Of course, the press can never get enough of a good romance, and once Harry turned 21 and gave the customary interview to mark the occasion, he was inveigled into commenting, ‘I would love to tell everyone how amazing she is. But, you know, that is my private life and once I start talking about that, then I’ve left my own self open, and if anyone asks me in the future, then they’ll say “Oh well hang on, you told them but why aren’t you telling us?”’ This was just enough to satisfy the newspapers, whose absorbing interest in the Harry and Chelsy affair seemed never-ending.
In the beginning, though, the real strains between the couple were their youthfulness and the enforced separations they had to endure. Chelsy remained in South Africa for the first two years to obtain her BA from the University of Cape Town in 2006, while Harry entered Sandhurst, completed his officer training course, before being commissioned into the Blues and Royals. Although royal protocol deemed it inappropriate for her to be in attendance at his graduation ceremony, she flew in for the graduation ball.
In 2006, Chelsy moved back to England to take the LLB law degree at the University of Leeds. Harry, meanwhile, was flourishing in the Army. It was announced that his unit would be deployed to Iraq the following year, which created a tremendous kerfuffle, with the Defence Secretary agreeing with Harry, who wanted to be sent to the front line. ‘If they said “no, you can’t go front line,” then I wouldn’t drag my sorry arse through Sandhurst and I wouldn’t be where I am now,’ Harry announced, gaining the admiration of the public. The Queen, who had previously allowed Prince Andrew’s life to be put on the line during the Falklands War just like every other serving soldier, sailor, and airman, agreed with her grandson. Although Harry would ultimately not be sent to Iraq, because his presence would provide a magnet for insurgents, endangering the lives of the other men, he was sent instead to Afghanistan for two separate tours of duty. This gained him the respect of the public in a way nothing else could ever have done. The fact that he was brave, determined to do his duty, happy to muck in with his cohorts and expect no special treatment, gained him a regard which he had hitherto not had. Even when he did silly things, such as being photographed cavorting nude in Las Vegas with a group of drunken friends, including his ‘Wingman’ Tom Inskip, the respect he had earned remained intact. Indeed, the public admired him all the more for being a ‘bit of a lad’. It showed that he was not only a brave man, but a prince who was fundamentally just another accessible and likeable human being.
If Chelsy was prepared to cut Harry slack where his drinking was concerned, she was not so willing to overlook what she regarded as being taken for granted. When Harry chose to attend the Rugby World Cup final in Paris rather than be with her for her twenty second birthday, she dumped him. This was but the first of the endings that led to reconciliations, but by 2009 she was sufficiently resolute, after Harry had decided to embark on a two year training course to learn to fly helicopters for the Army Air Corps, to alter her online Facebook profile to ‘Relationship: Not in One’. She knew it was only a matter of time before the news leaked to the press, but she welcomed the respite, as by then she was heartily sick of the media intrusions, and also looked forward to a break from the strains of a long distance relationship.
For the next two years, Harry and Chelsy’s relationship was on and off. There was genuine affection there, but their youthfulness and Harry’s career in the Army meant that she had to endure the same sacrifices that other Army wives and girlfriends do, all the while running the gauntlet with the press, who followed her every move. By the time of William’s marriage to Catherine Middleton on the 29th April 2011, their status remained unresolved yet the trust between them was so strong that Chelsy not only helped Harry to write his best man’s speech, but was also his plus one for the wedding and the events following it.
By 2012, Harry and Chelsy were definitely headed in opposite directions. Princess Eugenie knew that her first cousin wanted a girlfriend and that her good friend Cressida Bonas had recently split up with boyfriend Harry Wentworth Stanley. They had been an item at the University of Leeds, but when Wentworth Stanley took off for his gap year on his own, the relationship came to an end. So Eugenie introduced them and Harry and Cressida hit it off.
For a while, it looked as if they were ideally suited. Both were athletic, good looking, bohemian, and she had the advantage of being resolutely British upper class, with a family that was as colourful as Harry’s.
