William and Harry (34 page)

Authors: Katie Nicholl

BOOK: William and Harry

11.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Charles is also said to be reluctant for William to hurry into a decision. ‘Before he left for New Zealand and Australia Charles told him to have a good time. By that he meant enjoy himself, like Charles did when he went to Australia. Charles likes Kate very much but he is concerned that William has only ever had one serious long-term girlfriend,’ said a family friend.

When and if William marries Kate, it will be on his terms alone. For the time being, the fevered speculation continues. According to one close to the prince: ‘When it comes to Kate and William and a wedding date, there’s only one thing you can safely put your money on. If the truth about any date ever did leak out, he would change it.’ According to close friends, William and Kate are secure in the pact they made in the Seychelles and
which they reinforced at the end of last year. ‘As far as they are concerned they are as good as engaged and enjoying their lives as they are at the moment,’ one of their friends told me. William’s inner circle believe that a royal engagement could be announced before the end of the year and if the couple’s tactile body language during their recent skiing trip to Courchevel in March 2010 was anything to go by, it seems a probable timeline. As he had the year before, William joined Kate and her family in the French Alps for a skiing holiday and was so comfortable with the Middletons it was reported that he affectionately referred to Kate’s father Michael as ‘Dad’. William and Kate were photo -graphed racing around the ski resort on a snowmobile in matching ‘his and hers’ red salopettes and enjoying dinners at local restaurants in the picturesque town. ‘He loves being with Kate and her family on holiday and he deliberately called Kate’s father “Dad” because it was a tongue in cheek reference to the assurance he gave Carole just before Christmas,’ explained one of William’s friends. ‘The holiday was very low key and relaxed. Kate’s family is very normal which William loves. They make him feel incredibly comfortable and William and Kate are really happy at the moment.’ If all goes to plan, William, who turns twenty-eight in June, the age to which he gave unwitting importance when he announced he was ‘not going to get married before I’m twenty-eight’ will graduate as a search and rescue pilot this summer. Those who know Kate say she has braced herself for the life of a service wife in Anglesey and what could be more appropriate for a possible future Prince and Princess of Wales? William has already rented a cottage on the island which may well be their first marital home. Kate knows what is expected of her and will
behave accordingly. She loves William deeply, and if that means being away from her family to spend the first years of her marriage to the future king on a windswept RAF base in Wales, then that is what she will do.

One thing is certain: when William is finally ready to ask for Kate’s hand in marriage, the Palace PR machine will swing into action. At St James’s Palace possible dates in 2011 and 2012 have already been earmarked for a royal wedding. William and Kate are both privately said to be reluctant about a state wedding, but as a friend of the Queen’s commented to me, ‘The Queen loves a wedding and she will be involved and consulted at every point.’ Whether William chooses to follow in his parents’ footsteps and marry at St Paul’s Cathedral, or Westminster Abbey, from where his mother made her final journey home, or St George’s Chapel in Windsor, the wedding will be a momentous occasion. Like Diana, Kate will be centre stage from day one of her new life as a princess.

Royal weddings may seem like fairy tales to the public, but they are in fact all about timing and coordinating diaries. Some courtiers believe that the diamond jubilee celebrations may be opportune. By then William will be thirty, the age he famously said he was likely to marry, but will the Queen want to share her diamond year with a wedding as well as the Olympics? Many, like Dickie Arbiter, believe that 2011 is a safer bet.

I’d expect a wedding at the earliest in 2011, and I think it will be a very great thing for the royal family. It’s almost too late for William to turn back now with Kate; they have come this far. If he was to find someone else, he would have
to go through the entire courtship process again. He’s known Kate for a long time and the royals traditionally stay with women who have become entwined in their lives. Look at Charles: he knew Camilla for thirty years. It’s not necessarily about habit, but these women who know their lives inside out are a comfort zone.

But of course it all depends on William. He has made it clear that he wants his career in place before he commits to Kate, something his aides agree on. Learning from the past, they want William established as a public figure in his own right before he marries Kate, who is just as glamorous and intriguing as Diana. For the time being it has been decided by courtiers that Kate should keep a low public profile and stay out of the limelight. William has also learned lessons from the past. His father agonised over how to live his life as king-in-waiting, which is largely why William has been so determined to have a career in the RAF. He wants to have a sense of purpose, not just a sense of duty. When he announced he was going to join the Royal Air Force he surprised everyone, but it was a canny move which has bought him more time to enjoy a ‘normal’ life. The RAF will have invested nearly £1 million in the prince by the end of his training and will want their money’s worth. Senior RAF sources predict William will serve for at least three years, possibly longer.

It is a commitment that suits William. Given the longevity and good health of the Windsors, he has every reason to believe it will be some time before he is king, and he has no intention of standing idle. His dream is to fly Sea Kings and be a real-life rescue prince. As for his girlfriend, William still stands by the
pledge he made to her in Desroches and which he re-affirmed at the end of last year. She may hate her nickname Waity Katie, but I suspect Kate, who has proved herself to be the most loyal of consorts, will not have to wait much longer.

