Posted on 05/30/2003 4:12:53 AM PDT by LuisBasco
He can't dance, or paint, or cook. But he is attempting to learn Swahili and is looking forward to a long summer away from the lecture theatre.
So said Prince William in a rare interview as he completed his second-year examinations midway through his four-year MA Honours degree course at St Andrews University.
Looking relaxed in typical student attire of denims and threadbare pullover - with obligatory holes at elbow and underarm - the Prince, 21 next month, took to the beach at the Scottish coastal town for photographs and to answer questions about his time at St Andrews, a town he said he has grown to love.
Slightly pale after weeks of intensive study, the Prince emerged from his last exam - a two-hour geography paper - with the clear intention of winding down.
Sipping mineral water, he revealed there was some serious partying ahead. Not that he would be sticking to mineral water. "Everybody thinks I drink beer but I actually like cider," he said, thus demolishing the myth that he liked nothing better than to knock back a pint of Australian lager.
There were more surprises too. In what little spare time he has, he has been studying Swahili, and even began a course in Middle Eastern Studies before dropping it because of the heavy workload from his other courses.
"I am trying to teach myself Swahili, which is something that has proved a little harder than I thought," he said. "It's because of my love of Africa. It's an odd language to learn but I wanted to do something that was very specialised.
"I love the people of Africa," said the Prince, who spent part of his gap year in Kenya and whose 21st birthday bash at Windsor Castle features an African theme. "And I'd like to know more about them - and to speak to them," he added, fuelling speculation that voluntary work may feature in his after-university plans.
"I've got a book and a book tape. Like I say, I am teaching myself. I have them in my room and they're collecting dust quite rapidly, but I am trying to make progress."
The Prince's room, in a flat in St Andrews which he shares with three other students - one male and two female - is his sanctuary and is distinguished by his sound system and the drapes he has hung on the walls. "I'm not particularly fussy about my room," he said. "I just want it to be somewhere I can relax - my own space.
"But I do have drapes up in my room. I like that because it makes it more cosy.
"I've got to have a stereo - got to have music - I love my music," enthused the Prince, whose friends will attest that he enjoys R&B - played very loud. Oh, and there is the "odd book", he joked, "just to make it look like I'm working - and a comfortable bed".
But soon, he revealed, he will be decamping from the flat to a cottage on the outskirts of the town, having decided to spend his third year in a more rural setting. "Most people tend to move houses and that was always my intention," he said. "In my third year I have fewer lectures and have to spend less time in the university and so I thought: how about moving somewhere different?
"I do think I am a country boy at heart. I love the buzz of towns and going out with friends and sitting with them drinking and whatever - it's fun. But, at the same time, I like space and freedom."
Freedom, of a sort, is what he has found at St Andrews thanks to its citizens and his fellow students. He is grateful to them, and to the media who, by and large, have kept away. It has meant he is able to saunter down to the local supermarket to shop for food without attracting too much attention. "I do a lot of shopping - I enjoy shopping, actually," he said. "I get very carried away, you know, just food shopping. I buy lots of things and then I go back to the house and see the fridge is full of all the stuff I've just bought."
Sharing a flat has meant mucking in. "I cook quite regularly for them and they cook for me, although we haven't had a house supper for quite a while because everyone's been doing exams and working quite hard. I've got some very good cooks in my house but I am absolutely useless, as my paella experience, which was filmed at Eton a while ago, proved," he said, referring to his Eton cookery classes which were filmed for television.
"We tend to have chicken, curries and pasta. But we go out to eat quite a lot - whatever we feel like at the time."
As in most students' houses, he disclosed, the flatmates started off with good housekeeping intentions and organised lists of duties. "We all get on very well and started off having rotas but, of course, it just broke down into complete chaos. Everyone helps out when they can. I try to help out when I can and they do the same for me. But, usually, you just fend for yourself."
The freedom he has also meant he is able to drive his car around and sometimes drives into Edinburgh for a change of scene. He has made good friends in St Andrews and enjoys a good social life.
"There are so many people here from different backgrounds," he said. "My friends are made up of all sorts of different people - I've got lots of Scottish friends, American friends and English friends. I don't deliberately select my friends because of their background. If I enjoy someone's company, then that's all that counts. I have many different friends who aren't from the same background as me and we get on really well - it's brilliant."
