You know how I feel about love, Kathryn: If you are lucky enough to find

the real thing, God bless you, and hold on to it, never minding what people

say. (But please, don’t ask me to subsidize you, or upturn the social

arrangements of centuries on your behalf.) From that point of view, I offer

Chuck and Camilla my truly sincere best wishes for future happiness.

That aside, I find the Windsors (“those bloody Germans,” as my old Dad used

to say, not at all fooled by the name change) a deeply peculiar lot. There

was the great mid-20th-century mystery of what on earth the then-Prince of

Wales saw in that appalling Simpson woman. According to Evelyn Waugh, it

was her “oriental tricks” — she had spent time in the Far East, and

apparently made a study of certain techniques. I find this an inadequate

explanation. In any case, one of Mrs Simpson’s later lovers, asked what

kind of experience he had had with her, replied: “It was like sleeping with

the Ancient Mariner.” (I can’t recall who said this, though I think it is

quite well known. If anyone knows the source, please tell me & I’ll post

it.) Anyway, this can’t apply to Camilla, who so far as I know has never

spent time in the Orient. Charles and Camilla are just another one of

love’s mysteries, which perhaps is the way it should be. Good luck to them,

anyway.