Three weeks after the concert, her status was assured when she received a sought-after gilt-embossed invitation to one of the parties of the season, the Duchess of Cornwall’s 60th birthday banquet. Her attendance at the formal black-tie ball, organised by Prince Charles’s aide Michael Fawcett and Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot, an interior designer, showed that her newly rekindled relationship with Prince William was as strong as ever. Although she had not initially been invited to the party, she was put on the guest list the moment that she and William got back together.
Wearing a long white gown, Kate looked totally relaxed and happy as she sipped champagne and cocktails in the gardens of Highgrove with Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall. Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy were unable to make the party as they were on holiday, but there were plenty of celebrity guests, including the comedians Joan Rivers and Stephen Fry, TV presenter Jools Holland, actors Dame Judi Dench and Edward Fox, actress Joanna Lumley and her conductor husband Stephen Barlow and actor Timothy West, with his wife Prunella Scales. After dinner – a three-course organic meal – Kate and William made their way onto the dance floor, where the prince mouthed the lyrics of the Frank Sinatra song ‘It Had to Be you’ to his girlfriend.
Having returned to the royal fold, it was only a matter of time before Kate would pull out of The Sisterhood’s dragon-boat team, which had attracted so much publicity when she was single. Unfortunately, she dropped out of the race, which took place on 24 August, at the last minute, meaning that the girls could not find a replacement, although that did not stop them crossing in record time and raising £100,000 for charity.
Apparently totally enamoured with his girlfriend, William whisked Kate away on 16 August for a romantic holiday on the paradise island of Desroches in the Indian ocean. It was the first time that the couple had been away together since their skiing trip to Zermatt in January 2006, before William started at Sandhurst, and only the second time they had ever been on holiday à deux. Desroches was the perfect venue for a couple seeking privacy. With a tiny population of only 50 people, the island, which is 144 miles south-west of Mahe, the main island in the Seychelles, is ideal for divers and holidaymakers looking for sandy beaches, coconut plantations, endless coral and luscious vegetation, and it caters for only a handful of tourists. William and Kate stayed in a £500-a-night suite in one of ten double chalets in the Desroches Island Resort, overlooking a lagoon, where they spent their days scuba diving, snorkelling and sunbathing. At night, they dined in the resort’s restaurant, with a view of the ocean, or ate under the stars. After having dinner with members of staff on the last night of the holiday, William told them, ‘We will definitely return. We have had the most fantastic break.’
After they returned from their holiday – a week before the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana’s death – the couple went to great lengths to avoid being seen together. Kate did not attend the thanksgiving service for the late princess and they gave their usual haunts a wide berth. However, on 5 October they finally let their guard down during a night out at Boujis and were photographed together for the first time since they had broken up six months earlier. In a change from their usual paparazzi-avoidance tactics, they came out of the club together and drove off in William’s Range Rover.
On 11 october, the couple were spotted together again when they flew up to the Birkhall estate for a long weekend to spend the last few days of the deerstalking season with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Dressed in camouflage gear, Kate was seen two days later lying in the heather and being coached by ghillies on how to use a hunting rifle. Her presence on the stag hunt that day may have endeared her to Prince William, but it outraged animal-rights protestors. She looked well on the way to becoming a fully fledged member of the royal family.
As the girlfriend of Prince William, Kate had grown accustomed to coming second to royal duties, but now it was brought home to her that she would have to come second to the military as well, as William missed her birthday, on 9 January, for the second year in a row. As the future commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces, the prince had little choice in the matter; the previous year, he had been on duty with the Household Cavalry and this year he had just signed up to the RAF.
Kate celebrated her 26th with her parents, Michael and Carole, and sister Pippa at Tom Aikens restaurant in Elystan Street, Chelsea. Afterwards, she and Pippa dropped in at Kitts, a swanky new nightclub in Sloane Square, the heart of Sloane Ranger territory. For the next few months, she would see little of her man. He was based 126 miles from London at RAF Cranwell.
