Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married on 29 July 1981 before heading off on honeymoon. This was spent sailing the Mediterranean aboard the royal yacht Britannia before visiting Scotland. Charles and Diana were famously not a very happy couple – so what did the pair get up to on their honeymoon? Royal expert and unauthorised biographer Kitty Kelly claims to reveal the truth in her book ‘The Royals.’
According to Kelly, Diana and Charles packed very different items in their suitcases for their honeymoon.
The Princess of Wales packed “a green bikini bathing suit that Charles liked, six satin lace teddys and several sheer nightgowns.”
Her new husband, however, apparently had different honeymoon activities in mind.
Kelly said he packed fishing tackle, a book on parapsychology and five scholarly books.
Aboard the Britannia were 256 navy men working as crew. They had to wear “rubber-soled slippers” near the royal stateroom so as not to make noise that might disturb the couple.
One crew member, seaman Philip Benjamin, was quoted by Kelly in her book. “We were to act like air,” he said.
“Unless spoken to we said nothing, just looked straight ahead. Bit difficult at times to look straight ahead with the Princess of Wales dashing about in her nightgowns.
“I remember her coming out of the royal suite one afternoon in a filmy white negligee with a pink satin bow at the bosom, which was untied and open. She was trying to lure the Prince away from his books.
“‘Chulls,’ she said in a sexy singsong, ‘come here and do your duty.’ He was reading in a deckchair and she wanted him to go inside and produce an heir.
“I was standing guard a few feet away and looked straight ahead. She giggled when she realised I had heard her, but she was unembarrassed.
“She just kept teasing Charles to go to bed with her. She teased him a lot.”
There was another occasion, however, when Charles was spotted getting intimate with another woman, before he married Diana.
In 1979, when he was on a royal tour of Australia, a woman named Jane Priest, the famously ran up to Charles while he was jogging on Cottesloe Beach in Perth and kissed him and put her arms around him.
Charles was clearly taken by surprise at the model’s actions but kept an arm around her as they spoke, as footage shows.
Jane – 26 years old at the time – has since revealed that the kiss was part of a PR stunt.
“It was a PR thing to make Charles more accessible,” she told the London Evening Standard.