Who Is Mark Bolland?
The new season of The Crown features King Charles's attempts to get the public—and his family—on his side over his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, the future Queen Camilla. Viewers who are royal fans know he was successful (she was crowned alongside Charles at their coronation this past spring), however, they may not know how he succeeded.
Enter Mark Bolland, a public relations executive. In The Crown, Bolland is played by actor Ben Lloyd-Hughes.
Bolland, who was born in Toronto, Canada, but raised in England, worked as a public affairs executive after graduating from college. In August 1996, Prince Charles appointed Bolland to be his Assistant Private Secretary, and became Deputy Private Secretary in 1997, serving in that role until 2002. He left to set up his own PR firm, Mark Bolland & Associates, keeping Charles and Camilla on for one year until they cut ties under some strain. He recalled in a 2004 interview with British Journalism Review, "That’s when I said to Camilla: 'I love you dearly, let’s have lunch or dinner a couple of times a year, but I can’t be at the end of a phone any more.'"
During his tenure, he is credited with transforming the public's image of Charles and Camilla. British Journalism Review explained: "The alchemy he once performed for Charles [was] raising his popularity rating from 20 per cent after Diana's death to 75 per cent, and rendering the prospect of a remarriage palatable to the British public."
In Spare, Prince Harry recounts the first times he and Prince William met Camilla, and learned of Bolland—who he refers to as a "spin doctor." "Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown. (With Pa's blessing, we presumed.) Stories began to appear everywhere, in all the papers, about her private conversation with Willy, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willy, of Course," Harry writes. "They could only have been leaked by the one other person present. And the leaking had obviously been abetted by the new spin doctor Camilla had talked Pa into hiring."
Bolland, now 57, is married to Guy Black, a Conservative member of the House of Lords.
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