Built on land requisitioned by the Admiralty from the Earl of Bristol, RAF Cranwell was commissioned on 1 April 1916 as a training college for the Royal Naval Air Service, which merged with the Army’s Royal Flying Corps to form the RAF two years later. The Royal Air Force College opened in 1920 under the command of Air Commodore C.A.H. Longcroft. Fourteen years later, the future Edward VIII opened its current brick and Portland stone building, with its central portico of six Corinthian columns.
In a message to the first entry of cadets, the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard, said: ‘We have to learn by experience how to organise and administer a great service, both in peace and war, and you, who are present at the college in its first year, will, in future, be at the helm. Therefore, you will have to work your hardest, both as cadets at the college and subsequently as officers, in order to be capable of guiding this great service through its early days and maintaining its traditions and efficiency in the years to come.’
Eighty-eight years later, on 7 January 2008, William arrived at the base on a four-month attachment to its Central Flying School, fulfilling a desire to follow in the footsteps of his forefathers. Men of four successive generations of his family have become RAF pilots: his great-grandfather Prince Albert, later King George VI, was the first member of the royal family to serve in the RAF, immediately after its formation. Both Prince Philip and Prince Charles graduated as flight lieutenants, in 1953 and 1971 respectively, and, like William, Prince Charles received his wings from his father. He has since been promoted and now holds the rank of air chief marshal. Kate’s family also have links to the RAF. Her grandfather Peter Middleton joined the service during the Second World War and also got his wings at RAF Cranwell.
Central Flying School Commandant Nick Seward commented on William’s arrival: ‘During his time with us, Flying officer Wales will be realising a personal ambition to learn how to fly and this will be the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the Royal Air Force. Throughout his attachment, whilst also training alongside fellow officers, we are very keen to make sure that Flying officer Wales will have the opportunity to meet airmen of all ranks to enable him to have as broad as possible an idea of the RAF and how it differs from what he has seen in the army. Following his training, Flying officer Wales will be attached to several front-line units, including support helicopter, search and rescue, air transport and fighter aircraft, which the Royal Air Force operates.’
For the three-month course, tailored specifically to his needs and intended to make him a competent rather than an operational flyer, William donned the RAF’s instantly recognisable olive-green flying jumpsuit, with zips and name tag, to learn to fly solo and perform basic aerobatics. He was one of the first in his class at 1 Squadron of 1 Elementary Flying Training School to make a solo flight, eight days after his arrival, in a propeller-driven Grob G 115E light aircraft.
After a month in Lincolnshire, William was transferred to RAF Linton-on-ouse in North yorkshire, where he trained on the faster propeller-driven aircraft the Tucano T1, which can travel at speeds of up to 345 mph. Although he was now even further from London, he did manage to drive the 225-mile trip on the odd weekend, when he and Kate would enjoy a leisurely Sunday lunch at the Builders Arms, a gastropub on the Kings Road.
On 14 March, Kate made her third trip in as many years to watch the Cheltenham Gold Cup, turning up with Thomas van Straubenzee as an escort. They ch
eered home Denman as he beat his stablemate and reigning champion Kauto Star in the prestigious race. It was a year since Kate had last been seen at Cheltenham, shortly before her split with Prince William, and the contrast could not have been more different. This year, she had ditched the tweeds for a thigh-skimming navy-blue raincoat and trilby.
Two days later, William and Kate were on their fourth skiing trip to the Alpine village of Klosters. In a break with royal tradition – Prince Charles usually stays in the royal suite at the five-star Hotel Walserhof – the party of friends rented an apartment high in the mountains. Prince Charles joined them later on in the week. Wearing a chic white skiing jacket and confidently tackling the offpiste runs, Kate looked relaxed as she was photographed poking William with a ski pole. Her appearance with one of William’s bodyguards invoked memories of Princess Diana, who was often seen skiing with a Metropolitan police guard while on holiday with Charles. The sight caused a group of photographers to gather on a ridge overlooking the terminus of the Gotschna cable car waiting to catch a picture of her arrival, enabling the press to compare the images of Princess William’s mother with those of his girlfriend.