It would, of course, be hard to find someone of the same background - but St Andrews appears to have adjusted well to royalty. And he to St Andrews.
"I like cinemas, bars, restaurants and lots of sport - on the beach, playing quick golf - just making use of everything up here. There is quite a lot to do."
And he has, he revealed, been voted water polo captain at the university, which was runner-up in the Scottish Cup. "I play lots of water polo - I love my water polo," he said. "I'm not quite doing enough exercise - I'm still pretty unfit. But I like lots of swimming. I love my water sports.
"I'm trying to play a little more rugby. I played in a sevens tournament a little while ago. I play some football - I play Sunday league up here. I gave up playing hockey when a friend of mine had his teeth knocked out - put me off a bit.
"I do swim in the sea but that really doesn't last very long. It's usually in and out and I make a big fuss and shout how cold it is and then don't do it again for a while.
"There is a very good water polo team here. The girls' team are particularly good and won the Scottish Cup last year. We got to the finals of the Scottish Cup this year although we didn't manage to win, so we were runners-up. But I was elected to be captain of the water polo teams next year."
He has also found time in his busy life to indulge in a spot of Scottish dancing although, unlike his father, he has no great desire to wear a kilt and has so far eschewed wearing one in public.
"I haven't got into it yet - it's a bit draughty," he joked. "I have worn a kilt in private and I am not saying I will never wear one in public.
"You can learn to play the bagpipes at Eton but I never really tried that either," he added. "But I love Scottish dancing - it's great. I am hopeless at it but I do enjoy it. I usually make a complete muck-up of the Dashing White Sergeant. I do throw my arms dangerously around and girls fly across the dance floor.
"Scottish culture is very diverse and definitely very different," he concluded. "My great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, was passionate about Scotland - about Birkhall at Balmoral and about the Castle of Mey."
As well as the kilts, it seems Prince William is unlikely to follow in his father's artistic footsteps either. Despite studying History of Art, he is, he claims, useless at the easel, describing his father's talent as "brilliant".
"He's very modest about it and he's always criticising his own work. But I do actually like it," he said.
"His subject matter is particularly sensitive - he paints mostly landscapes and his paintings make a lot of money for charity."
His brother, Prince Harry, however, is of a far more artistic bent. "Harry can paint but I can't. He has our father's talent while I, on the other hand, am about the biggest idiot on a piece of canvas.
"I did do a couple of drawings at Eton which were put on display. Teachers thought they were examples of modern art but in fact I was just trying to paint a house," he laughed.
"I like traditional art. I love the Renaissance. It's fascinating because it's just so detailed and precise. More modern people - Picasso and his Blue Period, I do like that. He was evolutionary."
It helps, as he admits, that his grandmother, the Queen, holds the Royal Collection in trust for the nation, and that the walls of the royal residences are adorned with masterpieces. "I did do my A-level History of Art dissertation on Leonardo da Vinci's drawings which, of course, are in the Royal Collection, so I was very lucky," he said. However, despite his love of art, he confirmed speculation that he may drop History of Art in his third year to specialise in Geography for the final two years of his degree course.
"It slightly depends on my exam results," he said. "History of Art and Geography are my two choices and I honestly haven't decided yet. I'm torn between the two. But I have to decide soon.
"In my first two years I've done quite a range of modules. I've done Social Anthropology and Moral Philosophy as well as Art History and Geography. But now I have to specialise." He speaks with enthusiasm, but there was a time, he admits, when he was not even sure St Andrews was the place for him.
"I love being at St Andrews," he said. "It's basically everything that I had imagined when I first came up here. I went to look at Edinburgh first of all and I was torn between there and St Andrews. For me, though, St Andrews had a community feel and the people here are brilliant."
That is not to say it has been easy, and he admits to a wobble at the end of his first term when he thought he wanted to leave but was talked out it by his father.
"I think it was the new surroundings. When I was with Raleigh International in Chile during my gap year, it was the same sort of thing. You're thrown into completely new territory.
"You have to start fending for yourself quite considerably and you desperately want to settle in and meet everyone but, at the same time, you have lots of reservations."
