As a debutante from aristocratic stock, a 17-year-old Camilla Shand celebrated her “coming out” long ago. It was 1965 and she quaffed cocktails at Searcys, a fancy establishment behind Harrods.
It feels increasingly, though, the true coming of age of the Duchess of Cornwall is happening now.
Six decades later, ahead of her 75th birthday tomorrow, it appears she is finally making her entrance.
In the build-up to a landmark birthday when most people are slowing down, Camilla has graced the cover of Vogue and guest-edited
Country Life magazine.
She has had ITV cameras follow her for a critically praised documentary in which she revealed a passion for collecting royal memorabilia mugs (possibly not a Charles and Di edition?).
And she also hosted a celebrity lunch for her peers, including Dane Joanna Lumley and Sir Trevor McDonald.
Commemorative photos, taken by the Duchess of Cambridge, may show her looking suitably retired, sporting jeans and florals, and also with a Jack Russell and trug of cut flowers.
But make no mistake, Camilla isn’t about to wield the secateurs – although friends hint she’d probably love nothing better than to retire to her garden.
She appears at last to have received the key to the door and maybe our hearts. Recent polls suggest 55% of Brits back the move for her to become Queen Consort when Charles takes to the throne, while only 28% oppose.
For a woman once infamously labelled Number Three by Princess Diana in a controversial 1995 Panorama interview, for the past week she’s taken a spin in the Number One spot, or at least appears to have been firmly accepted as her husband’s Number Two.
And love or tolerate her, even loathe her, you can’t deny she’s waited a long time for it.
After the Queen announced this spring it was her “sincere wish” Camilla takes the title, she is gearing up for the job of her life. Indeed, to become the country’s oldest Queen Consort.
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward insists the Duchess is a reluctant star, never personally ambitious or a lover of the limelight. “She’d probably like to retire!” she laughs.
But Camilla will be ready to embrace this new era. Ingrid admits: “I’m sure she is full of trepidation, she was not born a Windsor, she does not like travelling, flying, and she is 75. I’m sure she would like a quieter life.
“But she is a young 75 at heart and she is going to do the job her way.
“She has had to live in the shadow of Diana’s ghost and to some extent she always will be the woman who took her place. But it is not top of the list anymore. We are being allowed to see her as something other than that now.
“She is not someone who would push herself there but she has slowly been moved to the forefront.
“Now it is time to step up the plate and she will do the job in her own special style.” She adds: “She is entertaining and fun, she has a twinkle like the Queen Mother had. She will do a good job.”
What’s clear, is Camilla’s determination to be herself.
Stubbornness is a trait alongside good humour. She is the patron of around 90 charities and this week she cut the cake as Battersea Dogs and Cats Home celebrated its 160th anniversary.
But Camilla hasn’t shied from tackling difficult issues, most strongly violence against women, voicing thoughts on taboo subjects like rape.
They’re not areas Duchesses tend to stray. Least of all Queen Consorts.
But she has no plans to abandon them.
Ingrid says: “She is not afraid to speak out about anything anymore.”
In a recent Woman’s Hour interview, Camilla said of becoming Queen Consort: “Of course, it’s a great honour. But I’m going to keep up with these causes.
“I hope I should be doing it for a lifetime.”
But she has revealed one surprising influence. Her late dad-in-law Prince Philip once wrote to Diana: “I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind leaving you for Camilla”.
But he and Camilla shared an unshowy approach to their supportive roles.
She called him a role model, who “always told me what he thought”. “The Duke of Edinburgh’s philosophy was clear,” she said this week.
“‘Look up, look out, say less, do more and get on with the job’ – and that’s what I intend to do.” But while Camilla “takes life on the chin”, Ingrid says public vitriol over the years, including abusive letters, dented her.
Current public respect will be a relief. She says: “For the past two years she has been getting her voice heard and she is a very likeable person.
“No one wants to be disliked, and now people are seeing her for who she is, they are not standing in judgment of her anymore.”
Her irreverence is certainly refreshing. It’s hard to forget that covert wink at a reception with then US president Donald Trump.
This week she opened her birthday lunch with the provocative: “Ladies and gentlemen, if I can call you that!”
Once reportedly dubbed “the Rottweiler” by Diana, she is emerging as the most amiable Royal of the lot. It’s what Charles loves about her, said Penny Junor, biographer and author of The Duchess: The Untold Story.
She added: “Charles loved that Camilla smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things he did.”
It’s what he wanted us all to see.
After a 2012 trip to Papua New Guinea, he gushed: “I hope they found out just how special she is.”
Certainly, he has never been in doubt since their first meeting at polo in 1971 and a “blissful” six months together before she was deemed an unsuitable (unvirginial) bride.
It’s said Charles begged her not to marry her first husband Andrew Parker Bowles, with whom she had two children (Charles, a “best friend” before they reignited their affair in the late Seventies, is the godfather of her eldest son, Tom).
After a painfully slow creep into public life as his partner – first snapped as a couple in 1999, two years after Diana’s death, and marrying in 2005, although the Queen did not attend the civil ceremony – no one will be more pleased than Charles about his wife’s current “arrival”.
Wherever blame should be apportioned, it’s been a bumpy road.
“It’s not easy. I was scrutinised for such a long time that you just have to find a way to live with it,” Camilla said.
But now, finally, it feels time to let that go. There’s work to be done, and, 75 or not, the garden will have to wait.
