Carole Middleton, the mother of Princess Kate, is celebrating a significant milestone – her 70th birthday. We reflect on the life of this accomplished businesswoman and how she has managed to maintain such strong family ties.
Born Carole Goldsmith to parents Ron and Dorothy, the future King’s grandmother spent the initial months of her life in a council house in Ealing, West London, a stark contrast to her current residence, a country manor reportedly worth £4.7 million. Her parents were industrious and ambitious, qualities that Carole undoubtedly possesses.
Her father, Ron, transitioned from working at a haulage company to embarking on a new career as a builder, painter, and decorator, fully supported by his wife, Dorothy. The family relocated to Southall, where Carole spent most of her childhood before the family expanded with the arrival of her younger brother Gary, who is a decade her junior.
Gary made headlines last year with a brief appearance on Celebrity Big Brother and has been a somewhat contentious figure over the years. In 2009, he was ensnared in a sting operation by the now-defunct News of the World, where he boasted about his Royal connections through his niece Kate, who was dating Prince William at the time.
Gary was also allegedly caught on camera preparing lines of cocaine and is reported to have offered the services of sex workers to a journalist. Following this scandal, it’s said that the rest of the Middleton family distanced themselves from him, reports the Mirror.
Carole attended Featherstone High School until she was 16, then left to work at Prudential, a job she confessed in a rare interview with The Telegraph that she didn’t enjoy. Realising that this line of work wasn’t for her, the ambitious teenager asked her father Ron if she could return to education and take her A-levels, knowing that her parents would struggle to fund further studies.
She secured a coveted role in the John Lewis A-level trainee scheme, which is highly competitive. She enjoyed aspects of the role, such as learning about merchandising, but was less enthusiastic about sales.
Carole’s next career move led her to her future husband, although she was unaware of this at the time. She took on a secretarial role at what would become British Airways, but quickly transferred to ground staff due to her lack of enthusiasm for the work.
“‘It’s not like it is now,” Carole told The Telegraph “You had to be able to speak another language. It was almost like being at university.”
Carole first met her future husband, Michael, while working at Heathrow Airport. Michael, who was six years older and worked as a flight dispatcher, was considered quite the catch among the female staff, according to Royal author Katie Nicholl.
However, it was Carole who caught his eye, and after asking her out, their relationship quickly became serious. Nicholl claims that Michael was Carole’s first serious boyfriend, whom she found “charming, thoughtful, and fun”.
The couple rented a flat in Slough before getting engaged and marrying in 1980. Despite coming from different financial backgrounds – with Michael having attended private boarding school and grown up more comfortably than Carole’s family – they built a life together.
Their eldest daughter Kate, who would later experience a similar discrepancy in her own Royal romance, was born in 1982, followed by Pippa a year later. In 1984, with two young children, Michael and Carole embarked on a new adventure, moving to Jordan.
There, the family led a comfortable life, with Princess Kate attending nursery school. However, after three years, they decided to return to the UK.
Carole Middleton has previously shared that she wasn’t sure about being an expat mum and with her husband Mike’s job in Jordan coming to an end, they decided to return to the UK. Upon their return, they were expecting their third child, James.
This marked a new chapter for Carole as she embarked on her own business venture, Party Pieces, a mail-order party supply company which she built from scratch. She said: “I thought, ‘Oooh, bills to pay.’ But I also had this strong feeling that I hadn’t achieved anything. I got married at 25, had Catherine at 26…” Starting from home, the business gradually grew, with Carole’s determination and motivation inherited from her parents Ron and Dorothy playing a key role.
After two years, Michael quit his job to help expand Party Pieces, moving operations from their kitchen table to a nearby commercial unit. In the early stages of Party Pieces, Carole utilised her experiences as a parent to devise advertising strategies that significantly boosted the business, even using her three children as models in promotional materials.
As her own boss, Carole found it easy to balance work and parenting duties, and she and Mike enjoyed running their own business so much that work discussions during family time never felt intrusive.
The Middleton family has long called the idyllic village of Bucklebury in Berkshire home, residing in a quaint semi-detached cottage until Kate was around 13 years old. They also lived in a property known as Old Acre, where Prince William once controversially landed his helicopter in the back garden, reportedly causing the head of the RAF at the time to “erupt” in anger.
