EDUCATING THE PRINCE
The future King’s trailblazing schooldays were a mixed bag of character -building experiences
For centuries, it was customary for royal children to be taught by private tutors within palace walls, but as the role of the monarchy and ideas about education evolved, Prince Charles became the first heir to the throne to attend school.
Although a governess, Catherine Peebles, tutored him at Buckingham Palace from the age of five, he began classes at Hill House School in Knightsbridge just before his eighth birthday.
Two years later, he followed in his father the Duke of Edinburgh’s footsteps by attending Cheam Preparatory School in Hampshire and then Gordonstoun in Scotland – renowned for its tough, character-building ethos.
Although Charles’s grandmother the Queen Mother expressed reservations about sending the young teenage boy there – writing to the Queen that he would feel “terribly cut off and lonely in the far north” – his father ruled that his eldest son would attend his alma mater.