by David Stubbs
May I suggest, however, that you change the name of the dog after which our mission is named? Beagle 2? Beagles do not inspire as we gaze in wonderment at the Heavens. We need a hound that will elevate man’s soul, not one that in the popular imagination lies all day on top of a kennel. But which dog? Irish Setter? No! Poodle? No! Corgi? Oh, no! How about Spaniel? That seems the best of the bunch so far. If I think of others, I shall drop you a further line. Alsatian?
Yours, looking to the Heavens
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
19 February 2004
Bull mastiff? Great Dane?
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
20 February 2004
Basset hound?
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
21 February 2004
Collie?
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
22 February 2004
Staffordshire Terrier?
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
23 February 2004
Coarse-haired hound?
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Professor Colin Pillinger
Planetary Science Department
The Open University
Milton Keynes
England
24 February 2004
Dear Professor Pillinger
I’ve made the most embarrassing discovery: due to a clerical error at my end, I never actually sent a letter intended for you on 18 February, which must make all the ‘follow-up’ correspondence you’ve since received from me, essentially a list of dogs, seem rather confusing. I enclose a copy of the original letter.
Regretfully, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Mervyn King
The Bank of England
Threadneedle Street
London
England
12 June 2006
Dear Mr King
Well, it’s sad to dwell on this fact but sooner or later, my mother will no longer be with us and then we must be in place to deal with the implications for banknotes and the coinage of the realm. All notes and loose change bearing the image of Her Majesty The Queen will have to be phased out as quickly as possible and replaced by currency bearing my own countenance. This will be quite an operation – I trust you and your staff have contingency plans!
Might I suggest that in order to save time you send some of your best people – your artists and etchers – down to Highgrove so that we can discuss profiles and poses for use on future currency. I think we should do this now while I’m still in reasonably good physical ‘nick’. For the banknotes, I have a variety of suggestions:
£5: Charles at his easel, looking to a distant stag for inspiration £10: Charles staring beyond the horizon, enraptured by his own ‘Vision of Britain’
£20: Charles with rifle at half-cock, having just shot the stag he painted earlier
Of course, your people will doubtless have their own suggestions but I think I prefer mine.
Yours, in ‘sterling’ support
HRH The Prince of Wales
Alan Sugar
The British Broadcasting Corporation
London
England
11 December 2008
Dear Mr Sugar
‘You’re fired!’
I trust you don’t mind my little joke. You’re not fired, of course – far from it. In any case, I can’t fire you until I’ve actually hired you, though come to think of it, it confuses the dickens out of me that you do the same to those young people on your television show: fire them before you’ve even hired them, that is to say.
Well, that opening line didn’t work at all, but at least it’s broken the ‘ice’. I have a business idea I thought you might be interested in investing in: we’ve all heard of tin openers, but what about a tin closer? The idea is, having opened a tin of, say, ketchup, and finding you don’t use all of it, with this clever little electrical device you can weld the lid back into its place in one simple, circular action, resealing it so that the ketchup can be used another day.
Perhaps you could put it to the rest of your colleagues in the ‘Dragon’s Den’?
Hopefully, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Richard Branson
Virgin Group, Ltd.
London
England
5 June 2009
Dear Mr Branson
I should like to thank you once again for your message in support of my campaign to Protect the Rainforests. It is absolutely vital, I think, that big businessmen like yourself lend your weight to such campaigns – it assists tremendously in putting across our message. And it also helps that you have a beard – it reassures the ‘ordinary chap’. As does the fact that you do not go about the place wearing a top hat, monocle and long fur coat, which again means a great, great deal.
I hope that you will remain a supporter of such causes well into the future. For that to be so, it’s vital you don’t ‘lag behind’ commercially. I would urge you, therefore, to really pep up your energies in expanding Virgin products – the vodka, the mobile phones, the limousine services, the luxury vacations, the fizzy drinks, the prophylactics and of course, the airlines. Build more planes, more holiday destinations … be ‘number one’. Only this way can you successfully keep up the high profile that lends credibility to campaigns such as mine, encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprint and consume less.
Consistently, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Tony Hayward
BP
1 St James’s Square
London
England
29 May 2010
Dear Mr Hayward
You know, it’s really a frightful mess that you fellows have created off the American seaboard, don’t you think? I’d say! Mother Nature’s ire has been provoked and once again, it makes one yearn for the days of loom, smock and spinney before all this combustion and lubrication, which makes modern life such a choking hell for many of us.
