November 14, 2008. Copyright 2008, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, celebrates his 60th birthday
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, November 14, Graphic News:   At an age when most men are contemplating retirement, Prince Charles, eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and heir apparent since the age of three, has yet to step up to the job for which he been preparing all his life. Not for him the prospect of a career coming to a close, more time with the family or the chance finally to get on top of the garden. For His Royal Highness, turning 60 means moving ever-nearer the day when he will become King and his second wife, Camilla, Princess Consort. Like his great, great grandfather Edward VII, who was 59 when Queen Victoria died, Charles is another Prince of Wales waiting in the shadow of a long-reigning monarch.
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To the generation who can remember being given a day off school to watch his investiture at Caernarfon Castle on July 1, 1969, Prince Charles has always been a highly visible part of British life. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Archaeology and Anthropology, he followed in the footsteps of both his father and his great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten -- the man he affectionately called Uncle Dickie, butÊlost to an IRA bomb in 1979 -- and joined the navy. However, he was not a natural action man and served just five years. Known as a deep thinker, the Prince was a close friend of the writer Laurens Van der Post. His skill as a watercolour artist is acknowledged and he has also published a children's storybook, The Old Man of Lochnagar, illustrated by his friend, the artist Hugh Casson. A keen supporter of organic farming, Charles recently stirred up debate by openly denouncing genetically modified methods of food production. Despite being portrayed at times as a crank -- not least when he admitted to talking to his plants at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home -- the Prince's own "Duchy Originals" range of biscuits and other comestibles is a hugely successful brand worldwide, with all its profits used to support farmers in poorer countries. At home, the Prince has encouraged others to follow his entrepreneurial ways through the Prince's Trust, which helps disadvantaged young people start their own businesses.
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As a father, Charles has successfully brought up his sons, William and Harry, on his own since the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car crash in Paris in 1997. The couple, whose fairytale wedding in 1981 attracted a global television audience of three quarters of a billion, went through an agonisingly public break-up and divorce, with Charles admitting infidelity in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in 1994. Ten years ago, at his 50th birthday party hosted by the Queen, Charles was still unable to bring his long-term partner, Camilla Parker-Bowles, into the public arena. But the couple, by then both divorced, finally married in a civil ceremony in 2005, and afterwards had their union blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Of the criticism he has received over the years for airing his views -- he famously described the proposed extension to the National Gallery in London as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend" -- Charles remains philosophical: "It is the tall tree", he is quoted as saying, "that feels the wind".
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