Charles’s 60th birthday souvenirs

The Prince of Wales is set for lashings of good publicity next month when an exhibition to mark his 60th birthday opens at Windsor Castle. The show, which will document his early life, the time he spent at Cambridge University in 1960s as well his marriages to Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker Bowles - though not, apparently, the girls who came before - will be bolstered by an official pictorial biography, which will contain photographs never seen before.

The book, called Charles, Prince of Wales: A Birthday Souvenir Album, is being published by the Royal Collection, and traces his official and family life through material selected from the Royal Archives, the Royal Photograph Collection and his personal collection.

It offers some interesting insights into the heir to the throne's childhood, including a note written by a five-year-old Prince Charles to his late grandmother, complete with crayon hugs and kisses. The book also shows for the first time some of the Prince's favourite toys - a trolley of wooden bricks decorated with the words "Prince Charles Express" and a green Sunbeam Coupe pedal-car, which he drove up and down the Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle.

His time at Cheam School, the Berkshire preparatory school, is documented by a history notebook, with doodles on the cover, and childish drawings of the Battle of Hastings. On show, too, is his geometry set, containing a ruler with "P Charles" scratched on it.