by Dylan Howard
The month on the farm supercharged William’s self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Here he was, living on the land he would one day rule, knee-deep in cow shit, hoisting hay bales and fixing fences. According to friends, he couldn’t have been happier.
“The best bit [of my gap year] was in England,” he told journalists a few months later. “I loved working on a farm. It was the best part of my year. I enjoyed the fact that I was put in as a farmhand and was paid and was just another guy on the farm. I got my hands dirty, did all the chores, and had to get up at 4 a.m. I got to see a completely different lifestyle.”
William and Harry had been out to Africa with their father’s friends the van Cutsems in the wake of their mother’s death. William had been enchanted by the continent. In March 2001, he headed back to visit Kenya. He would stay on Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a 61,000-acre game reserve owned by the aristocratic Craig family since 1922 and famed for its conservation programs for indigenous wildlife.
The Craigs welcomed William to Lewa, Kenya, and their family with an easygoing friendliness that reassured and comforted the young Prince. Always responsive to close-knit, cozy families, William bonded with Ian and Jane Craig and their children, Jecca (Jessica) and Batian. He especially bonded with the glamorous Jecca, the teenage daughter of the family, with many believing she became one of William’s first serious girlfriends. Others (including the Craig family) downplayed the relationship, pointing out that the Prince was close to them all.
While in Lewa, William developed an in-depth knowledge of rhino and elephant poaching, a major problem in Kenya and neighboring countries. It was this knowledge that convinced him to become royal patron of Tusk Trust, which remained eternally grateful for it. “You can’t exaggerate their [the Royals’] importance in Africa’s conservation wars,” stated Charlie Mayhew, chief executive of Tusk Trust. “[When William was here] he was in paradise. Lewa’s a very dynamic place, there’s always something exciting going on.”
During his stay in Kenya in the spring of 2001, William again pitched in with the usual crew of laborers and family members in undertaking day-to-day tasks around the reserve, blissfully reveling in the anonymity and indifference to his royal status from those around him. He helped capture and transport a large elephant to another conservation reserve as well as constructing a slide across a particularly treacherous gorge.
And later on, William confirmed his deep love of the continent: “I first fell in love with Africa when I spent time in Kenya, Botswana, and Tanzania as a teenager. I was captivated.” As William’s gap year came to a triumphant close, with the successful completion of his slide, he returned to Britain confident in the knowledge that he could survive and indeed thrive in some of the world’s harshest conditions—and on his own.
“WOW, KATE’S HOT!”
I just want to go to university and have fun. I want to go there and be an ordinary student. I mean, I’m only going to university. It’s not like I’m getting married—though that’s what it feels like sometimes.
—PRINCE WILLIAM
St Andrews is Scotland’s oldest university, situated fifty miles north of Edinburgh. William’s father, uncle Edward, and great-grandfather King George VI had all attended Cambridge, but the course the young Prince intended to study, History of Art, was regarded as being among the best in the United Kingdom. St Andrews, founded in 1413 and set within the pretty, ancient town of the same name, was secluded and remote, factors that appealed to the privacy-loving Royal. If he needed any further encouragement, the course was four years long, rather than the three that was standard to English universities.
William arrived at the university on the morning of September 23, 2001, a few weeks after the World Trade Center had fallen, reshaping not only the landscape of Manhattan, but the entire world. His father accompanied him during the move into St. Salvator’s Hall, his new home. He had spent the previous few days rather unlike most new students, staying at the Palace of Holyroodhouse and touring the region, before giving the world’s media some photocalls and interviews. For St Andrews’s sixteen thousand or so locals, it was a chance to get accustomed to seeing the Royal and his entourage moving around the small town.
Nevertheless, there were some teething issues. The day after William arrived, nerves frayed to breaking point when one media truck showed up and began filming—furious resistance revealed the embarrassing fact that they were with a production company owned by William’s uncle, Prince Edward, making a documentary for US television. The company, Ardent, had even filmed students talking about the Prince, bribing them with restaurant dinners and creating the impression that the freshmen had just finished their first year with William. However, following a turbulent weekend of recrimination and humiliation for Edward, the crew vanished, leaving a rather rattled William to settle into college life.
Nicknamed Sally’s, St Salvator’s is one of eleven halls of residence, a coed facility. Most mornings, on his way to class, William would notice the same dark-haired girl also making her way to History of Art lectures, amid the throng of students rushing about. He noticed her instantly. There was no shortage of girls anxiously changing their routines to increase the chances of “accidentally” bumping into the Royal, carefully navigating the charming streets and student haunts of the town in hopes of striking up a conversation. But, with his characteristic shyness and near-fanatical obsession with being as low-key as possible, something about the brown-haired girl pinged a chord with William.
He noticed her in class, and in the dining hall, where students typically claimed their spots and kept them over the course of the year, for mealtimes. He noticed she often liked a run before breakfast—another common interest, as well as their choice of course and their natural reticence. One morning, when William and his friends were in their regular places for breakfast in the dining hall, beneath imposing portraits of noble Scottish philosophers and beautiful stained-glass windows, eating their fruit and granola, he invited the brunette to join him. Her name was Catherine, she told him, but everyone called her Kate.
