‘I wasn’t going to be diverted,’ says King Charles about campaign on the environment | King Charles III
King Charles has revealed he is “not going to be turned away” from his environmental campaign despite past criticism in a new documentary showcasing his philosophy of “harmony”.
In the Amazon Prime Video film, his first project with a streaming platform, Charles recalls past attacks on his outspokenness on the environment, saying: “I just felt like that was the approach that I was going to stick to. A course that I had set and that I wasn’t going to be turned away from.”
He hopes Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, filmed over seven months on four continents and exploring the importance of living in balance with nature, will act as a call to action after five decades of campaigning against the climate crisis.
“On the fight to save the planet: It’s going backwards fast. I’ve been saying this for 40 years but anyway, here we are. So that’s why I get a little bit, anyway… I can only do what I can do, which isn’t much,” he says in the film, available on Amazon Prime from February 6.
He concludes: “Perhaps by the time I leave this mortal body there will perhaps be a little more awareness…of the need to put things together again. »
The film’s world premiere in Windsor Castle’s Waterloo Room on Wednesday evening would be the first time a film has been shown in a royal residence.
It reflects five decades of Charles’s environmental missionary zeal and, although not a momentous political project, it is an unprecedented one for a British sovereign, but not for Charles as Prince of Wales. Summing up his message, the king says in the film: “It all comes down to the fact that we ourselves are nature. We are part of it, not apart from it.”
The film, narrated by actress Kate Winslet, reveals the 1986 documentary that revealed Charles talking to plants had “haunted him ever since.” He was “really upset” by the criticism that followed, said Ian Skelly, co-author of the 2010 book King’s Harmony.
Charles is seen collecting eggs at ‘Cluckingham Palace’ – his chicken coop for rare breed chickens in Highgrove, the Gloucestershire home he transformed into a testing ground for his radical ideas on ‘Harmony’.
When he first announced his organic farming plans at Home Farm, in Highgrove, he said: “The whole thing was considered completely crazy to say the least.”
He laments: “When I came here 45 years ago… I mean, I heard cuckoos, and you never hear a single cuckoo… And there were grasshoppers and, you know, the place was buzzing. And that wonderful sound, you don’t hear a lot of it, although I did my best, you know, to make sure of it.”
The lavish production includes projects inspired by ‘Harmony’, from beekeeping at HMP Bristol to the rainforests of Guyana, the deserts of Rajasthan, India and Kabul, Afghanistan. The concepts of connectivity with nature, “sacred geometry” and “natural mathematics” are explored.
Produced in partnership with The King’s Foundation, the nature and sustainability charity based at Dumfries House in Scotland and founded by Charles in 1990 as Prince of Wales, the film presents an undisputed vision of this philosophy. It will be available in 240 countries and territories.
A spokesperson for the king said it was not a “conventional royal documentary” but a “deeply personal exploration of the ideas that have shaped his majesty’s life and work: the interconnectedness of all things, the wisdom of traditional knowledge and the belief that we can build a future that works in partnership with nature rather than against it.”
