In March 2021, for the first time in over two years and after a strange day's journey along near-deserted roads through a Scotland still in lockdown, I made my way home to my cottage on the outskirts of Stornoway. It had been a long, lonely, and dreadful winter. There were days when I found myself in tears over the sink, and I doubt that dank, masked, socially-distanced time was great for you either.
But here I was, late on a Saturday night, a fire crackling in the grate, my little dogs ecstatic, a glass of something nice in hand, once again in my own space, surrounded by my own things, and responsible, momentarily, only for myself. And I imagine that is very much how our gentle King feels when, duties permitting, he can occasionally collapse into an armchair at Birkhall.
King Charles's Favourite Retreat
Charles III, with several official residences and a host of private ones from Gloucestershire to Romania, hardly lacks a place to hang his hat. But among them all, Birkhall – an intimate, private, creamy L-shaped house by the River Muick in Royal Deeside – is his favourite. Unlike the rigid seasonal round the late Queen made of her residences, the King is apt to pop up there, even just for a weekend, at any time of year.
Though in the Royal Family's hands since the 1840s – Victoria had envisaged Birkhall as a Scottish lair for her eldest son, but the future Edward VII stayed there once and did not like it – it was only from 1932 that Birkhall became the prized summer retreat of the then Duke and Duchess of York. It has been cherished by generations ever since.
A Place of History and Solace
Here, the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret sat out the first months of Hitler's war; a playhouse built for them is now enjoyed by the great-grandchildren. Here, amidst the snows that closed out 1947, Elizabeth and Philip enjoyed a secluded honeymoon. In the summer of 1952, her newly-widowed and broken mother hid herself away, thinking of quitting public life entirely. Family and ladies-in-waiting conspired, and Winston Churchill invited himself to tea at Birkhall, gently coaxing the Queen Mother back out.
And here, some years later, the teenage Charles would fly to his grandmother for desperate comfort amidst his boarding school misery. Birkhall, with its tartan wallpaper, cartoons by Spy, 11 longcase clocks that all chime at slightly different times (none quite right), and the constant babbling wash of the Muick, has been precious to him ever since.
Here he hid away in 1992, amidst the rubble of his first marriage. Here Charles proposed to Camilla. Here they self-isolated in 2020, as the heir to the throne spluttered through Covid. In September 2022, he spent his first wracked night as King, before flying to his capital to present himself; here, too, Charles relaxed after his coronation – and here, since his accession, he has seen in every New Year.
Birkhall: Not Grand, but Cherished
Birkhall isn't grand. The Queen Mother once perkily described it as 'a small big house or a big small house'. She actually had to extend it a bit in her widowhood; coats and hats she left behind still hang in the hall. Camilla has had less liberty to refurbish and redecorate here than at Clarence House – the other significant property Charles inherited in 2002 – and is presumably tolerant of His Majesty's delight in red squirrels. A window or two is always left open for them; in any event, the King is notoriously averse to heat, and they have the run of the house, rooting into coats and jackets wherein he has thoughtfully secreted some hazelnuts.
The 18th-century manor might still feel very familiar to the Queen Mother. The gardens are another matter – 'made a bit more interesting,' Charles has laconically recorded. In fact, they have been redesigned wholesale, planted to look their very best in the weeks of high summer when the King and Queen lodge here for weeks on end.
The King's Character and Commitments
The King is not his mother. He is more whimsical, more extravagant, consciously funnier, and – staff sigh – far more demanding. When she was truly angry, there was silence and the death stare; when Charles is furious, no one within earshot is left in any doubt. And he has one quirk: he never, ever eats lunch. Even when he is hosting one.
But as he has settled into his role – within hailing distance of 74 when he ascended the throne – his strengths have come to the fore. The self-deprecating charm. The command of languages – French, German, Italian – and concerns for nature and the environment articulated as early as 1970, which indeed proved prophetic. He is a far more assured, relaxed, and – as the moment calls for it – much funnier speaker than Elizabeth II, as his recent tour de force in Washington attested. All the more impressive given recent health concerns – not that, in America or on other state visits, King Charles has looked the least ill – and the signal trial that is his younger and oceanically self-absorbed son.
Like his grandmother, he enjoys the grandest entertaining: the best dinner service, masses of flowers, gleaming crystal, and gourmet fare. But Charles is perfectly capable of roughing it. During a deftly discreet stay on Berneray, Harris, in 1987 – he has long been fascinated by the crofting life – he tilled the land, repaired fences, and took avidly to mince and tatties.
After Tottenham was trashed by protracted riots in 2011 – shops looted, family businesses burned down – the Prime Minister and all the party leaders paid sententious visits. Once. 'I got a number of phone calls in the course of that day,' local MP David Lammy recalled several years later. 'David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and they all said “Can we come?” And they came. None came back. Prince Charles also phoned. He came; he has been back five times and he doesn’t just come back to look at it, he’s brought all his charities. He hasn’t done it with a fanfare, he hasn’t put out press releases, he’s just done it because he cares.'
If anything, the King is still more adored in South Ayrshire, where his rescue and restoration of Dumfries House have been a parallel with a host of endeavours for good in post-industrial communities long blighted by unemployment. This is scarcely Last Night of the Proms country – and yet, when he visited Kilmarnock in 2012 (in the course of one day he joined an archery session, listened to an Alzheimer’s Society choir, dropped by on a homework club, and charmed some dental nurses) crowds lined the streets to cheer him.
Walkabouts and that we see. Seldom, sadly, do we glimpse the gentle monarch off-duty in Deeside. Laying a hedge, or deftly casting his fly-line into the foamy Muick: a King, at last, come into his own.