The incident reminds me of the time when I was five and playing ‘hoop and stick’ outside the study, where Mother was composing a letter to the Ambassador of what was then Rhodesia. A footman was delivering ink on a tray to replenish the Royal well and at a point of high involvement in the game, I slipped on the carpet, sending footman, bottle and tray directly into the clasp of poor Mater, resulting in a black mess similar to the one you’ve made. Nothing was said but dripping with ink, she gave me a look which registered profound dismay at my misadventures, one that I feel has persisted to this day.
Still, now we must knuckle down to a solution and I propose this: giant, waterproof ink blotters lowered with mechanical devices on to the seabed. The practicalities I leave to you – the hard bit, I often find, is thinking these things up. Keep me updated as to progress, would you.
Practically, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Julian Assange
c/o The Embassy of Sweden
11 Montagu Place
London
/> England
1 December 2010
Dear Mr Assange
It’s not for a personage like myself to express an opinion on the rights and wrongs of leaking confidential documents, which may or may not be in the public interest. However, I do make one request of you, not as a Prince but as a private citizen and a concerned son.
It may be that top-secret documents have fallen into your hands regarding my father, HRH The Prince Philip. If they have done so, they may well reveal a side of his character unknown to citizens of the Kingdom. You see, it’s like this. My father has rather a jaundiced attitude towards foreigners, particularly those of different skin hues. It’s not that he’s against foreigners exactly, just that he finds them inherently amusing in a way that, were they to get wind of it, they might well find insulting. At my 50th birthday party, for example, I overheard him making a general remark about members of the Indian subcontinent (‘they get everywhere!’), which might be misinterpreted as comparing them with an infestation.
Needless to say, if this were to get out it’d be dynamite and cause no end of trouble, as well as profoundly alter the public perception of Father. I urge you, if you have any lingering feelings for the Empire, to ‘sit on this one’. I’d be greatly obliged.
Yours, hopefully
HRH The Prince of Wales
Sir Philip Green
Topshop Oxford Street
London
England
21 January 2011
Dear Sir Philip
Twenty-four hours later but still no response from you regarding my smocks’ proposal. Hang it all, can’t you see why British industry is so down-at-heel? It’s because of this sort of sluggishness.
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Sir Philip Green
Topshop Oxford Street
London
England
22 January 2011
Dear Sir Philip
Four days, now. This quite beggars belief! The Minister at the Department of Trade & Industry will be hearing about this.
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
Dealings With International Statesmen
General Idi Amin
c/o Ugandan High Commission
Uganda House
Trafalgar Square
London
England
1 February 1971
Greetings!
I’m writing to you as a representative of Black Africa. I have frequently met and jostled intimately with your people, particularly the womenfolk (not specifically Ugandan, but in a more general sense) and have always found them remarkably friendly. Cheerful poverty seems to be the order of the day in your continent – here, we have our televisions, electric stoves and yet we’re so often down in the dumps. Tell me, as a jolly man yourself, what is the secret that which we sick blighters of the West have lost? Is it a potion, some proverb? I’d be curious to know and feel sure I could send you on a Royal gift of sorts by way of exchange. Do you like teak?
Yours, in good faith
HRH The Prince of Wales
Malcolm Fraser
The Prime Minister’s Office
Canberra
Australia 12 April 1976
Dear Mr Fraser
I must say, I am most disappointed to be rejected for the job of Governor-General of Australia. One feels somewhat slapped in the face. What, may I ask was the problem with my candidacy? At twenty-eight, am I too old? That strikes me as ridiculous. It’s not as if I don’t know the country – I spent some weeks there in my youth and got to know the ‘ordinary’ Australian ‘chap’ quite well, at ‘first hand’.
Hang it all, with the greatest of respect, there you are down there in the bottom right-hand corner of the map! It’s not as if you’re at the centre or crux of world affairs. And you know, I simply wasn’t going to sit in a big house on the hill in a plumed hat doing nothing – I would have got things done. I expect you need things done, don’t you? Well, I would have done them! On some islands not too far away from you, the natives worship my father as some sort of stone God. Are you aware of this? I find that too-large island states can sometimes get above themselves and lose touch with their original, spiritual simplicity.