Unlike the Davy family, Cressida’s was used to the press. Her mother and aunt had been It Girls in the 70s, when we were all young and few weeks went by without all of our names featuring in the gossip columns. Her mother Lady Mary Gaye Curzon was the elder of two daughters of the 6th Earl Howe’s second marriage. Her aunt Lady Charlotte Curzon was a year younger, and in the 1970s the Curzon sisters were such social luminaries that you couldn’t go to a party anywhere in London or the shires without running into one or the other of them.
At the time, Mary Gaye was married to her first husband, Esmond Cooper Key, who was even better connected than the Curzon girls, if such a thing were possible. His maternal grandfather was the mighty press baron Esmond, 2nd Viscount Rothermere, and his uncle the Hon. Vere Harmsworth’s wife Pat was one of the most outstanding figures in Society. While Vere was so laid back that he was almost reserved, with a delightfully droll sense of humour, Pat, who relished becoming the 3rd Viscountess Rothermere in 1978, was an unpredictable firebrand, perennially bedecked in Lacroix, a large bow in her curly chestnut-coloured hair styled like Shirley Temple, her ears and hands weighed down with stones the size of almonds, the inevitable pair of sneakers contrasting with the whole costume, which was finished off with a glass of champagne in one hand and a dazzling swizzle stick in the other. Pat drank only champagne, but hated bubbles. Hence the gold swizzle stick and the ironic nickname Bubbles, which she loathed and friends hesitated to use to her face.
By the time Cressida was born in 1989, Mary Gaye was on her third marriage, to an Old Harrovian businessman called Jeffrey Bonas. His family had once had a lot of money but no longer did. Cressida was their only child, but she had seven half-siblings: three paternal half-brothers from her father’s first marriage, a half-sister from Mary Gaye’s marriage to Esmond, and two other half-sisters and a half-brother from Mary Gaye’s second marriage to John Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe.
Fortunately for her parents, Cressida was athletic and won a sports scholarship to Park Prior College in Bath, after which she attended Stowe before heading to one of the aristocracy’s favourite universities, Leeds, where she studied dance. She was a beautiful girl, which was just as well, for she wanted to become an actress.
The years between Cressida’s birth and her introduction to Harry had seen profound changes in British society. These had loosened up everyone, including the royals and aristocracy, with the result that everyone now had greater choice as to what they could do with their lives. This was as a result of the flipping of the hierarchical ladder, which had once defined the social order from the bottom to the top, from vertical to horizontal. The divisions between the classes still existed, but they were now perceived as being surmountable. Although the aristocracy still had a degree of influence, in national terms it had ceased to be the oracle it had been in the days when deference had accompanied vertical hierarchy. British society no longer being deferential, this gave everyone the freedom to explore their desires and ambitions in a way that had been unthinkable in a previous generation. Cressida and Harry, who were exploring the possibilities of what their lives could be - whether together or separately was beside the point - were therefore typical of the open-endedness that now characterised British society.
In many ways, Harry and Cressida seemed ideally suited. They were a good match not only physically and in terms of background, but also in terms of interests and outlook. The word in aristocratic circles was that Mary Gaye was keener on her daughter marrying into the Royal Family than Cressida was, but since Cressida and Harry seeme
d to be so well matched, and so good together, everyone crossed his or her fingers and hoped there would be no slips between the cup and the lip.
Cressida, however, was struggling under the harsh glare of the press’s attentions. When she appeared on Woman’s Hour, she highlighted some of the difficulties. ‘I think it’s that thing of being pigeonholed. Especially in this country, I find that people are very quick to put you in a box, or put you in a corner, and think “Oh, well you’re that so you must be this”. It’s incredibly frustrating.’
She was confronting the reality that friends of mine, who could have married into the Royal Family when they were her age, had also faced. Unless you were so gut-wrenchingly in love with the man that you would sooner be pilloried than live without him - and unless you knew with complete certainty that you would remain so in love with him that the torture of being royal would be endurable - or you were so ambitious that you’d endure the heat no matter what - you had your day in the sunshine, got scorched, and headed for shelter and the Camomile lotion.
