Prince William

by Penny Junor

  They wanted to find somewhere that neither of them had been to before, and although they went to the Seychelles after their reconciliation in 2007, they’d stayed on a different island. They also wanted somewhere that was fun, exciting and different, and where they could do some serious diving – something they both loved. And perhaps most important of all, it had to be somewhere that was guaranteed to be totally private – and in this day and age, privacy doesn’t come cheap. The rate at North Island is a fraction under £2,000 per person per night, and includes all meals and virtually all drinks, scuba diving and snorkelling; also windsurfing, sea kayaking, and just about everything else you could dream of, including mountain bikes and a buggy for getting around the island. The hotel owns all 462 acres of it, and has only eleven rooms, which are large and luxurious individual villas, each with a private plunge pool and butler service. There is no mobile phone signal, and nobody comes to the island unless they are a guest at the hotel.

  They found the suitably eco-friendly North Island themselves – and paid for it themselves. The use of the private jet to take them there and back was a wedding gift from the Duke of Westminster, but the hotel was down to them – and they researched how they were spending their money very carefully. They trawled the internet and consulted Time Out guide books, and books about the best diving sites in the world, and gradually narrowed the search down to this one speck of an island in the Indian Ocean, which promised peace and privacy.

  While they were there, the Queen was on her first-ever state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an historic exercise in reconciliation and friendship, and, between dives, William assiduously followed her progress online. ‘She was so excited about it,’ he said. ‘This was like a big door opening up to her that had been locked for so long. We all wanted it to go smoothly because it was such a big deal. I was keeping a careful watch.’The visit was a triumph and the Queen was visibly delighted by the outcome. ‘As far as she was concerned, in terms of the relationship between Britain and Ireland and the Troubles, it was time to move on from that. What’s happened has happened and no one wants to cover it up. We must make sure all the right things are done and that the right people are said sorry to or vice versa.’

  After ten days on their paradise island they left more than footprints behind. They had made a lasting impression. The Seychelles High Commissioner to Great Britain, Patrick Pillay, said of them, ‘In a world of so much turmoil, they bring a welcome and much-needed breath of fresh air with their warmth and humility.’

  CROSSING CONTINENTS

  When the twenty-year-old Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales, he was already working as a full-time member of the Family Firm, so, immediately after their honeymoon, she was thrown into Royal duties alongside him – the first of which, fittingly for the new Princess, was a tour of the principality of Wales. William is still a full-time search and rescue pilot, fitting in occasional Royal duties around his work schedule, and after the honeymoon he was back on duty at RAF Valley. So Kate’s introduction to official Royal life was to be gradual. But before his engagement, William had agreed to carry out an official tour of Canada in the summer of 2011, the country where he had caused such a sensation as a shy teenager the year after his mother’s death. Kate’s initiation, therefore, by accident rather than design, would be ten days alongside him in Canada.

  They arrived in Ottawa on 30 June. At that point, they were the world’s most famous and feted couple, and were treated to a rapturous reception. It was the eve of Canada Day, the most important day in the country’s calendar, when everyone takes to the streets to celebrate with parties and fireworks. The Canadians, a warm and friendly people, who had doted on the Princess of Wales, were thrilled that William and Kate had chosen their country for their first foreign tour. It was also, poignantly, the eve of what would have been his mother’s fiftieth birthday.

  The Governor General, David Johnston, set the mood of the tour by saying, ‘Welcome to Canada – the honeymoon capital of the Commonwealth’. The crowd of thousands cheered loudly. William responded with the first of many bilingual speeches, and won hearts, as he struggled with his French pronunciation, by saying, ‘It will improve as we go on.’

  I was one of fourteen hundred accredited international media who flocked to Canada to observe their progress around the country, and I was there in Ottawa that day. Having also been in Wales in 1981, to observe Diana work her magic on the Welsh people on that first tour with Prince Charles, it was interesting to compare the two – and I had a strong sense of déjà vu.