Yours, in high dudgeon
HRH The Prince of Wales
Malcolm Fraser
The Prime Minister’s Office
Canberra
Australia 17 April 1976
Dear Mr Fraser
Thank you for the response from your office, over which whomsoever was responsible evidently laboured hard for some minutes. I should observe that I am referred to as ‘Your Royal Highness’, not ‘Your Worship’ nor, as I am just one line later, ‘Your Honour’.
Yours, underlined with emphasis
HRH The Prince of Wales
Mikhail Gorbachev
c/o The Kremlin
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
6 July 1986
Dear Mr Gorbachev
According to our Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, you are ‘a man we can do business with’. Between ourselves as gentlemen, anyone who can do business with that lady – who has all the obduracy of an Oscar Wilde aunt – is a man who can do business with anybody!
Which is why I am writing. As relations between our two great nations thaw, it seems to me that we have a chance to work together in a harmonious and co-operative spirit. Let’s drop the pretence, neither you nor Great Britain really want to perish in a global nuclear annihilation – it’s all a bit of bluff. What we need to do is talk, two eminent men of the world, you and me. Of course, you don’t have any English and my Russky is a bit rusty. What’s more, having some translator fellow hanging around is no good either – it’s like having an inexperienced, over-attentive footman at the dining table, breathing down one’s neck. We all know what that’s like!
May I, therefore, make a practical suggestion? At an arranged summit meeting I shall have sent for one of my most favoured tomato plants from Highgrove, which is well used to the sound of my voice and in flourishing annually has shown itself to be a most excellent listener. I propose each of us in turn talks to the plant, expressing our mutual goodwill and willingness to move forward. The plant will absorb this goodwill; the tomatoes it will yield, both this year and in the future, will be the fruit of our dialogue, working their way back into nature’s system and thereby spreading positive emanations. We could film the thing live for posterity. The plant’s name is Emily – named after Emily Bishop, a very famous television character in our country. I have always felt she would be a good listener.
Attentively, yours
HRH The Prince of Wales
Mikhail Gorbachev
c/o The Kremlin
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 6 July 1986
Dear Mr Gorbachev
I’m afraid the dangers of a translator have been well highlighted in the response from your man. He seems under the impression that we convene to talk at a tomato canning plant! That wasn’t what I meant at all. What must you think of me?
I enclose the original letter, with a Russian translation provided by one of my reliable staff of the relevant sentence in the margin, plus an illustration of a plant by oneself to ‘ram home’ my meaning.
Yours, &c
HRH The Prince of Wales
The Mayor of (West)
Berlin Berlin
West Germany
12 June 1989
Dear Sir
I recently had cause to pass through your side of the city for a conference on Alternative Chiropody, a subject very close to my heart to say nothing of my toes (forgive my English humour!). Like a great many people, I was saddened to witness the rather depressing spectacle of the Berlin Wall, particularly the graffiti with which it is covered, one of the great blights and curses of the modern age.
May I advance a radical suggestion, which could historically alter Berlin as we stand on the brink of the 1990s? Foliage.
Herbaceous coverage. Greenery. Hang it all, the wall can’t be knocked down, but at least it needn’t be a hideous spectacle of bare, inhuman concrete of the sort that drags down the spirits in every modern city, every day! I suggest a mixture of ivy, creeping plants and so forth, shrubbery covering every last inch of the wall from one end to the next, so that it’s not such a ‘karbunkel’ (ich habe ein bisschen Deutsch).
By 1999, my vision of the Berlin Wall is that it be known as the ‘Berlin Hedge’. In time, who knows? The shrubbery might even lead to a greater understanding and harmony between East and Western Berliners and from that, who knows?
Yours, in spiritual assistance!
HRH The Prince of Wales
Nelson Mandela
Praetoria
South Africa
Africa
17 August 1994
Dear Mr Mandela
Congratulations on achieving the office of President with a clear mandate from your people! I have always admired your courage in fighting against the apartheid regime, which I found abhorrent. To me, to discriminate against a man because of the colour of his skin is as ridiculous as being prejudiced because of the shape of his knees.
I was privileged to travel to your country and may I suggest as your first order of business that you do something about the amount of litter in some of the outlying towns. I was driven through one area, which was mile after mile of ghastly mess – randomly strewn corrugated iron, bits of cloth hung over sticks, rusty old stewpots and so forth. It would probably require a squadron of bulldozers to sort it all out and clear it away, but I should get on to it right away, the sooner the better.