Despite being able to afford to send their children to prestigious private schools, Carole and Michael Middleton’s lifestyle was vastly different from the Royal palaces and residences that Prince William was accustomed to. After Kate met and fell in love with William at the University of St. Andrews, the Middletons found themselves thrust into the limelight, a situation that the late Queen is said to have been deeply “sympathetic” towards.
William reportedly quickly formed a close bond with the Middleton family, appreciating their close-knit, ordinary dynamic. Despite the intense scrutiny that comes with being associated with the Royal family, and the late Queen’s sympathy for this, Carole and Michael have consistently maintained discretion about their Royal connections over the years.
Despite her high-profile status in the UK, Carole Middleton has only given a handful of interviews. She confessed that it wasn’t until 2017 that she stopped reading press coverage about herself, initially believing it was important to stay informed about public opinion, but later realising that others’ perceptions of her weren’t as significant as she thought.
The Middleton family has managed to maintain a close bond despite the scrutiny that comes with their public life. Carole, who often states her preference for staying active over lounging on the sofa, is a devoted host to her extended family.
Carole and her husband Michael currently reside in Bucklebury Manor, a property valued at £4.7 million which they purchased in 2012, a year after their daughter Kate officially became a member of the Royal Family by marrying Prince William in a dreamy ceremony at Westminster Abbey. The manor, boasting seven bedrooms and set on 18 acres, served as the venue for Pippa’s wedding reception in 2017.
Their son James has also lived there, even offering a peek into the property via his social media accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carole Middleton’s home is reportedly the warm and welcoming hub of the family, particularly the open-plan kitchen, where they enjoy “delicious” suppers often followed by an impromptu “disco”. This haven has been especially important for Princess Kate, who has sought refuge and comfort there during her challenging year of chemotherapy treatment.
The Middleton family values their private lives, but it’s clear that Carole’s children, including Kate, Pippa, and James, share a deep affection and closeness with their mother. In a past interview, Kate spoke fondly of her family, saying, “Yes. It’s very important to me. And I hope we will be able to have a happy family ourselves. They’ve been great over the years – helping me with difficult times. We see a lot of each other, and they are very, very dear to me.”
Carole has also demonstrated her unwavering support for her children during tough times, such as when James struggled with depression.
Initially, Carole and her husband found it “challenging” and worried that they were to blame, but with the help of therapy, which the whole family attended together, they were able to work through their struggles and emerge even closer. “Initially, my parents saw it as a challenge for them – where had they gone wrong? And that’s why it was so important to have somebody else in the room to explain: ‘No, this isn’t you that’s done this to your son. This is a combination of multiple things. It stems back to childhood but there’s not a single trigger point,” he told Hello magazine.
“Once I started to understand a bit myself, and then for my sisters to understand it, who could then also speak to my parents… Now, it’s something that can be discussed at the dinner table. It’s helped us as a family – not just me individually, but as a unit – to be more open.”
The whole family shares a passion for sports, with Bucklebury Manor featuring an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts. Carole has expressed her enthusiasm for staying active, especially to keep up with her seven grandchildren.
“I want to run down the hills, climb the trees and go through the tunnel at the playground,” she told Good Housekeeping. “As long as I am able to, that’s what I’ll be doing. I cook with them, I muck around dancing, we go on bike rides.”
Carole takes pride in being a “hands-on” grandmother and goes the extra mile to create memorable experiences for her grandchildren. She embraces the festive spirit by setting up multiple Christmas trees around her home each year, allowing all her grandchildren to participate in decorating them.
In a heartwarming video shared by Kate in September, the public caught a glimpse of the Wales family’s intimate moments, including a scene where Carole and Michael Middleton were seen enjoying a game of cards with their grandchildren, Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six, alongside Kate and William. Despite her business, Party Pieces, facing financial difficulties and going into administration in 2023, which reportedly left Carole feeling “desperately sad”, it’s likely that her grandchildren will remain her top priority.
In a 2018 interview, the mother-of-three confessed that while she’d love to embark on new adventures and travel, she couldn’t bear to be away from her young grandchildren for too long.