Remembering lavish Prince of Wales Foundation dinners

Now that Charles is King, his entertainments for generous donors face an uncertain future

It’s the height of the summer “Season” in England. Good weather has already graced Trooping the Colour in London, the Order of the Garter ceremonies at Windsor Castle, and Royal Ascot, with its traditional carriage processions down the racecourse. Still to come are Wimbledon and the Henley Regatta.

One annual June fixture missing this year from the private diary of King Charles III: his dinners for deep-pocketed donors to his Washington, DC-based Prince of Wales Foundation. The future of these entertainments is uncertain now that his son William has the Prince of Wales title and can likely decide how—and perhaps even whether—to continue the foundation and its fundraising to finance some of Charles’s favorite philanthropic causes.

Charles essentially acknowledged this issue the night after he became King last September when he said in a televised address, “It will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply.” During his long tenure as Prince of Wales, Charles established numerous foundations, each with its own mission and staff. In 2018 four of the most prominent—supporting historic restoration and traditional arts— were merged into The Prince’s Foundation, based in Scotland. In the process, the new philanthropic entity took over some of the enterprises that had been underwritten by the American Prince of Wales Foundation.

Contemplating these shifts got me thinking about my experiences some fifteen years ago when I was invited by the late Robert Higdon, then the Prince of Wales Foundation’s Executive Director, to “make up numbers” (i.e., fill a seat without donating money) at black-tie dinners in Buckingham Palace, St. James’s Palace, and Kensington Palace.

These were dazzling evenings orchestrated by Michael Fawcett, the prince’s factotum for more than forty years until 2021 when he was forced to resign his position at The Prince’s Foundation, where he had been chief executive since its inception three years earlier. Fawcett’s departure came amid allegations that he had helped secure a coveted CBE award (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for a Saudi billionaire in exchange for nearly $2 million in donations to Charles’s charities. When I saw Fawcett in action more than a decade earlier, he had left Charles’s household and was working as a freelance party planner and fundraiser, but he had outsize influence over the prince, his biggest client.

Cocktails in the garden at Clarence House in June 2010 with the Prince of Wales and (left to right), Karl Wellner, his wife Deborah Norville, and my husband Stephen G. Smith

The Prince of Wales Foundation in those days relied mainly on financial support from Americans, but also attracted donors from the Far East, Europe and South Asia. As conceived in 1997 by Robert Higdon, each couple paid $20,000 to support projects focused on architecture, education, the environment, health care, and culture. In return for their generosity, Charles treated his benefactors to events he hosted in the early summer and autumn, not only at the London palaces, but at his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and once even at Balmoral Castle, the Queen’s private residence in Scotland.

The cost of the Fawcett-designed events was estimated at $1,000 for each guest. The menus alone were worthy of framing. For dinners at Buckingham Palace that I attended in June 2008 and June 2010, they were eleven-inch-high hand-painted cards in the shape of Prince of Wales feathers. Here’s the front as well as the back, equally exquisite—the sort of aesthetic touch characteristic of Charles.

In other years, the menus were less elaborate, but no less impressive. Here are two more, for dinners at Clarence House, the London residence of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, and Kensington Palace, along with the program for a concert in the Buckingham Palace ballroom before dinner in June 2010.