Ten things we learned from Prince Charles's ‘black spider’ memos

Prince Charles’s private letters to Labour government ministers have been made public after a decade-long legal battle.

The Guardian campaigned for 10 years to get the “black spider memos” - so called because of the Prince of Wales’s handwriting - published.

So what have we learned from them? We've taken has taken a look at what Prince Charles had to say to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair back in 2004 and 2005.

Prince Charles warned Blair about a lack of resources during the Iraq War

He also recommended somebody to the Prime Minister for a job at Defra

Charles asked Tessa Jowell, then Secretary of State for Culture, to preserve Smithfield Market and the Arctic huts used by Shackleton and Scott on their ill-fated expedition

Public money was eventually used to save both.

He really, really likes Patagonian toothfish

And cows

But he hates badgers

He's very into homeopathy (sorry, "complementary medicine")

He's prone to the odd Americanisation

And weirdest of all, Charles seems to have known that someday the entire internet was going to be reading these letters

That’s 10 years’ worth of secrets in a nutshell. You can read Prince Charles’ letters in full here.

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