Camilla's Rescue Dogs Star in New Photo Shoot
When Prince Charles guest edited Country Life magazine in 2013 for his 65th birthday he chose his wife Camilla to star in the magazine’s notorious "Girls in Pearls" page, which has traditionally featured aristocratic young women. And as Camilla marks her 75th birthday almost a decade later, she has chosen her own beloved family members to take center stage in a glamorous photoshoot—her dogs Bluebell and Beth.
In what the magazine described as “an amusing twist on the traditional girls in pearls page,” this is the first time dogs have appeared on the publication’s frontispiece without their owners. Pictured on a wooden bench in the duchess’s private Wiltshire home, Ray Mill, the Jack Russells are wearing Camilla’s pearl necklaces. “Bluebell and Beth, 10 and 11, are TRH The Price of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall’s terriers, both of whom were rescued from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home,” the caption underneath the image, which was taken by photographer Anya Campbell, reads. While undoubtedly their most starring public role to date, it is not the first time that Bluebell and Beth have featured in an official portrait. They were pictured being held by Charles and Camilla in a 2020 picture released to mark their 15th wedding anniversary. Taken during one of the COVID-19 lockdowns when the couple were staying at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, the informal image showed them dressed down and sitting on the porch of the Scottish residence holding a dog each.
The Duchess of Cornwall’s edition of Country Life has already attracted plenty of attention for the cover image of Camilla that was taken by the Duchess of Cambridge. Giving readers a glimpse into the private home she owned before she married Prince Charles in 2005, a second image shows Camilla walking amongst bluebells in the garden.
“There are many reasons why I was delighted to be asked to guest edit this week’s Country Life,” Camilla wrote in her editor’s column. “The most selfish thing being that celebrating the magazine’s 125th anniversary makes me, at 75, feel positively young… I have cherished this opportunity to highlight some of the people, communities and charities whom I have had the privilege to encounter and who do such a great deal for life in our countryside, too often unseen and unsung.”
Camilla spent six months working on the 244-page edition of the magazine in which she pays tribute to her husband for his lifelong advocacy for rural communities as well as highlighting issues such as rural crime and domestic abuse. Country Life is on sale starting Wednesday, July 13.
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