‘Camilla? She’s a bloody brick’, writes REBECCA ENGLISH

‘Friendship, love and respect. That’s what makes them tick,’ an in depth good friend of the King and Queen instructed me just lately.

‘They are quite different people in many ways, but at the heart of it you have two people who just really love and respect each other and still laugh an awful lot. It’s genuinely candy.’

It’s a verdict emphasised by Annabel Elliot, Camilla’s sister, who described them in a BBC interview final month as ‘yin and yang’, however an completely ‘brilliant’ group.

And it’s why I’ve little doubt that Queen Camilla shall be extra of a rock than ever to the King over the tough months to come back.

Of course the distressing information that her husband has been identified with most cancers will come as an enormous blow to Her Majesty.

From the second they first fell in love of their early 20s, Charles and Camilla’s lives have been inextricably entwined.

While theirs has not been a standard love story – certainly at one level the late Queen Elizabeth feared the couple’s ardour may show the downfall of the monarchy – it’s one which, in the end, could also be thought of one of the crucial enduring of our instances.

Indeed, Their Majesties are resulting from rejoice their twentieth marriage ceremony anniversary subsequent yr, a landmark which many would have thought completely inconceivable as soon as upon a time.

But the Queen can be stoic – the very definition of the British stiff higher lip – and somebody who takes issues very a lot in her stride.

Her method to this devastating information will, I’m positive, be sometimes calm and pragmatic, and she is going to insist on being there by her husband’s facet, supporting him each step of the best way.

Indeed final night time, I can reveal, she was with him at Clarence House as he returned to London to start out-patient hospital remedy.

And I’m instructed that whereas she is understandably involved and making ready to play ‘an important role in supporting The King throughout his period of treatment’, she plans to proceed with a full programme of public duties on the similar time.

That British stiff higher lip once more.

‘She’s a bloody brick,’ a good friend says.

Ironically, within the early days of their marriage it was Charles who was extra protecting of Camilla, figuring out the enormity of what she had taken on to be by his facet.

During their first official tour to the US following their 2005 marriage ceremony, I watched as the longer term king instinctively reached out throughout the aisle of our aircraft and squeezed his spouse’s shaking hand as we took off as he knew how terrified she was of flying (though I additionally subsequently heard him yelp throughout one significantly bumpy flight: ‘Darling, please don’t maintain me QUITE so exhausting!’)

But over time Camilla has bloomed, rising in confidence underneath the usually deeply merciless public highlight and incomes admiration for her work ethic and confidence in taking up retro causes.

It’s not at all times been plain crusing, in fact.

Camilla’s relationship with William and Harry has at all times been significantly complicated.

But, privately, William does acknowledge how pleased Camilla has made their father and is appreciative of the very fact she has by no means tried to intrude of their lives.

There’s additionally admiration for the best way she has diligently embraced royal duties at a time of life when most could be slowing down – and not using a squeak of grievance.

‘The King and Queen know what their roles are, why they are doing it and what they want to achieve. She has become increasingly bold in the work she does, seizing on difficult issues such as domestic violence, but doesn’t tread on his toes. They work effectively collectively and there’s a whole lot of mutual belief,’ the good friend stated.

That similar bond is obvious in non-public as effectively.

‘They get on, they share the same sense of humour and make each other laugh. They have the same interests – the countryside, walking, their dogs….. and, yes, the Queen knows when to beat a hasty retreat too. She knows when to give him his space,’ one other supply provides.

While she is fiercely supportive of her husband’s devotion to the causes he holds expensive, Camilla can be not above affectionately pricking that earnestness each every now and then.

On a couple of event over time I’ve caught her eye as her husband waxes lyrical over a trigger near his coronary heart, a figuring out smile flickering on her lips and a mischievous glint in her eye.

During an official visit to Egypt several years ago, the entire royal entourage were forced to somewhat rough it in modest mud brick houses because Charles was so keen to visit an eco-friendly, electricity free village.

His wife confided in me later, amid much jokey eye-rolling, that the lack of plug sockets was ‘all well and good if you don’t want to make use of a blooming hair dryer’.

But don’t mistake her capability to generally chuckle on the absurdities of the place she has discovered herself in as an indication of informal distain. Queen Camilla is fiercely loyal to ‘her man’ – and woe betide anybody who disrespects him.

‘It sounds so horribly clichéd but she genuinely respects her husband, his drive, his passion to change the world for the better,’ says one other confidante.

‘She is his fiercest champion and no-one should ever underestimate her loyalty to him. They come as a team. Disrespect him at your peril.’

Indeed, I’ve by no means, in all my years working along with her, heard Camilla ever check with her husband as something lower than ‘His Royal Highness, the Prince, the King or His Majesty’, even in non-public.

‘She has huge respect for her husband as a King, as well as a man, and the institution of the monarchy,’ one other supply provides. ‘That’s one thing Queen Elizabeth got here to admire too.’

And one good friend tells me that if Camilla is seen to be tolerant of her husband’s quirks, then he’s equally affected person with hers.

‘He has brought, how shall I put it, a little discipline to her, um, somewhat disorganised routine,’ they remarked wryly, with a nod to Camilla’s infamous untidiness and beforehand slightly ‘relaxed’ perspective to life.

Of course there’s often friction.

The King can get tetchy when his spouse chats an excessive amount of. She needs he would decelerate, only a contact.

But they’re minor, run-of-the-mill marital squabbles within the scheme of issues and the King is clearly grateful to have somebody to share this slightly unusual and generally lonely life with.

One solely needed to see the smile of undisguised pleasure that lit up his face when he noticed his spouse stroll out in her coronation finery at Buckingham Palace final May to know simply how a lot she means to him.

They nonetheless personal separate houses: Camilla has Raymill in Wiltshire, purchased as a single girl, the place she enjoys an off-the-cuff existence away from the rigorous of palace life, whereas Charles nonetheless adores the formal/informality of Highgrove in close by Gloucestershire.

But they’re nonetheless limpet-close, assured sufficient of their relationship that they’ll merely sit in a room, studying, with out saying a phrase – simply the occasional smile.

Charles has additionally embraced Camilla’s household like his personal. He is vastly near her sister, Annabel, who will present a shoulder to cry on for her sister having misplaced her husband to a long-term sickness simply days earlier than the coronation final yr.

And he adores her kids, Tom and Laura, in addition to her 5 grandchildren.

During an interview 5 years in the past, Camilla instructed me how her husband was a superb story-teller, frequently studying the kids bedtime tales, significantly Harry Potter, and doing all of the completely different voices for them. They have been at all times mesmerised, she stated.

It is a facet to the King that few get to listen to about.

Above all there’s laughter. The form of painful, gut-wrenching laughter that leaves you weak within the knees.

On royal engagements you’ll typically see the couple actually crying at a shared joke, corpsing many times as they catch one another’s eye – no imply feat after 18 years of marriage – particularly when issues don’t fairly go to plan.

Laughter is one thing that they may, as a pair, want greater than ever as they face the King’s present well being disaster.

And like every little thing in life, it’s one thing they may method collectively, united.

King and Queen, however, extra importantly, husband and spouse.