Royal watchers are still reeling from the news about Clive Alderton’s departure as King Charles’ private secretary. Alderton was Charles’ private secretary before Charles was king, and Clive is generally believed to have orchestrated the years-long transition between QEII’s last years and the first years of Charles’ reign. In the coverage of Alderton’s retirement, there are consistent mentions of Prince Harry’s Spare, where Harry referred to Alderton as “the Wasp.” Interestingly, there are few efforts to examine Alderton’s many failures – of all of the “men in grey,” Alderton is arguably the person most responsible for the current state of the monarchy. A paranoid, petty and childish king estranged from his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. A deeply unpopular boozehound queen consort. A lazy and illiterate heir. A rapidly aging and dusty roll call of “working royals.” Still, the Mail’s Becky English is trying to polish this turd.
He’s the man who delivered a King – and, for that matter, a Queen – masterminded the banishment of one particularly problematic relative, while cunningly corralling another. In short Sir Clive Alderton, Principal Private Secretary to His Majesty King Charles III, is arguably the most formidable and consequential courtier of the modern era. But to many readers of the Daily Mail, he will be simply known as ‘The Wasp’.
That was the ostentatiously offensive nickname given to him by the Duke of Sussex (or perhaps, more appropriately, his ghostwriter) in his vengeance-laden memoir, Spare – although one that, in the circumstances, must now surely be worn as a badge of honour? And while there are bound to be cheers from Montecito today when they learn that Sir Clive is sensationally set to retire after 20 years working as King Charles’ gatekeeper, the news will sadly leave Buckingham Palace without one of its ‘big beasts’.
For it can be confirmed that after two decades of the most loyal of service, leonine Sir Clive has announced that he will leave the royal household next May, a move that coincides with his 60th birthday (a revelation that has prompted some fans to enquire whether he has a Dorian Gray-style portrait in the attic). The feeling is that now is as good a time as any for him take a well-earned break: to start with he has helped to deliver a relatively problem-free accession (leaky pens aside) and a successful coronation.
The King has also just completed the ‘last of his firsts’ (starting with his first public engagements and home nations visits as monarch, to the big test so far of his reign, this year’s State Visit to the US, and his first to a British Overseas, Territory, Bermuda). He has also steered the King – and indeed the nation – through the dark days of the monarch’s cancer diagnosis in 2024. Charles himself, I am told, is in a ‘good place’ health-wise, as it stands. In all (and safely assuming that as a long-term diplomat Sir Clive’s pensionable age is 60), next year is a natural moment to move on.
While no-one, not even his most ardent admirers, would claim Sir Clive and his team have always got it right, there is no doubt that he was absolutely instrumental in turning the tanker round… Insiders would probably add to that the transformation of his wife, Camilla, from Duchess of Cornwall to Queen, something that was simply unthinkable when he joined royal service. While there will always be those who have strong opinions on the matter, few can argue that she hasn’t carried out her duties with enthusiasm, diligence and good humour and carved a space for herself in public life, tackling some truly thorny issue such as domestic abuse.
Needless to say, the King is a much, much happier man with his wife standing by his side.
That’s not to say, of course, backs haven’t been put up or hackles raised along the way.There’s no doubt that Sir Clive relishes the game of diplomacy – ‘he puts the ‘M’ into Machiavellian,’ says one wag.
To say that Prince Harry hates his father’s gatekeeper is an understatement, and he didn’t hold back in his memoir, as he described the then triumvirate of powerful royal aides at the heads of each of the three royal households (Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace) as ‘the bee, the fly and the wasp’. Sir Clive, it seems, was the worst of the three in his book, being ‘arrogant’ and ‘great at pretending to be polite, even servile’, but would ‘put you on his list’ and ‘give you such a stab with his outsized stinger that you’d cry out in confusion’.
Harry firmly blamed the courtier for being a roadblock in attempts to reconcile with his father. While that may in part be true, friends of the diplomat pour scorn on this claim, suggesting no aide would be so arrogant to stand in the way of father and son on a personal basis. But, of course, if the prince behaved in such a way that would place his father in potentially constitutionally tricky waters, he would not be doing his job if he didn’t protect the monarch, they add.
“Masterminded the banishment of one particularly problematic relative, while cunningly corralling another…” And “suggesting no aide would be so arrogant to stand in the way of father and son on a personal basis…” Basically, Alderton’s minions are frantically trying to recast his mismanagement of the Sussexit catastrophe and make it sound like Alderton isn’t one of the biggest reasons for the slow-motion crisis at the heart of the modern British monarchy. Alderton was likely the most venomous courtier arguing that Prince Harry and Meghan wouldn’t survive outside of the institution, and that Harry would eventually come crawling back, divorced and humiliated. That boneheaded call has tipped the monarchy sideways for nearly SEVEN YEARS. Instead of Alderton admitting that he made a series of catastrophically bad calls around the Sussexit, he’s continued to wield his influence to repeatedly hammer wedges between Charles and Harry. Don’t get me wrong, Charles has terrible instincts too, and I assume that Alderton was both influencing Charles and simply doing what Charles wanted. But it’s bizarre to watch royalists polish Alderton’s CV like he hasn’t spent the past decade driving the whole monarchy off a cliff.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