It was, he concedes, probably more difficult for him than most, given his position. "It certainly felt like that. But people relaxed very quickly about it and the students have been so good towards me. They let me get on with things to start with and realised that no one could settle in just like that. So they gave me a bit of space and it's worked - and I hope for them as well. It's been brilliant."
His success at St Andrews is, he is convinced, down to the way he has been treated there. "People here just treat me like everyone else - it's really nice. I'm able to lead a near-normal life because of a combination of reasons really. The media have been very good considering, I'm sure, how tantalising it is having me up here. And the people of St Andrews and the students themselves have been so supportive. So, basically, I feel very comfortable."
Although he is probably always recognised as he goes about his business, it does not, he stressed, affect him. "It's quite interesting because when I'm walking around, you see people chatting and so on in their own little worlds - and I always go into my own little world as well - and you don't really notice what's going on around you.
"But the local residents, I'm sure, know what I do. They know the routes I take. Yet, very kindly, they just get on with their lives, their shopping and things like that.
"I think it's probably a little harder for tourists and foreigners who come up here and try and pretend, as it were, that they haven't seen me. That's a little bit tricky sometimes. But everyone else is very relaxed. I hope I'm not a tourist attraction - I'm sure they come here really because St Andrews is just amazing, a beautiful place."
So the university, Scotland's oldest seat of learning dating from 1413, has lived up to his expectations so far.
"I was very nervous about what was going to happen because I'd heard lots of stories," he said. "The exams are the tricky bit, but once they're out of the way the rest is a lot of fun. There is an immense amount of reading and lectures take up quite a lot of your time.
"I would recommend university as long as you decide to work. You have a lot of time to yourself and you have to keep busy. It's very different from school. But the last two years have gone by so quickly.
"Living in a hall of residence for the first year was a good move. That's where I met most of my friends. Immediately you're all put together - a whole load of people in similar positions - and it was a lot of fun.
"I think if you had gone into a house straightaway with people you didn't really know, it would have been very awkward and you would have been isolated," he added.
In the beginning even the university dons were in awe of the latest student. "Once they stopped trying to spy me at lectures then it was all very relaxed," he joked. "My tutors and lecturers have been very considerate and have just let me get on. They know I'll come to them if I've got any problems.
"I try to attend as many lectures as I can but inevitably there are certain times when I never make them for lots of reasons. But I go to all my tutorials.
"My father thinks I am the laziest person on the earth," said the young Prince who is often teased by Prince Charles for being a late riser. "But surprisingly, I do actually get up. I've had 9 o'clock lectures all this year."
The leftists love to hear things like this.
"My father thinks I am the laziest person on the earth," said the young Prince...
His father thinks wrong. The young prince is the second laziest person on earth.
He's about as smart as a rock.
This reminds me. About the same time as Chuck & Di got hitched, National Geographic ran a picture spread of the "Royal Wedding" of the King of Swaziland to a Zulu Princess. (Dig this: African royalty who are Christians) They might have a daughter about Will's age. Ya think?
As my Jewish landlady used to say about her daughter majoring in Theatre "It's nice but you can't eat with it".
Let's see what he does when he turns 30. Likely nothing, but you never know.
The only things that can be said in favor of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha ("Windsor" since a convenient name change during WWI) is that they have rarely been cowards and that their very ordinariness enables the monarch to connect with her subjects in a charming little way when she is 'meeting and greeting', so that they feel specially favoured.
The only thing you can't accuse the Hanoverian family of is being boring. From madness to stupefying dullness, the whole family has been interesting.
Well, I think it's a matter of taste whether one finds their stupifying dullness (as you so nicely put it) interesting. I suppose a case could be made that George III was interesting, or William IV when he was a debauched Prince Regent, or perhaps Albert Edward while Prince of Whales, but he surely ended up as a very dull king whose great legacy is the destruction of the power of the House of Lords. The first George never even spoke English. Victoria was no more amusing than she was amused. Her doting on Prince Albert was so middle-class as to be embarrassing on a throne that knew the likes of the Plantagents and the Tudors. Anyway, de gustibus non disputandam.
Stark raving mad, but if you consider his fifteen living offspring, it was probably self-defense.
William IV when he was a debauched Prince Regent,
William wasn't ever a Prince Regent, that was his older brother, but anyone who had ten children by an actress who supported him and then dumped her when the prospect of an eventual crown was flashed in his face is an interesting cad
or perhaps Albert Edward while Prince of Whales,
Prince Albert was canned.