  When Diana had stepped from their car thirty years ago, and stretched out her arms to clasp the dozens of hands reaching for hers, it was obvious that she had something special. She was just twenty-one, and had done nothing like this in her life – she had even been rather shy meeting strangers – but she had an instinctive ability to engage with the public that no amount of training could ever have bettered. At one engagement after another, as the rain soaked her beautiful outfits, she smiled, she laughed, she patted children’s heads or rubbed their cold hands between her own. She bent down to chat to people in wheelchairs, and sat on hospital beds, holding patients’ hands, always managing to find the perfect remark for everyone she met.

  Strange as it might sound to today’s readers, such familiarity was new to the Royal Family. Even the walkabout was still quite new. Until the Queen’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1970, neither she nor her family wandered over to talk randomly to the crowds that lined the streets. Those crowds received a smile and a royal wave. Theirs was the formality of a bygone age and Diana’s approach struck a chord with the people. The Welsh fell in love with her. The crowds groaned audibly, and embarrassingly, when they saw that Diana was not taking their side of the street, and that they were getting Charles instead. He ended up joking that he was just there to collect flowers for his wife, but it must have hurt.

  There was none of that in Canada. William and Kate travelled extensively, visiting seven cities in five provinces, and people were thrilled to see them both. Everywhere they went there were chants of ‘Will and Kate, Will and Kate’; people held up placards with big hearts on them and slogans like ‘Canada loves Will and Kate’ and ‘Will and Kate, You Were Worth The Wait’, and the young screamed when either one of them headed in their direction. People turned out in their thousands, many had come from hundreds of miles away and the wait was really long – five or six hours was not unusual, sometimes for nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of the pair – but no one seemed to mind. They all had mobile phones or cameras and they were just happy to have the picture that showed they were there.

  Kate took to it like a duck to water. She might have been Diana’s double, except that she clearly had the confidence of being older and more worldly wise. She had no training either, but she looked as though she had spent a lifetime schmoozing prime ministers and governor generals, and making small talk with strangers. Like Diana, she was full of smiles and easy laughter, she clasped hands, stretched into the crowd to greet the people at the back, bent down for children and wheelchairs, and never seemed to be lost for words or more than momentarily unsure of herself. When the father of a little two-year-old wished her luck starting her own family, she thanked him and said, yes, she hoped to. A throwaway remark was suddenly heavy with meaning when front and centre in the next day’s newspapers.

  The media contingent in Wales had been tiny by comparison with the numbers that followed William and Kate around Canada; camera technology was thirty years behind and there was no internet, YouTube or instant messaging. This time, not only was the world’s media picking up every remark and watching every muscle, but every man, woman and child in the crowd could post their own report.

  Kate seemed unfazed; and as the days went by, and she saw more of the country and met more of the people, she seemed to be positively enjoying herself. They both did; despite a gruelling schedule, they looked as though they were having fun together, which was not how Charles a
nd Diana had looked in Wales, barely two months after their wedding. The body language just wasn’t there with his parents. These two looked at each other all the time, chatted and whispered to each other, giggled every now and again, and were forever touching. William would give Kate’s hand a reassuring squeeze or he would place a hand on her back, and always seemed to be looking out for her.

  She, in turn, seemed to be taking her cues from him and was clearly learning as she went. She looked painfully thin – a more worrying reminder of Diana, and one which is worrying several of their friends – but she certainly understood what the job was all about. She did the formal, ceremonial bit, the frothy Canada Day celebrations, the barbecues and concerts, and was undaunted by cancer wards and potentially difficult conversations. She met young and old, war veterans with tales of conflict and small children who refused to surrender their bouquets. She got it right every time. And she was game for the outdoor activities. She rowed like fury in a dragon-boat race, determined, but failing, to beat her competitive husband, who, as he gave her a consolation hug declared, ‘There’s no chivalry in sport!’ In everything they did there was a feeling of partnership.

