Charles was also said to be a Colonel in the British Army, a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force and a Captain in the Royal Navy, in addition to being the patron of 500 clubs, charities and associations. “Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland.” Up to that point, the only one of his titles we knew very well was Prince of Wales while his father, Prince Phillip, was the Duke of Edinburgh in Scotland, which he popularized by always wearing the Scottish kilt.

Phew! Pilot, paratrooper, polo player, ship captain, scuba diver, skier, all the things I fear in my life! The story then listed Charles’ royal titles at that point. He is a gifted amateur cellist… He has scuba-dived in the Caribbean, schussed down the Alps, sambaed into the night with Brazilian beauties… A keen student of history, he can discourse persuasively on the neglected virtues of his ancestor King George III, and is host and interviewer on a TV series on anthropology.” He has skippered a Royal Navy minesweeper through North Atlantic gales with the skill of a yachtsman… He plays an aggressive, three-plus-handicap game of polo and is a qualified paratrooper. He can pilot a jet fighter and knows enough about helicopters to help repair them. It stated, “If Charles Philip Arthur George Mount-batten-Windsor did not exist, who could invent him? Consider. I have to recall some aspects of the story from memory, so there may be errors. After reading it, my young African nationalist aversion to the British royal family grudgingly gave way to some respect for Charles. He was described in the story as A Most Uncommon Bloke. At the weekend I dug through several sacks of personal books and magazines but could not find my 1978 copy of a TIME magazine with a faintly smiling picture on the cover of then Prince Charles.

Uncommon criminals book