Over the course of a 45-year-career, I’ve had many plum assignments, perhaps none more so than in the Manhattan of the plush 1990s. Among them was an interview with the British historian and documentary filmmaker Michael Wood. Looking back on it, I realize that in another life he might’ve been precisely the kind of man I would’ve married — handsome, intelligent, intellectually adventurous, engaged and engaging, with a lovely manner.
It helped that he was in town to promote his latest project, “In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great” (1997), a documentary series and companion book tracing the 22,000-mile journey, from the Balkans to India, of my childhood hero, the Greco-Macedonian conqueror of the Persian Empire. (This being filmed during the Persian Gulf War, he had to fly over Iraq, although he did visit Afghanistan. “No country for a woman,” he said.)
As we sat on a hotel terrace overlooking the city, I asked him what made Alexander, well, great, although I was sure I knew the answers. Wood checked all the boxes — genius of a field commander; inheritor of a superb fighting force trained by his father, Philip II of Macedon; a leader who had a vision, communicated his dream and made his men part of it. always leading them from the front. But then Wood said something that stopped me cold and that I have remembered ever since.
“He was lucky,” Wood said, “and no one is lucky forever.”
What he called luck, I would describe as individual strands in the universe, which has its laws, its causes and effects, calls and responses. It’s a tough way to look at the world. So much easier to think that bad luck — violence, poverty, ill health — is random. No one wants to be the universe’s chosen sacrificial lamb.
Up until the first month of this year, royal watchers and casual observers alike would’ve probably agreed that Catherine, Princess of Wales, the former Kate Middleton, had won life’s lottery. Beautiful, intelligent, gifted, poised and confident, she had married Diana, the late Princess of Wales’ golden boy, Prince William, now the heir to the British throne, with whom she has three personable children. (I must confess to a soft spot for that rascal Prince Louis.) From the garden to the courts of Wimbledon, parade fields and the red carpet, in couture or jeans and jumpers, Catherine hasn’t put a foot wrong in 13 years. Then came the announcement that she was undergoing abdominal surgery, which was quickly followed by a PR disaster that led her to announce on video that she has cancer and is receiving preventive chemotherapy.
Much has been made about the invasion of her privacy by internet and tabloid trolls. But that doesn’t change the fact that had she been upfront with the press and public about her condition — owned her narrative and gotten out in front of it — she could’ve saved herself a lot of anguish. The New York Times London bureau chief Mark Landler wrote that her video was akin to the TV appearance the late Queen Elizabeth II made after Princess Diana died in 1997. He’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks. Both appearances were made reluctantly by naturally shy, reserved women who were forced by their inaction to reveal something private and confront their emotions in difficult, public circumstances. Both also used children as reasons for not previously confronting those circumstances. The queen said she stayed on at the royal family’s summer home at Balmoral in Scotland to attend to her grieving grandsons, Princes William and Harry. Princess Catherine, too, wanted to wait until her children were on Easter break to talk with them about her illness.
Here’s the thing about kids, though. They will follow where you lead, and they will lead if you don’t. If you’re upfront and upbeat, they’ll be reassured. But if you obfuscate, they’ll be anxious. Also, sadly, children soon understand that adversity and tragedy are never convenient but happen whether you are on holiday, as William and Harry were when Diana died, or at school, as the Waleses’ children were when Catherine received the postoperative report.
Cancer — that “emperor of all maladies” — is, of course, an overwhelming foe that produces as many responses as there are sufferers. One in two people will get it and the other 50% should help but first get down on their knees and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Here King Charles III’s response to his own cancer has been magnificent. He informed people right away while keeping private the type, which would only lead to useless speculation on the five-year survival rate. He said what he wouldn’t be doing — going on walkabouts and making public appearances, which would only compromise his health. Otherwise, it’s business as usual with the worker bee Charles meeting privately with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and dignataries and attending the red boxes of official papers.
While Princess Catherine spoke in the video of the joy she finds in her work, it’s clear that the center of her life is the private cocoon of family. I think one of the reasons that she stumbled initially in her public response to her cancer where the king did not is because his expressive, workaholic temperament lends itself to crisis. Yes, work can be a stressor when you’re sick. But if it’s a life passion, particularly one with cushy confines, and not just a job, it can be a purpose, a haven and an escape. Cancer may have hit the 75-year-old Charles hard, but it did not strike at the core of his identity.
Whereas cancer has gone to the heart of who the 42-year-old Catherine is — world-class beauty, amateur athlete, wife and mother. Cancer will for a time change her looks and the energy she has for her young family and certainly for any sports.
Also cancer, always a shocking diagnosis, is nonetheless more expected in older people, although we are seeing a rise in breast, colorectal and other forms of cancer among younger people. For Catherine, this may or may not be her first real brush with mortality.
Once she embraced the need to go public, however, she met the challenge admirably, never more so than in telling fellow cancer sufferers to have faith and hope and that they are not alone. And while we’re at it, let’s throw in the third theological virtue, love, because those who love — whether it’s love of family, work, country or a hobby or even houseplants — are never alone.
Her video address brought me to another famous and famously private figure diagnosed in his case with an incurable illness also in the prime of life. New York Yankees’ first baseman Lou Gehrig was 36 when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the disease that would bear his name. Then as now there were speculations and misinformation, and a private person had to make his pain public.
Gehrig did so at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 in remarks recreated in the poignant 1942 film “The Pride of the Yankees.” They include the oft-repeated lines “People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today, today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
Lucky? Maybe not. But graced, for certain.