  One visit not on the itinerary was to the small town of Slave Lake in northern Alberta, which had been devastated by a massive wildfire three weeks earlier. All seven thousand inhabitants had been forced to flee their homes with nothing more than the clothes they stood in. They commiserated with townsfolk who had lost everything and spoke to the rescue workers, including the fire chief Jamie Coutts, whose team had finally put out the fire. Their visit had been a real morale boost, he said. ‘I’m happy for the people of Slave Lake. They got to have a happy day today, lots of smiles, and we haven’t had a lot of those. It’s easy to forget they’re real people,’ he said reflecting on William and Kate. ‘He’s a search and rescue pilot, she sits at home and worries about him when he’s on missions – and that’s a lot like what we did out on the front lines and what our families had to go through.’

  Kate won’t worry any less about William’s missions, but she does now have a better understanding of what he does on them. At Dalvay-by-the-Sea in Prince Edward Island, on a day of torrential rain, William took to a Sea King helicopter to learn an emergency landing technique developed by search and rescue services in Canada. It’s called ‘waterbirding’ and involves making a controlled landing on water in the event of engine failure – something he could no doubt take back to RAF Valley with him. He had specifically asked for it to be fitted into their schedule and after sitting alongside the pilot a couple of times, he took the controls himself and gently lowered the aircraft onto the water so many times that Kate must have wondered if he’d ever stop.

  On the same theme, the Canadian Coast Guard put on a search and rescue demonstration for them in the harbour at Summerside. From the helicopter deck of a coastguard ship, they watched men being rescued from a capsized boat and winched aboard a Sea King hovering deftly overhead. Even in the calm of the harbour on a summer’s day, the skill was clear to see. It wasn’t hard to imagine how dangerous the whole operation must be on a stormy night twenty miles out over a black and angry sea. Afterwards they met people who had been rescued and owed their lives to the service. Among them was a man William spent a moment or two longer with. He was a lobster fisherman whose boat, a year ago, had capsized several miles out in the early morning. Three of the crew had been saved but his sixty-two-year-old father-in-law had drowned. The dead man’s widow and daughter were there with him and also spoke to William, who was visibly moved by their story.

  It was a tour as emotionally varied as it was geographically; and while their welcome was tumultuous everywhere they went, not every Canadian was pleased to see them. There were noisy demonstrations by separatists in Quebec province, where more than 80 per cent of the population speak French. About three hundred protestors carried banners that read ‘Royal Parasites! Go Home!’ and other, less polite messages. They were angry about the cost of the tour – said to be over 1.5 million Canadian dollars. In 1964, protestors had turned their backs on the Queen during her visit and booed her; she has not been back to the province since. And just the year before William and Kate’s visit, Charles and Camilla were held up by scuffles between protestors and the police in Montreal.

  William’s biggest worry was that Kate would encounter some ugly incident on this first trip, and so the media were told there would be no walkabouts in Quebec City, where he spoke at the City Hall and he reviewed the Royal 22nd Regiment (and their hairy goat mascot), known as the Van Doos. They are the biggest French-speaking unit in Her Majesty’s Canadian Forces and recently returned from Afghanistan. He diplomatically delivered this speech entirely in French: ‘Thank you Premier, and Mr Mayor for your warm welcome. It’s an honour for me to be here with you in Quebec today. For me, as a soldier and an airman, it is a privilege to have inspected a great regiment like the Royal 22nd. Your reputation is as strong as it is legendary. This place has such beauty and history. You, the Québécois and Québécoise, have such vitality and vigour. It is simply a pleasure to be here. Thank you for your patience with my accent, and I hope that we will have the chance to get to know each other over the years to come. Until the next time.’

  The plan was for them to walk back to the heavily armed motorcade and make a swift getaway to the next event, but the thousands of people crowded into the city square, who had been soaked earlier by a heavy shower of rain, were calling out to them so excitedly that to everyone’s surprise (not least of all his team and the press corralled halfway up the street), William suddenly put an arm on Kate’s shoulder and led her past the waiting cars towards the crowds. The Quebecers were ecstatic, and it was a well-judged move – entirely his own – even if it did make the security officers very jumpy indeed.

