'Just to be involved in the Gordonstoun production was always exciting. One of those involved recalls the thrill of being on stage with the heir to the throne. She said he had enjoyed music and drama, taking part in several school productions.Īt the time, Gordonstoun was a boys-only school and girls from a nearby high school joined their casts.

in many speeches, he's talked about the really positive impact that his time here had on his life.'ĭescribing him as a 'studious young man' who went on to study at the University of Cambridge, Kerr said Charles, who has visited the school since leaving in 1967, would have mixed with people from a whole range of backgrounds. 'But interestingly, Prince Charles himself has said that he's always astonished at the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun. (Photo by PNA / AFP)Īsked if Charles had been happy, principal Kerr said: 'I suppose everyone's schooldays have their ups and downs, and it's probably no surprise that the downs are more interesting from a media perspective. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative.'įILE - Britain's Prince Charles seen with Scottish businessman Iain Tennant on his first day at Gordonstoun school in Elgin, May 1, 1962. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities. 'It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did - either mentally or physically.

'I am always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun and the careless use of ancient cliché's used to describe it,' he told the House of Lords in 1975. However, Charles himself has suggested his schooling was not as bad as is sometimes portrayed, praising what it taught him. 'I never saw it, I never knew about it, and then suddenly I started to piece it all together and go OK, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this bit about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he’s treated me the way he was treated,' Harry said in a 2021 podcast interview. I still wish I could come home.'Ĭharles' son Harry also suggested it had negatively impacted on Charles, talking during a discussion on parenting about 'the pain and suffering' his father had suffered. They throw slippers all night long or hit me with pillows. 'As an adult, the Prince of Wales would insist that the decision to send him to Gordonstoun, which at the time he regarded as a prison sentence,' was in fact beneficial, instilling in him the self-discipline sense of responsibility without which he might have 'drifted,’” Dimbleby wrote in 'The Prince of Wales: A Biography.'Īccording to Dimbleby, Charles once wrote home saying: 'The people in my dormitory are foul.

In a biography to which the now king gave his blessing, Jonathan Dimbleby described the royal's time there as an 'incarceration.' Novelist William Boyd, whose time at the school overlapped with Charles, said the monarch had detested his time there. 'What's more powerful for us is knowing that many of the attributes which Prince Charles takes forward as monarch were developed here at Gordonstoun.'Įarlier generations of British royal children, including Charles' late mother Queen Elizabeth, had been educated by tutors at home.Ĭharles found aspects of life hard at a school that had rugged practices such as sending pupils on early morning runs followed by a cold shower. 'For everybody at Gordonstoun, it's a huge sense of pride to have been the first school to educate an heir to the British throne,' current Gordonstoun principal Lisa Kerr told Reuters.

At a remote Scottish boarding school, King Charles spent his formative years developing a passion for the arts and environment, and according to one letter home a biographer quoted, dealing with bullies and wishing he could go home.Ĭharles, the new British monarch, was 13 when in May 1962 he began attending Gordonstoun, a private school on the north coast of Scotland where his late father Prince Philip had also studied and wanted his son to go.

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