As a descendent (albeit from an illegitimate daughter of King John) of the Plantagenets as well as legitimately from at least two of the barons who stood surety for Magna Charta, I think I have every right to speak freely about the Germans that Parliament invited to England after Queen Anne had no issue. By that time, during the Commonwealth actually, some of my forebears had had the good sense to come to America. Any claims of allegience the House of Hanover had on my forebears was sundered by the Independence of these states.
I have great admiration for the peoples of Britian - the English, Scots and Welsh - but no particular reason to be fond of the monarchy. I suppose its good publicity - it sure takes in many Americans - but it's rather expensive, don't you think, for what you get?
And all of this drivel about Charles (who'd rather be Camilla's Tampon by his own admission) is enough to make a grown man cry. The man had an undistinguished career at university, and would be barely employable as a middle manager were it not for an accident of his birth.
The British Monarchy (capitalizing it as you did) may well have been a great institutition once upon a time, but no more. It was the monarchy, in the persons of Edward VII and George V who oversaw the destruction of the British Constitution by threatening to create enough Liberal peers to pass the Parliament Act which took away the Lords' veto, ushering in the era of socialism into Britain. So, sorry, I'm not having any, thank you.
As the Scots republican nationalists sing to the tune of "The Sash My Father Wore" (a Ulster loyalist protestant tune):
Nae Liz the I, nae Lillibet the T'wa, nae Liz shall ever be, we'll make our land republican, when the Scottish break away.
His sons certainly made up for it though. The Iron Duke called them "the biggest set of damned millstones ever hung around the neck of the nation" and they certainly were a wild crew.
The Prince Regent (a/k/a the Prince of Whales) was not William IV or Albert Edward the Prince Consort - he was George III's eldest son, later George IV. He hated his father and supported the opposition party (and with C.J. Fox in the lead it WAS a party - a very wild party).
William a/k/a The Sailor King was a bluff and jolly sort of fellow who wasn't really all bad, but I just can't get over him dumping poor Mrs. Jordan (who was a looker) and all the little FitzClarences for a chance at the throne.
But really the present Queen has very little of the Hanoverian blood left. Queen Victoria was the last of the Hanoverians, she married a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, her son married a Danish princess, their son married a Teck, and HIS son married the daughter of a Scottish Earl.
The principles the United States was founded upon, and which American conservatives are committed to, are somewhat elgalitarian by European standards, and republican. We do not yearn for the divine right of kings or to bend our knees to any man. Our conservatism is the sturdy, classical liberal kind that sees all men as equal before the law, without titles or preferences of nobility.
You are welcome to revere the House of Hanover, excuse me, "Windsor", and I will wish you and them "Godspeed" but, don't come here on an American board and demand that we worship, or even respect, your German monarchs. Sometimes, I think the Germans got the better of the deal, getting rid of the Hohenzollerns in 1918. I always preferred the House of Waiblingen myself.
For Wellington, a Tory so high he opposed the Reform Bill in 1832 and supported commission by purchase in the Army to the end, to say such things about George IV and William IV (who also opposed the Reform Bill) says a great deal indeed.
You're quite right of course, that I earlier confused George IV who was Prince Regent, with William IV, who wasn't.
Actually, weren't the Teck's also German? I agree that the blood isn't purely Hanoverian anymore, but, clearly Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was as German as they come, and the Danish royals are more than a little German, and are always off marrying those Greek royals who are Germans.
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had no known natural or manufacturing resources and survived by marrying off its males to the Crowned Heads of Europe. They are all over the darned place on the family trees of European royalty.
That's why Nicholas of Russia looked so much like his cousin George of England (it's uncanny) and why the Tsarevitch had hemophilia.
You tell me which is which (no fair peeking):
Now, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was a Cavendish-Bentinck on her mother's side and her father was Claude George Bowes-Lyon (the 22nd Lord Glamis and 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne). She has a good English pedigree, and I consider her responsible for whatever turned out well in her daughter. Remember, she married into the family expecting only to be a royal duchess, and was a modest unassuming person go good character who always did her duty, and a bit more. Were the monarchs all such good stock, one might have a different opinion of them.
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