  TINSEL TOWN

  For ten days in Canada, William and Kate had been cheered and applauded as the nation’s future King and Queen, and they had as much of a buzz from the experience as their future subjects. In his final speech in Alberta, William said, ‘A week ago in Ottawa I spoke of how much Catherine and I looked forward to getting to know Canada and Canadians. I can only say that the experience of this past seven days has exceeded all our expectations. We have been hugely struck by the diversity of this beautiful country: from Ottawa to Quebec; from Prince Edward Island to the Northwest Territories; and now the excitement of Calgary – and what about these fantastic white hats [stetsons given to them for the Stampede Parade] … Canada has far surpassed all that we were promised.’ He meant it. They were exhausted, it had been hard work, but every time their energy had started to flag something different presented itself and they were revived.

  It had been a triumph. Once again he had looked like a King in waiting, and he had been received as such; and Kate by his side completed the picture. In every situation, in formal suit or jeans and an open-necked shirt, he hit the right note and charmed the birds from the trees. His speeches, delivered with perfect timing, also hit the right note and delighted his audience.

  As they took off into the sky above Calgary after ten full days and countless flights, they must have wished they were going home. (The exhausted press pack certainly did.) Instead they flew to Los Angeles for two days, which had a very different feel for them and which, in my view, throws up some important questions for the future. It was essentially a fundraising trip that was tacked on to the end of the Canadian tour at the last minute – and a very profitable one it was too. Hollywood celebrities, rich Californians, wealthy Brits living in Los Angeles, everyone wanted to meet the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and were prepared to pay big bucks for the privilege. But is this what our Royal Family should be doing?

  Shortly before they left for Canada they topped the bill at one of the most star-studded and ostentatious displays of wealth in London’s social calendar. It was the £10,000-a-head gala dinner for Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), which was co-founded by Swiss-born financier Arpad Busson. The charity funds projects for d
isadvantaged children in the UK and around the world, and one year the auction alone at one of these dinners raised £14 million. Kate, in a beautiful gown designed by Jenny Packham costing nearly £4,000, looked stunning, and William, on sparkling form, was there to announce a joint venture between ARK and his Foundation. He began by saying he didn’t know how he was going to explain the spectacle before him to his grandmother when he saw her in the morning.

  ‘I am delighted that this evening marks the start of a new joint-partnership between Absolute Return for Kids – ARK – and The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry and The Duchess of Cambridge – F P W P H A T D C … This new joint-partnership is based on our shared vision and commitment to transform the lives of thousands of young people. I know that I am very fortunate. I have had a good education, a secure home and a loving and supportive family. So many young people, however, do not have these advantages and, as a result, can lack the confidence and knowledge to realise their full potential.

  ‘I count myself fortunate for another reason too. Harry and I find ourselves in a position to be able to help. I really believe that individuals can make a serious difference – whether it’s through wealth, through position, or some other advantage. It is so heartening to see that so many of you here tonight, through your commitment, share that belief. It is in this spirit that my brother, Catherine and I hope to use our philanthropy as a long-term catalyst for meaningful change.’

  His sincerely felt words no doubt brought the partnership a massive injection of cash, but there was something discordant about the sight of such a carefully modest pair among such opulence – albeit raising money for a good cause – at a time when working people all over the country were struggling to make ends meet.

  California was a similar exercise; they were using all their many advantages – and using them very effectively. In two days, they raised an enormous amount of money and there is no doubt that that money will be used to make a difference. And they did it charmingly and in the style that Hollywood respects. Kate’s dresses were by top designers; she borrowed jewellery from the Queen. At one event they arrived by helicopter. It was along the coast at Santa Barbara: a lavish lunch for sixty followed by a match at the prestigious Santa Barbara Polo Club to raise money for the American Friends of the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry. It was the Club’s centenary year and William said in his speech, ‘My father, the Prince of Wales, and my brother, Harry, were as green as that grass out there when I told them I’d be here.’ Guests paid on a sliding scale depending on how close they came to the couple – $2,500 to be inside the tent, $250 to be on the other side of the pitch – and those that played polo with him were rumoured to have paid up to $60,000. He was playing rather well that afternoon and scored four goals, winning the Tiffany Cup for his team, presented to him by his wife. In five hours, in the blistering Californian sunshine, he raised $1.6 million.