After their holiday, William was stationed at RAF Shawbury, near Shrewsbury, Shropshire – and 170 miles from London – where he flew a helicopter for the first time. He then undertook his final test to gain his wings. ‘William was very good,’ said instructor Wing Commander Andy Lovell. ‘I was very impressed by his flying skills. He had a natural handling ability and was very quick to learn. He responded well to instructions and demonstrated plenty of spare capacity.’ Flight Lieutenant Simon Berry, 26, who was on the same course, added: ‘William was socialising with everyone. He was just a normal bloke, a normal guy and very sociable. He was working really hard, flying in the morning, coming down and doing two hours of flight school, and then working all hours in the evenings like everyone else.’
However, it later emerged that William, codenamed ‘Golden Kestrel’, was not quite as ‘normal’ as the other RAF officers. Stationed at RAF odiham, west of Basingstoke in Hampshire, he spent his final week training with 7 Squadron, learning how to fly a £10-million twin-rotor Chinook helicopter. It was during his time there that the 25-year-old officer let his youth and enthusiasm get the better of him, taking five ‘joyrides’ at a cost of £86,434 to the taxpayer. Although he was accompanied at all times by a senior instructor and experienced crew, and three of the flights could have been a legitimate part of his training – using family residences as navigational marker points to plot his course – two others involved using the helicopter as transport to social events, causing a public-relations nightmare that threatened to overshadow his graduation ceremony.
Having drawn up the flight plans himself, William decided that his first training exercise, on Wednesday, 2 April, should be a trip to his family home, Highgrove, where he could ‘buzz’ his father (it is not known whether Prince Charles was at home at the time). Under tuition, he flew the 106-mile round trip to Gloucestershire. The MoD later claimed that the trip, which cost £11,985 in fuel, maintenance and man hours, was part of a ‘general handling exercise’.
The following day, perhaps in a bid to show off to Kate, William suggested practising his take-off and landing skills at her home in Berkshire, as the MoD routinely uses other locations when their two permanent fields in the area surrounding RAF odiham are busy. After getting permission from the police and the Middleton family, he flew the 12 miles from his base and circled over the house at 300 ft, before landing in a paddock in their grounds. He did not get out of the helicopter but took off 20 seconds later. The trip cost £8,716, but was defended on the grounds that ‘battlefield helicopter crews routinely practise landing in fields and confined spaces away from their airfields as a vital part of their training for operations’.
However, on Friday, 4 April, William bent the rules even further, travelling 260 miles to Hexham, Northumberland. While another pilot flew back to base, he travelled on to the Scottish border town of Kelso, to join Kate at the wedding of their close friend Lady Iona Douglas-Home (granddaughter of Sir Alec Douglas-Home and daughter of the chairman of Coutts, she had met the couple at St Andrews) and banker Thomas Hewitt. The most expensive of William’s jaunts, at £18,522, the ‘general training’ flight took 4 hours and 15 minutes but was defended by the MoD as ‘a legitimate training sortie’.
After returning to base from the wedding, William had to conduct low-level flying training. Having buzzed his father and girlfriend, the obvious choice was his grandmother. He made the 256-mile round trip to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on Wednesday, 9 April, at a cost of £4,358, although the Queen was not there at the time.
