Queen Camilla's impressive charity work and unwavering support for King Charles is viewed favorably today, but her reputation in the 90s was ...... Well, it wasn't good. When Prince Charles and Princess Diana's divorce became public, the public favored Princess Diana and Camilla was portrayed as the villain. However, growing up as Camilla's child was not always easy, her son Tom Parker Bowles revealed in a recent interview with Hello! in a recent interview with

. While he says that he and his mother, father Andrew Parker Bowles (his parents divorced in 1995), and sister Laura Lopez had a “lovely, happy English upbringing,” the media intrusion surrounding Camilla's relationship with King Charles made life difficult and even “dangerous” at times.

As most royal watchers know, Camilla and Charles were married to their respective partners, Princess Diana and Andrew Parker Bowles, after dating in the 1970s. The King and Queen then had an affair in the mid-1980s, and after a divorce, they remarried in 2005.5]

Parker Bowles told Hello! magazine, media interest in Camilla and their affair reached a fever pitch in the “mid-90s,”

calling that period “a bad time.”

He recalled “the aggression of the paparazzi, the shouting, the yelling,” and noted that because her mother was not a member of the royal family, “there was no network to protect her.”

“I remember the high-speed chase on the M4 that was incredibly dangerous,” the food writer said.

When asked if he felt “angry” or “resentful” toward his mother in the high-profile relationship, Tom replied, “I don't know. She was always - and this is not just PR - a very good mother.”

In a previous interview with The Times, the acclaimed cookbook author also defended his mother's “reputation for drinking gin and smoking cigarettes,” adding, “I don't smoke. I don't even smoke.

Parker Bowles, who is currently promoting her new book, Cooking with the Crown, also shared memories of her mother's cooking, praising her killer roast chicken. 'We all sit around the table. We all love food. We all love to drink. And when talking about her father-in-law, the author had many words of praise for him.

“It wouldn't have happened without the palace and the king,” he said of the book, which contains recipes from Queen Victoria's reign to today. Tom described King Charles as “the kindest, most knowledgeable, nicest man. If you ask him about food, he is the kind of person you would ask a scholar.”