By 2014, Cressida was ready for the shade. She and Harry parted on amicable terms, just as he had with Chelsy, both of whom would be asked to his wedding. She then quietly returned to her previous boyfriend, Harry Wentworth Stanley, another tall, good looking second son, whose mother is the present Marchioness of Milford Haven, wife of the head of the Mountbatten family, of which Prince Harry’s line, Mountbatten-Windsor, is a distaff branch. She remained on such good terms with the royals that she attended Harry’s wedding to Meghan and Princess Eugenie’s to Jack Brooksbank last year.
By this time, Harry was something of a hero with the public. His first deployment to Afghanistan, as a Forward Air Controller in Helmand Province, had come to a sudden end when the German newspaper Bild and the Australian magazine New Idea had breached the embargo concerning his presence. Disappointed that he was being forced to abandon his men, but understanding of the danger his continuing presence would place them in, he was airlifted out before the Taliban had a chance to attack. Frustrated and disappointed at how his posting had ended, he was nevertheless pleased to be presented with the Operational Service Medal for Afghanistan by his regiment’s Colonel-in-Chief, his aunt Anne the Princess Royal, at Combermere Barracks.
Aside from loving the structure, discipline, and camaraderie of the Army, one of the greatest delights of that life for Harry was that he was just another human being. His royal status made no difference, except occasionally as a preventative, stopping him from being assigned postings, or being able to accept assignments, that would endanger his fellow-troops if it became known that HRH Prince Henry of Wales were involved. The challenge, for him and his superiors, became how to carve out a meaningful role for himself which would give scope to his abilities without exposing his fellows to increased danger.
Like his father, brother, and uncle, Harry then became a helicopter pilot, which is how he came to be posted to Afghanistan a second time. This time, there was no secrecy, his assignment being announced beforehand in an act of confidence and defiance by the British authorities. His arrival at Camp Bastion, for a four-month posting as a co-pilot and gunner for an Apache helicopter, was greeted by the Taliban, whose spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told Reuters, ‘We are using all out strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping. We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him.’
It was obvious that there was little likelihood of the Taliban succeeding. Camp Bastion was as secure as Fort Knox. By making the announcement the way they did, the Taliban had set themselves up for failure. The British and American press thrilled to Harry’s presence, which did as much for morale amongst the Allied troops in Afghanistan as it did for Harry’s reputation in England.
Harry’s status as a brave soldier consolidated his popularity and helped to enlarge his options both as an Army officer and a prince. These, however, did not include more tours of duty in battle zones. His presence was too risky for all concerned, so to his disappointment he was quietly transferred to a staff officer’s role at Army headquarters in London. His office was in Horse Guards, and his duties included helping to coordinate Army significant events in London. This might have been a disappointment to someone who liked getting himself dirty in the trenches, who loved nothing better than mucking around with the men, but it was also an opportunity to leave his mark in a creative way. Unlike Charles and William, whose position as immediate heirs to the throne made their roles relatively easy to define, Harry, being a second son, had more scope. Within reason, he could do what he wanted. The role of spare could provide opportunities that an elder son could not have, if only he had the imagination and commitment to avail himself of them.
What Harry did next covered him in glory, and showed that his humanitarianism was not an empty drum to beat for his own glorification, but a genuine and deep seated desire to create opportunities for those who lacked them. He created the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-type sporting event for wounded, injured or infirm soldiers of either sex, launched officially by him, in combat gear, at the former Olympic Centre in Stratford, East London, in March 2014. Inspired by the highly successful 2012 London Olympic Games, and by the Warrior Games which had been created by the United States Olympic Committee in 2010, these games would take place that September.
