The author of a new Prince Charles tell-all says she's written a fair and balanced book about the heir to the British throne, despite attempts by Clarence House to distance itself from her work.
Journalist Catherine Mayer says her new book, "Charles: The Heart of a King," debunks many of the myths and misconceptions about the Prince of Wales.
"I set about examining this character who turns out to be far stranger, but in many ways more sympathetic, more compelling than reports would let you know," Mayer told CTV's Canada AM on Monday.
In her book, Mayer says she "trailed" Charles for six months, dined with him on one occasion, and met with him for several hours at his estate. She also followed Charles and his wife, Camilla on their trip to Canada last spring.
A correspondent for Time magazine, Mayer says she had warned Prince Charles' office that she would be writing a balanced book that would include details he would like, and others that he would not.
But after the book was serialized in the Times of London, Clarence House released a terse statement to say Mayer and her publishers had over-stated her access.
"It is not an official book," Kristina Kyriacou, head of communications for Prince Charles, told The Mail on Sunday at the end of January. "The author did not have the access as claimed. Clarence House has no further comment."
Mayer says she has since had "cordial conversations" with Clarence House.
"I told them the whole time I was working on the book, 'I'm a journalist, I'm writing a balanced book. That means I'm not writing a puff piece. There will be things you like and things you don't like,'" Mayer told AM.
"They knew that, but I think when they saw some of these headlines start to come out, they thought that they had better distance themselves."
Mayer acknowledges that by writing about the inner workings of Clarence House, including how Prince Charles deals with his staff and how they behave in his absence, she has put out a "much closer observation of the man" than previous biographies.
"What emerges is this picture of somebody who is very complicated," she said.
But she notes that many of the most outrageous rumours about Prince Charles that have circulated over the past years, including the allegation that he has a staffer squeeze toothpaste onto his brush each day, are "incredibly distorted."
"(The Royal Family) are brought up in such a separate environment that communications do get quite scrambled between Planet Windsor and Planet Earth, and that's where some of those misunderstandings arise," Mayer said.
Among those misunderstandings, Mayer said, is that Prince Charles remains "defined" by his marriage to Princess Diana.
"One of the reasons that people assume him wrongly to be a dry old stick, whereas in fact he's this incredibly emotional person, is that they assumed that (Diana) was the emotionally intelligent one, he was the one who was all about royal duty," Mayer said.
"So he struggles still with that legacy."