Luckily, news of these trips had not yet emerged when he attended a gala dinner the night before his graduation ceremony to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the RAF. Wearing his No. 5 mess dress for the first time, he joined Charles and Camilla in the officers’ mess at Cranwell, after they’d watched a sunset flypast of Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Twenty-four hours later, William used another Chinook training exercise as an excuse to ferry him and Harry to the Isle of Wight. Avoiding the Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic, he picked up Prince Harry at Woolwich Barracks before flying on to RAF Bembridge, on the island, for a drunken weekend. The official reason given for the £8,716, 190-mile trip was ‘open-water training’, but unofficially the princes were attending the stag party of their cousin Peter Phillips, who was to get married the following month to Autumn Kelly. The 24-man party, which included Zara Phillips’ boyfriend Mike Tindall, was staying in the sailing resort of Cowes, where they spent two days touring the restaurants and bars, starting in a restrained fashion in the Anchor Inn, an eighteenth-century pub, and getting wilder as the weekend went on.
The MoD said that the flight was intended to train William in low-level flying, negotiating busy air traffic over London, crossing water, flying in low cloud and landing at an enclosed helipad, but by the time he took the flight William had already been given his wings, and documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act showed that he had kept his superiors in the dark over the reason for his trip.
One of the main gripes was that the MoD had allowed William to use one of its 48-strong fleet of Chinooks as his own personal taxi service when the RAF was overstretched in Afghanistan. But once the floodgates opened, the complaints snowballed. Some complained the money the MoD had spent on William’s training had been wasted, as he was never likely to fly on the front line, others that he had been fast-tracked through the course in double time.
RAF-trained pilot Jon Lake, an aviation analyst, said at the time: ‘This is an absolute waste of training hours on the Chinook helicopter that the military are hard-pressed to afford. No other pilot at Prince William’s stage of training would be allowed anywhere near the left-hand seat of a Chinook. It’s like a learner driver being given the keys to a Formula one car just because his father owns the racing team.’
Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, head of the RAF, was reported to have been furious about the situation and the ‘sheer stupidity’ of allowing William to make the Isle of Wight flight, asking for a detailed explanation of how it had come about. Even so, the MoD decided that although ‘a degree of naivety’ had been involved, there should be no punishments as no rules had been broken. While William was enjoying his boys’ weekend in Cowes, Kate spent some quality time with her family. It was her brother James’s 21st birthday on 15 April, and the entire Middleton clan went out to celebrate. They started their evening at Cocoon, a futuristic Pan-Asian restaurant in a former odeon cinema at the bottom of Regent Street owned by the same team as Boujis, on whose dance floor they ended the night.
By then, Pippa had found a job working for the upmarket event organisers Table Talk, who plan exclusive parties for blue-chip companies such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, jewellers Asprey and auction house Christie’s. Founded in 1992, the company, which had catered one of Elton John’s exclusi
ve White Tie and Tiara balls, jumped at the chance to employ Kate Middleton’s sister. With her society contacts and love of the high life, she was to be a natural at the job.
James too had left university – he had dropped out of Edinburgh, where he had been studying environmental geoscience, the previous summer, after his first year – and had set up his own offshoot of the family firm, the Cake Kit Company, which provided the ingredients and accessories for making novelty cakes. While he got on his feet, he was working out of his parents’ offices and staying in the family home. ‘I knew that that mouthful of academic prescription was not going to do it for me,’ he told Tatler. ‘I wanted to join the workforce. So I quit early and started my own baking business. My parents had planted a gene in me with their business, and for me it was going to be all about baking. I even had a grandfather on my mother’s side, Ronald Goldsmith, who had been a baker during the war, so there was a family link too.’
Two weeks after James’s birthday, during William’s final week in the RAF, he made his first trip to the front line in Afghanistan, from where he was to repatriate the body of the 94th serviceman to be killed in the country since hostilities began in 2001. The prince joined a group of RAF officers flying into Kandahar airport to bring home the body of Trooper Robert Pearson, 22, a Queen’s Royal Lancer, who had been killed when his Viking armoured vehicle hit a landmine in Helmand Province. William took his turn at the controls of the C-17 Globemaster military transporter and spent three hours on the ground meeting servicemen. Back in the UK, he met the family of Trooper Pearson.
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