.
But was it gossip?
Absolutely.
I remember it.
DIANA AND JIMMY GOLDSMITH
Then came Diana.
I later encountered another extraordinary society rumour: that Diana was supposedly not Earl Spencer’s biological daughter at all but the child of billionaire Sir James “Jimmy” Goldsmith following an alleged relationship with her mother.
People would point to Diana and Goldsmith’s daughter Jemima and say they could have been sisters.
Again: resemblance proves nothing, and I know of no reliable evidence establishing this claim.
But it became another of those stories passed around British high society.
HARRY AND JAMES HEWITT
Perhaps the most famous royal paternity rumour of modern times concerns Prince Harry and Major James Hewitt, Diana’s former lover.
People have spent decades pointing to their red hair and supposed facial similarities and declaring them father and son.
There is, however, an enormous problem with that story: the accepted chronology does not fit.
Harry was born in 1984. Diana and Hewitt both placed the beginning of their relationship later, generally around 1986.
It is an excellent demonstration of how royal gossip works. Repeat something for long enough and eventually people forget to ask whether the dates even make sense.
WILLIAM AND ROSE HANBURY
More recently, the rumour machine has turned upon Prince William.
There have been persistent internet and tabloid rumours concerning William and Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.
An even more extreme version of the gossip has attempted to attach William’s name to the paternity of one of her children.
I have seen no credible evidence establishing either proposition.
Yet the rumours circulate, mutate and acquire new details with every retelling.
It is precisely the same mechanism I witnessed fifty years ago—only today the school corridor has been replaced by social media.
PRINCE EDWARD
Prince Edward was not spared either.
Rumours about his sexuality circulated for years.
His future wife, Sophie Rhys-Jones, was famously caught in a newspaper sting before their marriage in which a reporter posing as a wealthy Arab client secretly recorded conversations touching upon the Royal Family and Edward.
I also heard claims about Edward from gay men whom I considered exceptionally well connected.
Did their connections make their assertions true?
No.
At the time I believed them. Today, with fifty additional years of experience, I make a sharper distinction between what somebody tells me and what somebody can prove.
AND NOW EARL SPENCER
Which brings me to Charles Spencer.
Earl Spencer attended Eton after I had left. He therefore entered that same peculiar institution with its intimate historical connections to Britain’s establishment.
But Spencer possesses something far more important than Eton gossip.
Princess Diana was his sister.
And Spencer now says Diana told him that her husband was “in love with his valet.”
That is an extraordinary allegation.
It does not establish that Charles had a sexual relationship with the man. It does not establish the King’s sexual orientation. What it establishes, if Spencer’s recollection is accurate, is what Diana told her own brother she believed about her husband.
And suddenly my mind travels backwards fifty years.
Back to Eton.
Back to Windsor.
Back to those conversations.
Back to the extraordinary stories boys from some of Britain’s most connected families told one another about the people living across the river.
THE CURTAIN HAS COME DOWN
When I was young, the British monarchy possessed something almost unimaginable today: mystique.
The newspapers knew things they didn’t publish.
The aristocracy knew things they didn’t discuss publicly.
Families protected families.
Institutions protected institutions.
And ordinary people bowed, curtsied and watched the magnificent performance from outside the gates.
That world has largely disappeared.
Diana shattered part of it.
Andrew shattered another part.
Harry and Meghan pulled back another curtain.
Books, interviews, court proceedings, recordings and social media have done the rest.
And now Diana’s brother is telling his story.
Spencer has indicated that there are things he knows about the King that he deliberately chose not to include in his book.
That may prove more interesting than everything he has already written.
Because I remember Eton.
I remember Windsor.
And I remember the whispers.
I am not presenting those whispers as historical facts. Fifty years later, some appear ridiculous, some remain intriguing, and others concern allegations serious enough that evidence—not aristocratic gossip—must determine what we believe.
But I can testify to something much simpler:
These stories did not begin with social media.
Some were being whispered inside Britain’s establishment half a century ago.
And now, one by one, people who were actually inside that world are beginning to talk.
What a family the British once bowed and scraped before.
And what an extraordinary collection of secrets, scandals, rumours and unresolved questions has accumulated around the House of Windsor.
The mystique is disappearing.
The whispers remain.
And history will have to decide which of them were merely gossip—and which contained a grain of truth.
