The Crown Spin Doctor Mark Bolland Admitted He Was “A Bit Naughty” After Leaving The Palace

When Mark Bolland began working as a private secretary to then-Prince Charles in 1996, he had a tall order ahead of him. As revisited in The Crown Season 5, Bolland (played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes), who was just 30 years old at the time, was tasked with rehabilitating Charles’ (Dominic West) public image amid his highly publicized and polarizing divorce from Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki). At the center of the scandalous breakup was Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams), who the so-called “spin doctor” worked tirelessly — and allegedly at the expense of some other royals — to bring her into the good graces of the public who largely saw her as “the other woman” at the time.

“It was decided by a little college of people that I would be the right person to help him,” Bolland recalled to MacLean’s in 2005. “It was felt I could talk frankly to him; I would be respectful but kind of edgy.”

Given that Camilla and Charles married in 2005 — with the former eventually earning Queen Elizabeth II’s blessing to be known as “queen consort” after Charles became king — Bolland is among those largely credited with rehabbing the couple’s image. However, not long after PR Week named him one of their PR Professional of the Year in 2001, Bolland resigned from his job as the prince’s private secretary to start his own public relations firm, Mark Bolland & Associates. Though the company dissolved in 2020, his clients included Camelot and Berkeley Homes Group, according to The Guardian.

In 2003, Bolland also began writing a column called Blackladder — a nickname Princes William and Harry reportedly had for him, referencing Rowan Atkinson's BBC TV series character — for News of the World. The move garnered backlash. After he shared behind-the-scenes info about St. James Palace, the Institute of Public Relations accused Bolland of betraying a confidence, along with ethical standards, and unsuccessfully attempted to rescind an award for his work with Camilla. “Had I been a bit naughty? Well, probably,” he told the British Journalism Review. “In hindsight, it maybe wasn't the smartest thing to have done because it put me into the middle of it all. I should actually have stayed out.”

Meanwhile, a former Buckingham Palace official also accused Bolland of damaging members of the royal family, including Prince Philip and the Earl and Countess of Wessex, as diversion tactics in his attempts to enhance Charles’ public image. “I think Bolland has done an extremely good job but he’s walked a dangerous tightrope, in great danger of causing irrevocable damage to the royal family,” former palace press officer Dicky Arbiter claimed in BBC1’s Panorama: Queen Camilla? in October 2002. “But fortunately he’s stopped or been stopped before he could do any more damage. Now having done the job of presenting Mrs. Parker Bowles into the public arena . . . he's probably superfluous to requirement.”

Now, Bolland, a native of Toronto, Canada, reportedly lives in Clerkenwell with his partner Lord Guy Black, who is a life peer member of the House of Lords, UK, and executive director of the Telegraph Media Group.