Tom Parker Bowles – the only son of Queen Consort Camilla – was in high spirits as he stepped out in London this week for a special celebration.
The 48-year-old was photographed at the Groucho Club to fete the 50-year-long career of fellow restaurant critic Fay Maschler.
Tom was dressed down for the event in a bright red T-shirt, a blue jacket and matching blue trousers.
It was the first public sighting of Tom since the release of Prince Harry’s controversial memoir Spare, in which he took aim at Camilla.
In the book, Harry claimed that he and Prince William had pleaded with their father not to marry again and revealed he had wondered whether Camilla would be cruel to him, like a “wicked stepmother”, stating that William “long harboured suspicions about the Other Woman”.
Harry took his criticism of Camilla further with statements on her character, alleging that she had a calculated agenda to remedy her public image as the “other woman” – one that paved the way for her marriage and eventual Queen Consort title.
In an interview on 60 Minutes, the Prince went so far as to call Camilla “dangerous” because of the connections she has with members of the media.
“There was an open willingness on both sides to trade information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street,” he told host Anderson Cooper.
He then described his stepmother as “the villain” and the “third person in the marriage,” echoing his mother’s controversial interview with Martin Bashir in 1995.
“I had complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who, I believed, had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar,” Harry wrote in Spare. “In a funny way, I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy?”
