I think that as long as you approach it in a warts

I think that as long as you approach it in a warts and all way you shouldn’t have any problem. It’s full of gripping stories and is probably the most successful unit we teach.”English teachers’ leaders are also sceptical about the tone of the events. But I don’t think some notion of tradition and heritage is going to help.”But Baker laughingly rejects claims of a pro-Empire campaign “I would totally dispute any suggestion of that,” he says. “Teachers have taken the lead on how these ideas are introduced in the classroom and it is certainly not part of a right- wing conspiracy.”"We tackle the topic in a very multi-ethnic way. So if there’s a feeling that some people with different views have been excluded I think it is important that they are invited to join the debate.”Dr Jerry Brotton, lecturer in renaissance studies at Queen Mary, University of London, says: “The problem is that Charles is basically working from a version of history that he learnt 35 years ago.”If it’s always people like Starkey and Niall Ferguson who are invited to speak, then this is the version you are going to get.”Universities have a problem with students arriving with huge gaps in their knowledge and skills. “I agree that there’s a genuine issue about who is invited to speak there. It is by invitation and people such as David Starkey, Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts tend to be invited.”Niall Ferguson has got a very right-wing, very assertive and triumphalist view of the empire and I think it would be an idea for there to be more of a debate around the history presented.

“It’s an issue that arouses a lot of political sensitivity and a lot of teachers don’t feel confident in tackling it.”St James’s Palace has had to deny repeatedly claims that Prince Charles is mounting a personal campaign for the return of imperial or Commonwealth studies. But the Prince’s choice of speakers has sparked mutterings of a plot by right-wing historians intent on changing the way history is taught.The historian Tristram Hunt has been among the most prominent critics of the summer schools, accusing the Prince of using them as a Trojan horse for the views of his “circle of conservative cronies”.He has argued that the conservative historians who are invited to speak are not representative of the subject as a whole, warning that the events are “just not agenda-free”.Sean Lang, secretary of the Historical Association, agrees that the narrow range of historians who addressed the events had caused concern. Teaching British history without it, he said, was like “Hamlet without the prince”.Baker went away inspired. “Like a lot of schools the British Empire was not something we addressed,” he says.

But it is the surprising impact on the content of the school curriculum which has provoked the furore.While English classrooms have seen the reintroduction of authors of the classics, history has produced a renaissance in the study of the British empire, prompting fears that the Prince’s Highgrove set is promoting a traditionalist right-wing agenda.More than 30 years after the history of the British empire was dropped from the curriculum as irrelevant, it is making a startling comeback in comprehensives across the country.Scott Baker, 31, head of history and politics at Robert Clack school in Dagenham, east London, is one of many teachers who was inspired to introduce lessons on the British empire as a result of his experiences at Prince of Wales summer schools.”The summer schools have had a big impact both on what we teach and the way we teach it,” says Baker.All 14-year-olds at his large multi-ethnic comprehensive now study the British empire after a shake-up of the curriculum since Baker attended his first summer school in 2003, where he heard Professor Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, speak.Ferguson, who is currently presenting his new series, The War of the World, on Channel 4, describes the Empire as “the big story of British history in the modern period”. “In English, a passion for literature is almost always the reason why people go into teaching in the first place.”English teachers can feel very distant from the reasons why they came into the profession. Summer schools are an excellent way of getting them back in touch with their love of literature.”For many, Miles included, this has already seen a revolution in the teaching of Shakespeare.Summer schools delegates have returned to their classrooms fired with new determination to teach entire Shakespeare plays to 14-year-olds and reject pressure to dumb down by only covering the two scenes that are required for the Government’s national tests.So-called difficult authors such as Chaucer, John Donne and William Blake have also made a comeback in many classrooms after the summer schools. At the mid-point of the 210p-270p range, the company would be priced at little more than embedded value.Other life assurers trade at a significant premium.

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