By this time, everyone understood that Harry truly felt for those less fortunate than himself. He had been a patron since its inception of Walking With The Wounded, founded in 2010, had walked to the Arctic on their behalf in 2011, and would walk to the South Pole in 2015. He also beat the drum for Sentebale, putting both the charity and its country on the map in a way no one and nothing ever had done before. His sense of humour also garnered him many admirers, such as the time in 2012, when, on an official visit to Jamaica, he ‘beat’ the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt, by out and out cheating, running to the finish line before the race had begun. When Bolt then did his characteristic Lightning Bolt movement, Harry was right there beside him, doing it as well. ‘The Jamaicans loved him,’ the Jamaican High Commissioner told me. ‘They couldn’t get enough of him. He was just such a delight.’
In March 2015, the palace announced that Harry would leave the Army in June. The constraints he had had to endure would help in his personal life, should he find himself a girlfriend or wife. Whether the lack of structure he would have to cope with in civilian life would be beneficial to him personally, was another matter. All his life Harry had needed to be kept occupied. He had flourished in the Army, because he was the sort of personality which needed structure to bring out the best in him. Even as a little boy, he used to beg Ken Wharfe to give him assignments. He had leadership ability of the median rank, was also good at taking orders, had energy and courage, and he loved being surrounded by the men and mucking in with them. He was the perfect Army man, but he did not possess the inner spark or self-discipline that enables people to flourish in an unstructured environment.
To further complicate matters, Harry was headstrong and had been brought up by Diana and, to a lesser extent his father, to overestimate his importance in the scheme of things. He was a second son, whose role could never be as well delineated as his elder brother’s, and, with the passage of time, that role would become of increasingly less consequence constitutionally. It was inevitable that he would suffer the fate of Prince Andrew, who had started out as second in line to the throne and found himself being pushed further and further down the table of succession with the birth of each child who supplanted him. There were doubts that Harry had the internal resources to realise his full potential without the clear boundaries that an institution like the Army provided, but the enthusiasm with which he embraced royal projects in civilian life heartened observers. Maybe he did have what it took to become a successful civilian prince after all.
In contrast to his public life, privately Harry struggled to find a girl who wanted to take him on full time. No one wanted the job. Although he was a nice enough guy, and undoubte
dly physically appealing, with the robust athleticism of a fit soldier, he had emotional problems. He was often unjustifiably angry. I know of one instance when he tried to attack a contemporary of his father’s for no reason at all. He was dragged off by his protection officers and is only lucky that nothing was made of the incident. He could be churlish and placed many demands on those closest to him. He could be overly clingy while being out of touch with his emotions. He seemed to believe that his troubles all stemmed from his mother’s death, but people who knew the family well, disagreed. Relations of his tell me that he was always going to be trouble, ‘Because Diana simply refused to provide consequences.’ Patrick Jephson, her Private Secretary, bore this out when he recounted the three year old Harry deliberately riding his tricycle at full speed into the shins of a senior cavalry officer who had come to pay his Colonel-in-Chief an official call. Although Diana scolded him, she did not punish him, and Harry rode off without contrition or consequences.
Such a joke did Harry’s quest for a girlfriend become that his sister-in-law Catherine even gave him a Grow-Your-Own-Girlfriend kit in 2016. It was no secret in aristocratic circles that he desperately wanted to marry and start his own family. Unlike many men, who want to sow their wild oats and will flit from woman to woman with no thought of emotional involvement, Harry had an almost feminine attitude to relationships. They were more about love than sex. And while he could get sex easily, lasting love had proven so far to be depressingly elusive.
Indeed, Harry’s quest for love had become almost pathetic. He would ask friends to set him up with girls who were well bred and attractive, and, to ensure that they wanted him for himself and not for his name and rank - the very things, ironically, that turned off most well-bred girls - he would pretend to be someone else. He did this with a friend of my children’s, Baroness Jessica Heydel, who found the whole experience so bizarre and discomfiting that she was hamstrung into stupefaction. How does one of the most famous men in the country expect a well-educated, well-bred, intelligent girl to react when he tries to start off a relationship incognito? Is she supposed to go along with the deception, or is she supposed to call his bluff? Why would he think she would care so much about his rank, style and title that he had to pretend to be someone else? How does a girl begin a real relationship with someone who isn’t who he says he is? Crazy, just crazy.
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