Prince Harry Read online

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  To Marlene, Max, Oscar, Emilia, and Jonah Leith

  CONNECTION

  It was May 2013 and Prince Harry was in Harlem, holding a baseball bat in his hand. He had never played the game before. The New York Yankees first base star, Mark Teixeira, was about to pitch. The world’s media were watching from the sidelines. And a little girl, dressed in body armor and face grille, was standing stoically behind the plate ready to catch. Harry ignored the flashing cameras, he ignored Mark Teixeira, and he put his own nerves to one side. He squatted down beside the little girl and peered through her grille and said, “Are you all right in there?”

  Harry has many strengths—and his fair share of weaknesses—but his passion for children’s welfare and his empathy with those who have suffered during their childhood is what ultimately defines the man. Perhaps because he too suffered as a child.

  Prince Harry is never going to be King. Unless the unthinkable happens, the Queen will be succeeded by his father, the Prince of Wales, who in turn will be succeeded by Prince William, and in another half century or so, Prince George. And it is generally agreed, by those who know Harry, that this is a good thing. If it were the other way round, if he was in line for the top job and not his brother, then we would all be in big trouble. It is always said with an affectionate laugh, because people love Harry, but Diana’s younger son, who turned thirty in September 2014, has always had a wild, unpredictable streak to him, even as a little boy, but a future King can’t afford to be caught playing strip billiards in a Las Vegas hotel bedroom, no matter what the circumstances.

  But he’s not going to be King and, as fourth in line, and arguably the most charming and down-to-earth member of the entire family, he can afford a little slack. At least while he is young and single. Indeed, it is his Las Vegas moments as much as anything—his knack of getting into trouble—that appear to endear him to the public. They make him seem a little more like the rest of us.

  His detractors say they just prove he’s not very bright. His detractors need to think again. Anyone who thinks Harry is not bright seriously underestimates the man. He may not be academic, but he has emotional intelligence coming out of every pore. He was also one of the best Apache attack helicopter co-pilot gunners in the British Army Air Corps, and that is no mean feat. His ability to think on his feet, to think laterally, and make life-or-death decisions under the most stressful circumstances would leave most academics in the shade.

  There was a time, granted, when it did look as though Harry wasn’t too bright. A time when he behaved like a mindless Hooray Henry with too much money, too much privilege and no self-control. A time when one wondered whether his mother’s death and the chaos of his childhood had set him on a dangerous downward spiral. There’s no doubt he was an angry adolescent, who drank a great deal more than was good for him. Even as an adult he does like to party, and there’s no pretending that when Harry goes on a bender he does it in short measures. But the flip side of Harry that has emerged in the last few years is very different. And that flip side could be life changing for thousands of forgotten and disadvantaged people, not just in Britain, but across the world.

  He is the Queen’s grandson, a senior member of the most important family in the land; he lives in palaces, plays expensive sports, drinks in exclusive clubs and holidays in exotic locations. He has a private fortune, beautiful girlfriends and wants for nothing. On the face of it, everything about him should repel the tough inner-city kid with a knife in his pocket and no qualms about using it. Yet he has taken a close interest in the escalation of knife crime in Britain’s cities and through the Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry has funded youth projects, and those kids like him. Because they can see that if you strip away Harry’s titles and the privilege, underneath it all he’s someone like them, who had a rotten childhood and a broken home—and a dad who was often absent. Like them, he gets into trouble and he knows how to fight; he understands violence. The difference between them is that Harry had people in his life who were there for him, so his fighting has been in Afghanistan and it’s been internationally condoned. These kids with knives at the ready weren’t so lucky. They had no one to pick up the pieces, so they gravitated towards gangs and the streets and a very different sort of violence. But fundamentally, there’s a connection. And Harry has that connection with all sorts of disparate groups. He wears the right clothes for the occasion and, with a witty remark or a gentle tease, he immediately connects with people of every age, every class, every gender and from every walk of life. Like his mother, he is tactile, he’s relaxed, he’s fun and he’s not afraid to show his humanity. It’s a rare gift.

  He hates special treatment, hates the cameras that follow him and hates much of what goes with being a member of the Royal Family. He is fiercely and rightly jealous of his privacy. But he accepts who he is and the responsibility that goes with it. His future is not as easily defined as his brother’s, but after years of observing his parents and grandparents, he is inculcated with a sense of duty and service to others that most of us—let alone most thirty-year-olds—could not begin to comprehend.

  “When we’re doing public engagements, I often have to check myself and remind myself who he is,” says Edward Parker, who co-founded Walking With The Wounded (WWTW). “I have to start off with ‘Your Royal Highness’—and it’s what his position deserves and expects—but it’s great when the door closes and the people on the outside can’t see in anymore and you can go back to being normal people. And I think that’s what he is; a normal person in an abnormal position.”