When William began at the university, other students were notified in advance of his presence and warned that severe penalties would be imposed for any photographs, leaks to the media, or unwarranted intrusions. The college staff was fully on alert to deal with problems within the student body and, if necessary, to take steps to protect William, in order for him to study in peace. However, to everyone’s surprise and relief, the Prince barely caused a ripple on the first day of classes. Students merely gave him a curious once-over before returning to their books. William’s tutor, Professor Brendan Cassidy, told biographer Penny Junor, “I was so surprised. I was expecting some sort of buzz but there was nothing.” In his seminars with Cassidy, where smaller groups of students met weekly with the tutor, William found himself the only male in a group of women and utterly tongue-tied. “His body language said it all,” said Cassidy. “[Initially], he tried to wrap himself up, but within a couple of months, he was so much more relaxed.”
During his first semester, William started dating Carley Massy-Birch, an English-language and creative-writing student. Carley was a true country girl whose warm and hospitable Devonshire family welcomed the shy Prince to their home for cozy family dinners. At college, the pair kept a low-key presence, keeping their relationship relaxed and easy. They hung out in local pubs, bars, cafés, and restaurants some of the time, or socialized with other students over a typical undergraduate dinner party of tuna bakes or spaghetti Bolognese.
“I’m a real country bumpkin,” Carley told Vanity Fair. “I think that was why we had a connection. William was in the year below, and we just happened to meet through the general St. Andrews melee. It’s such a small place that it was impossible not to bump into William, and after a while there was nothing weird about seeing him around. We got on well, but I think we would have got on well even if nothing had been going on romantically. It was very much a university thing, just a regular university romance.
”
The “regular university romance” hit the wall fairly soon, however. Carley was growing suspicious of William’s true feelings about his summer romance with Arabella Musgrave, back in Gloucestershire. Despite the pair having broken things off before William went up to Scotland, a homesick Prince was keeping in regular contact with her and seeing her on trips home. It soon transpired that the life of studious stability and fulfillment he had envisaged in St Andrews wasn’t working out. William was making friends in Scotland, and his tutors in his History of Art course recall a conscientious, if not dazzling, pupil. Yet, as the semester wore on, it became apparent to William that his heart was not in History of Art, and for all its charm and old-world appeal, St Andrews was a bit dull compared to the days of Club H or London’s West End. Family issues were never far from his mind, or indeed the headlines. After all, this was the year in which sixteen-year-old Harry went, not for the last time, spectacularly off the rails and onto the front pages. William’s brother was caught smoking weed and drinking underage at the Rattlesnake Bar in Gloucester, prompting a gleeful outburst of finger wagging from those models of temperance and sobriety, British tabloid journalists.
That Christmas, William told his father he didn’t want to return to St Andrews for his second semester. He wasn’t enjoying his courses, he missed home, and he didn’t feel committed enough to warrant the massive upheaval his choice of university had caused numerous people, from his fellow students to the townspeople, college staff, and his own security operation. The college had even moved the configuration of the History of Art teaching buildings around, to accommodate William’s security detail.
Charles was thoughtful. Many students experience uncertainty in their first year, and homesickness is also par for the course for the great majority, especially those who were used to livelier places than St Andrews. But given William’s status and, yes, the huge amount of work that had gone into creating a safe space for him to work and live, Charles counseled caution. His own brother Edward had quit the Marine Commandos halfway through the induction year, much to the public’s disappointment. Charles himself was no stranger to the trials and tribulations of adjusting to a new educational establishment, hundreds of miles from home. Despite availing himself of one of the finest collections of art in the country—that of his grandmother, where William had been immersing himself in the world of Old Masters and classical art—he hadn’t clicked with the subject, and worse, he was terrified of public failure. He was preyed upon by the prospect of getting a reputation for weak work or an uninspired degree at the end of years of hassle and fuss for everyone.
But common sense (and a few motivating talks with his gruff but loving grandfather) prevailed in the end. “I don’t think I was homesick, I was more daunted,” William later said. “My father was very understanding about it and realized I had the same problem as he probably had. We chatted a lot, and in the end we both realized—I definitely realized—that I had to come back.”
Charles told him that if he still felt the same way at the end of his second semester, they could talk again. In the meantime, William agreed to return to college and drop History of Art and major in Geography, a subject he felt a much deeper connection to. “It was really no different from what many first-year students go through,” Prince Charles’s former private secretary, Mark Bolland, recalled to Vanity Fair. “We approached the whole thing as a wobble, which was entirely normal.” But William’s decision to return to St Andrews had also been motivated by another factor.
***
By now, Kate Middleton was a good friend. William and the girl from Marlborough School had grown close despite their mutual reserve, which concealed strikingly similar tastes and outlooks on life. Kate had also been on a Raleigh venture to Chile before college, of course, so she and William found much to talk about regarding their experiences there, as well as finding that they could make each other laugh and, increasingly, feel secure in each other’s company. They both loved sports, and in his first term, William had enjoyed many tennis, swimming, and surfing sessions with Kate, followed up by drinks somewhere around town or in the university’s grand common rooms. When William found himself unhappy and unsure of his future at school, the quiet Kate was a sympathetic and willing listener, letting him talk and not bullying or pushing him one way or another. William liked that. It reminded him of his mother’s gentle demeanor and natural warmth.
