[KC Burke]

Laurens van der Post was the name of the guy that I was grasping for in my post above.

[naturalman1975]

Laurens van der Post did have some influence on the Prince for a while. He was also very influential on the thinking of Margaret Thatcher - and not all of his ideas were bad ones.

But that influence ended very abruptly in the mid 1990s when certain additional facts about the man were brought to the Prince's attention. Personally I wonder why it took so long for that to happen - I think some people in the British government really liked the influence LvdP was having (seeing as I have mentioned her, I will be specific and say I am definitely not including Lady Thatcher in that group).