Being royal – whether born or marrying into it – is always, in part, a waiting game. For Charles, the oldest Prince of Wales in history, the wait has been long and continues. The Queen is in good health. She may well have another decade on the throne, and one has to wonder how effective a ruler Charles will be then. He is finally being recognised for his tireless work with the Prince’s Trust for the young and disadvantaged, and celebrated for his global campaigning, While he was once ridiculed, the prince has been proved right in many of his arguments for preserving British agriculture and traditional farming methods. But he still has a reputation for meddling in political issues and interfering with planning applications that should not concern him. An avid letter writer, his personal correspondence and the diaries he writes and sends out to a select group of politicians and influential friends have landed the royal family in controversy – most notably the time he referred to the Chinese as ‘appalling waxworks’ during the handover of Hong Kong.

Whether Charles is fit to be the country’s next king continues to divide the nation. But it will be down to him, and then William, to justify the existence of the monarchy. ‘The world is changing, as everybody knows, and we’ve changed with it,’ Harry once observed. ‘I think everybody can see that.’ His confidence is touching. It is true that, when set against their forebears, William and Harry, at least, stand apart. As siblings they have
a closeness that their father never enjoyed with his own brothers and sister. Harry wants to be more than just the spare. He wants to take on more official engagements, as he demonstrated when he carried out his second solo visit to Barbados several days after William returned from Australia. His willingness to share the load with William will no doubt be to the benefit of them both. My personal view is that Charles will be king, but William is the true future of the monarchy and the key to the success of the royal family.

The boy who rattled around the corridors at Balmoral, bumping into skirting boards and playing merry havoc with stuffy notions of decorum, who stood on unfamiliar school steps as anxious as any new boy, who suffered a near-unbearable loss and carried himself with dignity beyond his years, who has won over hearts and no doubt broken a few – that boy, now a man, carries more on his shoulders than most would care to imagine. But he doesn’t carry it alone. Through most of his life – and most of the moments that have shaped him and with him the future of the royal family – Harry has been and remains by his side.

The tutelage William received from his grandmother more than ten years ago is being updated, refined. The look on his face as he posed next to the empty throne in Government House in Melbourne said it all. It was an echo of the feeling of awe he tried to convey to his friends many years ago on a mountainside in Chile. In reality it is an emotion that words cannot capture. He knows the task ahead of him, and he is slowly preparing himself for it. Harry’s future is less certain, his role less defined – something which must at times be both liberating and troubling. For the time being, both William, shadow king,
and Harry – soldier, confidant, brother – are happy being exactly where they are. Once they were the reluctant heir and his wayward spare. Now William and Harry are the House of Windsor’s most valuable and most powerful assets.

Acknowledgements

Andrew Morton, arguably the most controversial royal biographer of all time once wrote: ‘The eternal problem facing royal writers is that of authenticity. How to convince the world of the truth of your account, and the veracity of your sources when so many interviews are conducted on a confidential basis.’ My entire career as a journalist and royal reporter has depended on sources, none of whom I have ever been able to name or acknowledge. Understandably you all wish to remain confidential and it is my duty to keep you so. Please know that I am indebted to every one of you – thank you for all your time and trust. Without you this book could never have been written.

Some of the contributors to this book, however, have kindly agreed to be named. I would like to thank the Queen’s cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson for generously sharing her wealth of knowledge about William and Harry’s early lives. Having worked closely with the Prince and Princess of Wales for many years I must also thank Dickie Arbiter for his time, memories and archive footage. I would also like to thank Camilla Fayed for agreeing to speak with me about the summer of 1997 for the very first time.

My thanks also, in no particular order, to Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Simone Simmons, Vivienne Parry, Emma Sayle, Sam Young, Ian Jones, Alan Davidson, Dominic O’Neill, Ingrid Seward, Darren McGrady, Mark Fuller, Andrew Neil, Kitty
Dimbleby, Garth Gibbs, Mike Merritt, Niall Scott (Head of Communications at St Andrews), Dr Declan Quigley, Carley Massy-Birch, Ben Duncan and Katherine Witty. My gratitude and sincere thanks also go to Lieutenant Colonel Roy Parkinson and Major David James-Roll for inviting me to Sandhurst. Thanks also to the Ministry of Defence Press Office for their assistance and also the Royal Air Force press office, especially Martin Tinworth for his time.

Special thanks to my agent Jonathan Shalit for being the inspiration behind this book and to my editor Trevor Dolby for believing in me from the start. My publishers Preface have been fantastic throughout and I would like to thank in particular Richard Cable, Nicola Taplin, Vanessa Milton, Natalie Higgins and my picture researcher Melanie Haselden, you have been a pleasure to work with. Thanks also to Ian Monk for his guidance along the way.

Especial thanks to my esteemed colleague Laura Collins for her invaluable advice, assistance and encouragement and also to my dedicated researchers Helena Pearce and Charlotte Griffiths. I must also thank the Associated Newspapers reference library for all their help and Sian James and Marilyn Warnick at the
Mail on Sunday
. Finally my thanks to Peter Wright for his continued support.

List of Illustrations
Section One

On the steps of St Mary’s Hospital © Press Association Images

Harry aged three © Tim Graham / Getty Images

Royal Flight Helicopter © Tim Graham / Getty Images

Mrs Mynors’ Nursery © Ron Bell / Press Association Images

Wetherby School Sports Day Dads’ Race © Mirrorpix

Aboard the
Britannia
© Hulton Archive / Getty Images

William’s first day at Eton © Stefan Rousseau / Press Association Images

Diana’s last holiday © Eric Ryan / Getty Images

By the River Dee © Mark Cuthbert / Empics / Press Association Images

Floral tributes at Balmoral © Chris Bacon / Press Association Images

Diana’s funeral cortege © Mirrorpix