  Anyone whose heart was broken by the sight of Harry as a little boy, walking so bravely behind his mother’s cortège, alongside his father, grandfather, brother and uncle, will agree with that. And in many ways it’s a miracle that he came through the abnormality and trauma of his childhood with such equilibrium. His relationship with his brother was a vital part of that. They are as close as it is possible for two brothers to be. Though two very different people, with very different approaches to life, they have shared experiences and memories that no one else can imagine; and that is maybe where their extraordinary empathy for others comes from. Harry’s relationship with his father is more complicated. There have been difficulties and frustrations between them over the years but, beneath it all, there has been deep love.

  It is William and Harry’s differences, according to the man who worked as their Private Secretary for eight years, that make them such a good team. He likens them to the historical figures, John of Gaunt and Edward, Prince of Wales, known as the Black Prince. “A lot of people would grind their teeth at the name of John of Gaunt,” says Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, “but he was the Black Prince’s younger brother, a man in his own right who took a lot of the weight off, and shared the burden at a strategic level. You’ve got a really trusted sibling who is incredibly complementary to you in character as well as in outlook and belief and ideals and values and that sort of thing, which Prince Harry undoubtedly is with Prince William. He can apply different skills and talents to some of the issues that William as monarch may not have the time for, or which might not be quite appropriate for the top man to do but which the
man one down can do.”

  What both can do, he believes, is provide moral and community leadership that is badly lacking in Britain today. “I always think at times when the political credibility is low, you ask the man in the street what do you think of the leadership of this country and the really intelligent, instinctive Sun reader, of which there are millions out there, common sense coming out of every pore, will say, ‘What bloody leadership, mate?’ And then you say, ‘What about the Queen?’ And he’ll say, ‘She’s great.’ There’s a disconnect because he immediately thinks you’re talking about political leadership and it doesn’t have to be, and that to me is the role. These guys have got it and that’s what can’t be wasted.”

  This is the story of how Harry—the spare, the ginger one, the wild child—came so spectacularly good.

  MY LITTLE SPENCER

  Harry looks more like the Prince of Wales with every day that passes. They have the same-shaped faces, the same mannerisms, the same build and the same eyes, just like Harry’s grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh. His height and the red hair comes from his mother’s side of the family, which is perhaps why Diana called him, among other things, “My little Spencer.” He is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the son of James Hewitt, the good-looking, not-too-clever, redheaded Lifeguards officer, who became Diana’s lover in the mid-1980s.

  Rumors about Harry’s paternity have persisted ever since their five-year affair became public in 1991, when Harry was seven. That was the year it came to an end; and the facts have been known for almost as long. Yet if I’d had a penny for every time I have been asked—even today—whether Hewitt is Harry’s father, I would be very rich. The fact is, Diana did not know James Hewitt until after Harry was born, and they didn’t begin their affair until 1986, by which time Harry was nearly two years old. And for those who refuse to believe it, it may come as no surprise to know that the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid that closed down in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, had strands of Harry’s hair DNA-tested in February 2003. If Harry had been shown to be James Hewitt’s son, you can be sure we’d have known.

  Harry was born in the private Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s, Paddington, at 4:20 p.m. on Saturday 15 September 1984. It was the hospital where his brother, William, had been born two years earlier, and where the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to William’s son, Prince George, in 2013. Harry weighed a healthy six pounds fourteen ounces. There was huge excitement from the crowds that had waited patiently in the street outside. When Charles appeared, having been by Diana’s side throughout the nine-hour labor, he declared himself delighted. He said the birth had been “much quicker than last time” and that the baby had “pale blue eyes and hair of an intermediate color.” The next morning he brought William to meet his brother, along with his nanny, Barbara Barnes, and at 2:30 in the afternoon, the crowd was finally rewarded with a first glimpse of mother and baby, although Harry was so well wrapped in a lacy blanket that his face was invisible. Diana held him in her arms, looking a little fragile but as beautiful as ever. She stood on the steps of the hospital alongside Charles for a moment, while the crowds cheered and the cameras flashed, then the family climbed into the waiting cars and they were off.

  It is well known that Charles and Diana’s marriage was not a happy one, which was immensely sad for both of them, but it would be quite, quite wrong to assume that there had never been love or happiness in the relationship. At the time of Harry’s birth, it was as good as it had ever been. Diana’s view of her marriage was jaundiced by the end, and the accounts she gave of it to both Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story, and Martin Bashir for the TV program, Panorama, were unreliable. But even she admitted that they had been happy in the lead-up to Harry’s birth.

  A lot has been written about the marriage and why it failed, but the facts need to be reiterated, not least because it affected Harry deeply, and the man he is today is a product of that broken home, and of all that he heard and felt during his childhood.

  The marriage did not fail because of Camilla Parker Bowles, the woman Diana famously called the “third person” in her marriage. It failed principally because it was a tragic mismatch. They were wrong for each other in almost every way possible, but they rushed into marriage before they knew each other well enough to realize that. And they rushed into it because the media were harassing Diana and, at thirty-two, Charles was under huge pressure from both the media and his father to find a wife.