Furthermore, while she was—and is—undoubtedly a beauty in the English rose mold, she wasn’t at all glamorous or made up when she met William. Rather, William’s attention was piqued by Kate’s low-key, easygoing manner, her classic good looks, and natural personality. “They were instant companions,” said a friend of Kate’s, who lived at Sally’s with her. “Kate is genuinely a very nice person. I actually felt bad for her having to deal with all of those other two-faced chicks. It’s easy to see why a graceful person like Kate would charm Will.”
Despite being something of a college heartthrob, Kate’s friends and contemporaries from this time recall the future Princess as being a pretty normal girl, albeit one who was reputed to have had a picture of the Prince on the wall of her school dorm and would frequently talk about the chances of meeting him in a joking-not-joking kind of way.
“There wasn’t just one, there was about twenty,” smirked William years later when the pair was giving a television interview to mark their engagement.
“He wishes!” joked Kate. “No, I had the Levi’s guy on my wall, not a picture of William, sorry!”
Returning to St Andrews, William made some changes. He planned to move out of his college accommodation in his second year, and in September 2002, he did—with a small group of trusted friends, including Kate.
He switched to a major in Geography, which immediately engaged him in a way his previous major hadn’t managed to. The practical side of studying Geography—field studies, scientific analyses, and research—suited the Prince’s personality and interests. He began to feel comfortable in his seminars, participating in lively discussions and overcoming his reticence in front of other students.
“He was a perfectly capable student,” recalled his new tutor of Geography, John Walden. “The academic stuff was fine, he was no different from any other student in the cohort.” He began to relax around his new classmates and made some more friends and started to let down his hair—now noticeably thinning. Meanwhile, as spring 2002 approached, his friendship with Kate, which had deepened during his minicrisis, grew steadily closer.
On March 27, 2002, William and his pal Fergus attended a fashion show in which Kate was to make an appearance as one of the catwalk models. The annual “Don’t Walk” charity show at the college’s student union was a fixture of the Scottish social calendar, with tickets going for two hundred pounds each. It was very much a last-minute decision to attend the event, which was how William liked to play things—avoiding any undue attention and fuss, slinking into the hall in his customary baseball cap and taking his place right by the catwalk.
When Kate emerged in the spotlight wearing a dress designed by fashion student Charlotte Todd, there was a collective intake of breath among the assembled crowd. Her lithe, toned body was barely covered by the skimpy outfit, which essentially consisted of black underwear and a see-through top. In a moment that has since passed into myth, William turned to Fergus and whispered, “Wow, Fergus, Kate’s hot!”
“Kate was great on the catwalk,” recalled one of the other models who appeared that night. “She and everyone, including William, knew it.”
For William, it was the thunderbolt moment. After months of close friendship, in a flash, Kate’s confident sexy strut down the catwalk lit a fire that confirmed what he had subconsciously felt from the start. For him, this was the girl who had it all: smart, funny, warm, serious, loving, kind, sympathetic, sporty, sociable, and very, very sexy.
That night, friends recall William being in something of a spin. At a party after the show, he gambled on making his
move. In front of a roomful of people, William tried to kiss her, as they toasted her successful evening. Kate pulled away, slightly shocked at William’s boldness. He well knew that she was dating another student at the time, Rupert Finch. According to one of their friends who witnessed the moment, Kate “played it very cool” because she didn’t “want to give off the wrong impression or make it too easy for Will.” Still, the friend told Vanity Fair, “It was clear to us that William was smitten with Kate. He actually told her she was a knockout that night, which caused her to blush. There was definitely chemistry between them.”
It’s uncertain when Kate finally allowed her Prince to sweep her off her feet for the first time, but this much is clear: by the time William returned to the university in September 2002, he had found a lovely old house to share with a small number of close friends at 13a Hope Street, in the center of town. One of their neighbors, Julian Knight, a fellow student, recalled the early days of the fledgling romance.
He said: “It became quite amusing because we were obviously in the circle of people who knew they were an item and we were just wondering when the press was going to catch on. I think it speaks volumes for the kind of protection he had, because there were a lot of people who knew they were together, but no one said anything.
“I think one of the main reasons why they were able to be together was because they were in the same hall of residence and then they lived together. Initially, they had time to get to know each other as friends. So, they were always spending time together, going down to Anstruther to go banana boating or playing golf or going for a walk. They were able to get to know each other as friends without anyone going, ‘Ooh, what’s going on there?’”
While some modifications had to be made to it, to ensure the royal security team was happy, the house gave William the privacy and comfort he’d been craving. By this time, his romance with Kate was well under way. Living under the same roof (although nominally in separate rooms) with discreet, trusted friends, the pair found a degree of privacy. Their intimacy deepened despite the prying eyes and telephoto lenses that lurked every day outside 13a Hope Street’s bombproof front door.