Queen Camilla mourns her first love, Kevin Burke, who died aged 77

AND Kevin Burke, the man who first fell in love with the future Queen Camilla, dies at the age of 77. The two they met in 1965 during a party organized in an exclusive Knightsbridge venue by Major Bruce and Rosalind Shand in honor of their seventeen-year-old daughter ready to enter society. Kevin, fresh out of Eton, was the 19-year-old son of Sir Aubrey Burke, founder of aviation giant Hawker Siddeley. For Milla Shand, as she was then known, it was lightning strikeif it is true that only a few days later she lost her virginity to the young gentleman. A detail that according to the British press has changed the story: when five years later Camilla met Carlo, the lost purity – according to royal etiquette – would indeed have been among the main impediments to any marriage.

The story between Milla and Kevin was short but intense. He himself has it spoken in 2012 in the biography by Jessica Jayne The Duchess of Cornwall: The Story and Secrets of Camilla. “Every night we had two or three cocktail parties to go to and a couple of dances to choose from on the weekends in the country. All we needed was enough money for petrol (Kevin had a yellow Jaguar that Camilla nicknamed The Egg, ed). It was the best time, with the best and most fun partner I could ask for. Camilla was a lot of fun, immensely popular, and while she wasn’t a beauty, she was attractive and sexy. She was never shy and she always had something funny to say. I stayed with Camilla all that year. I suppose we were in love. Then he dumped me. Why? The short answer is that she was engaged in her dances in London.’

In reality Camilla, who at the time was often photographed at London parties with several guys, was staying falling in love with Andrew Parker Bowles, army officer whose parents were close friends of the Queen Mother, whom he would marry in 1973 and with whom he would have two children Tom And Laura. At first, however, the story between Camilla and the captain was a continuous push and pull: during an «off» period he even had an affair with the princess Anna. And it is precisely in that period that Camilla, at a polo match, met her future lover Carlo, who only in 2005 would become her husband number two.

Kevin for his part for many years repeatedly declared himself hostile to marriage. But in the end, so did he went to the altar twice: the first, a 42 years oldwith the 26-year-old advertising executive Peta Baker (from which he separated in 2001); the second with the former headhunter Louise Fairey with whom, at the age of 58, he had his only child. The funeral of multi-millionaire Burke, chartered accountant director of three oil companieswill take place at St Mary’s Church, Petworth, on 5 September 2023. And now all royal observers are wondering if Queen Camilla, on the day of her last farewell to her first love, will be present.