  On the face of it, Lady Diana Spencer could not have been a better match for the Prince of Wales. She came from the very top drawer of British society. Her father, the 8th Earl Spencer, had been an Equerry to the Queen and, before that, King George VI. Her maternal grandmother was a friend and Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. She grew up in a house on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where the Royal Family go every year for Christmas and New Year. She knew the family, she understood the protocol, she enjoyed a similar lifestyle, and she was young enough to be not yet set in her ways or to have a “past” for the media to trawl through, which had been the downfall of several previous girlfriends.

  But Diana had had a difficult start in life. When she was just six years old, her parents divorced and her mother left home, leaving her and her siblings with their father. Frances Althorp, as she then was, had endured an unhappy marriage until she had given Johnny the heir he so badly wanted. They had two girls, Jane and Sarah, then a boy, John, who died after ten days. Diana came next, and finally Charles, who is now the 9th Earl Spencer. Frances left Johnny to be with Peter Shand Kydd, a man with whom she thought she could be happy, with every expectation that the children would follow. But in the custody proceedings, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, gave evidence against her own daughter, so all four of her children stayed with their father. It must have been unbearably painful for her.

  It was painful for her children as well. The elder two were already at boarding school. Diana was the one who seemed most affected by her mother’s disappearance. She knew nothing about the goings-on in court; all she surmised was that her mother didn’t love her enough to want to be with her. She had the further insecurity of thinking she had not been wanted. In tape recordings she made for Andrew Morton, for his book Diana: Her True Story, she said, “The child who died before me was a son and both [parents] were crazy to have a son and heir and there comes a third daughter. What a bore we’re going to have to try again. I’ve recognized that now. I’ve been aware of it and now I recognize it and that’s fine. I accept it.

  “In my bed I’d have twenty stuffed bed animals and there would be a midget’s space for me, and they would have to be in my bed every night. That was my family. I hated the dark and had an obsession about the dark, always had to have a light outside my door until I was at least ten. I used to hear my brother crying in his bed down at the other end of the house, crying for my mother and he was unhappy too.

  “I remember Mummy crying an awful lot and every Saturday when we went up [to London] for weekends, every Saturday night, standard procedure, she would start crying. ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’ ‘Oh, I don’t want you to leave tomorrow,’ which for a nine-year-old was devastating, you know.”

  Rightly or wrongly, Diana felt rejected, worthless and unwanted. Those were the feelings that she nursed throughout her childhood and teenage years and, three weeks after her twentieth birthday, on 29 July 1981, took with her into her marriage to Charles.

  Their romance had begun in 1980, almost a year after the murder of Charles’s great uncle, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was blown up by an IRA bomb on a fishing trip with his family off the coast of Ireland. The Prince had adored the man he called his “honorary grandfather” and was devastated by his sudden and violent death; and when Diana poignantly said how sad and lonely Charles had looked at the old man’s funeral, he was touched.

  Charles hadn’t felt especially valued while he was growing up. There had been nannies and long periods of separation from his parents. Friends re
member his mother sitting him on her knee at teatime and playing games with him when he was small, but say she didn’t often visit the nursery because she felt intimidated by the nanny—and as an older child there were no overt signs of affection. He treated her, they say, more as a Queen than a mother; and his father was rough with him. Charles was a sensitive and emotional child who grew into a sensitive and emotional adult, and the Duke, perhaps hoping for a son in his own image, made him feel that he was a disappointment. They share many interests and enthusiasms, yet even into middle age Charles was searching for his father’s approval; never feeling he was quite good enough. And praise was thin on the ground from both parents. Yet, in the way that so often happens in families, William and Harry have a much easier relationship with their grandparents than Charles ever had with the Queen and the Duke. Theirs is a very close and warm and supportive relationship.

  Charles had first met Diana as a fourteen-year-old, when he was briefly dating her sister, Sarah. Now she was a bubbly nineteen-year-old with a dirty laugh, very pretty, good fun and utterly charming. He began to see more of her and invited her to Balmoral with a few of his friends during the traditional family summer holiday there. Everyone was entranced by her; she seemed to be almost too good to be true.

  Friends say his excitement at finding her was touching. He was brought up to hide his emotions in public and, until very recently, the mask he presented to the outside world was impenetrable, but in private, Charles has always been deeply emotional. His friends cautioned him to slow down.

  But Charles thought he had finally found a soul mate; a girl who seemed to love him, who didn’t seem put off by the limelight, and who seemed perfect in every way. And, as Harry is finding today, there were not many young women prepared to sacrifice their freedom for life in a goldfish bowl, or a lifetime being followed and photographed. And so, knowing nothing of Diana’s complex nature, Charles asked her to marry him.