Something needed to be done: acting on Gerald Grosvenor’s advice, Charles remembered a drink-and-drug rehabilitation centre in south London he had officially opened the previous year. He summoned his former equerry Mark Dyer and acquainted him with the situation. Harry should be taken there to see what terrible harm the substances could do – and left there if necessary. He couldn’t take him himself for fear of the publicity such a visit would arouse, but it was no problem for Dyer. One school of thought suggested that Dyer did it on his own initiative without consulting Charles but he would never have done that. Charles was fully informed throughout and was a party to later disclosure of the visit.
In the event it took just a one-day visit to the Featherstone Lodge rehab in Peckham, one of London’s toughest areas, to convince Harry that he had embarked on the road to hell. His escort, or ‘buddy’ for the day, was a chap of similar age to himself who was addicted to heroin. Initially embarrassed to be there at his father’s command and as a potential inmate, and after being shown a room he might one day be required to occupy for an extended period of recovery, Harry sat in on groups where inmates poured out their sorry tales. He met men of his father’s age who had lost everything – homes, wives, children and careers – as a result of drinking the way he had started to: a girl from a respectable middle-class family who had turned to prostitution after a cannabis habit had led to harder drugs, a crack addict who collapsed in a West Kensington crack den and was told: ‘Get out, we don’t call ambulances around here, we put bodies on skips.’
A counsellor had relayed to him the Japanese definition of alcoholism: ‘The man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink and the drink takes the man.’ He was told that only he could say whether he had reached the stage of alcoholism or addiction which demanded giving in to the craving every time the thought came into his head, but if he had there was no cure, only a treatment and the treatment would involve regular attendance at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and/or Narcotics Anonymous. When he asked if that would be for the rest of his life, he was given a simple answer: ‘Yes, if you like happy endings.’
There was one moment of laughter when he heard an old drunk declare: ‘Giving up drink is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times.’
Despite that moment of light relief, Harry left Featherstone Lodge pale, shaken and clutching a handful of literature about the illness he was showing early signs of suffering from. The realisation that despite his highly privileged background and lifestyle, his fate lay in no one’s hands but his own made tough hearing for a man who was used to being take care of. If he wanted recovery, he had to work for it. If he didn’t want to be sick and put to bed at anyone else’s party, he had to learn to say ‘No’. And above all he had to choose the company he mixed in: ‘stick with the winners’ was to be his new motto.
In the early days those winners were his father and brother. His weekend passes were limited and strictly monitored and that Christmas he was made to spend the entire break in the company of Charles and William. When, during one fireside chat, his father told him of his own teenage drink scandal, it sounded pathetic: Charles had gone into a pub on the Isle of Lewis with four other boys during a sailing trip to Stornoway and ordered a cherry brandy, the only drink he could think of when encouraged by his companions to ‘have something’. How Harry would have sniggered, considering the quantity of hard liquor he was putting away.
When the story broke shortly after Christmas, praise was subsequently poured on Charles for his responsible action in ordering Harry to the rehab, but all was not quite as it seemed. Charles’s media manipulators were subsequently accused of shamelessly using the story of Harry’s disgrace for his father’s benefit. Charles’s former spin doctor Mark Bolland (Harry named him Lord Blackadder) was obliged to pour cold water on reports that he had leaked the exclusive ‘Harry’s drugs shame’ story to his holidaying friend Rebekah Wade (now Brooks), then editor of Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-obsessed News of the World, in order to show Charles as a loving and caring father who would go to any lengths to do the right thing. Privately Charles admitted that his policy of giving advice instead of imposing rules had not worked, that it was far too lenient, but that did little to enhance Bolland’s denial that any such funny business had gone on. In any event, Charles got the praise, the News of the World got its scoop (and under the terms of a tight media agreement to leave both young princes alone at this delicate stage in their lives, that could not have happened without royal assent) and Bolland had good reason to resemble the proverbial cat with the cream. A remarkable development followed when the Press Complaints Commission, which had always regarded the protection of children’s privacy as a priority, backed the newspaper’s decision to publish the story. Some regarded it as no coincidence that the boss of the industry’s self-regulating body, Guy Black, was Bolland’s live-in partner and the two men had been on holiday with News of the World editor Rebekah Wade the previous summer.
Regardless of how the story had been broken, the Queen insisted on a public statement being issued. It read: ‘The Queen shares the Prince of Wales’s views on the seriousness of Prince Harry’s behaviour and supports the action taken. She hopes the matter can now be considered as closed.’ A spokesman for Charles declared, ‘This is a serious matter which was resolved within the family,’ adding somewhat optimistically, ‘It is now in the past and closed.’ Some hope! Tony Blair – whose own son Euan narrowly escaped being arrested for being drunk close to 10 Downing Street – got in on the act too: ‘[The Royal Family] have handled the situation quite properly: they have done it in a very responsible and, as you would expect, a very sensible way for their child.’
Nevertheless the episode was not forgotten at Eton where Harry’s hopes of becoming a prefect, as William had been, were dashed. One teacher says:
The prefects are the twelve elite pupils at Eton – they have to be considered popular, responsible and mature for their age. One of a prefect’s duties would be to catch pupils slipping out to drink in pubs illegally. His housemaster had put his name forward but in view of the scandal the outgoing prefects, who picked their successors, said it would be ridiculous to elect Harry Wales in view of the offences he had admitted to.
William was extremely popular and a deserving choice. Harry’s also popular. But basically he is seen to be of a different calibre, a bit of a naughty boy.
There was some saving grace – in his final year he was made house captain of games having excelled in physical sports, particularly swimming and athletics.
As for the Rattlebone Inn, it was soon under new management and a local man was successfully prosecuted after pleading guilty to supplying cannabis in the pub’s toilets, though it had taken a newspaper sting to catch him. The police said they had no intention of charging the Prince over allegations that he smoked the drug there and that, like the First Family, they considered the matter closed. As for Harry, he was removed from the pub for a second time, this time not by the management but by his father.
It was during his time at Eton that Harry’s honesty was put to another severe test. On one occasion his father’s press secretary Sandy Henney received a call from a Highgrove gardener: Charles’s beloved moorhen had been shot, would she be so kind as to pass on the bad news to His Royal Highness? Knowing how fond he was of the bird, the already-overworked Henney refused to inform the Prince herself but told the gardener to call HRH direct. Charles was mortified when he got the news and immediately demanded to know where his sons – who had been at Highgrove that weekend – were when the shooting occurred. When he was informed that they were in the vicinity of the crime scene, the pond, he said they had to be questioned by their housemaster, Andrew Gailey, who was to ensure that one of them came clean. When Dr Gailey told them their father was upset because his beloved moorhen had been shot, William said, ‘Which moorhen is that, Dr Gailey?’, at which point Harry cut in with: ‘The one you told me not to shoot.’ Harry was given twenty-four hours to phone his father and own up
, which he did, saying, ‘I’m so sorry Papa, it was me, I shouldn’t have done it.’ For Charles the confession was reminiscent of that delivered by George Washington when he owned up to his father that it was he who had chopped down a cherished cherry tree (actually, he had only mortally wounded it): ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie, it was me’ and, like Washington’s father, he was more pleased by the honest admission than distressed at the loss of his precious bird.
The year 2002 was not one Harry can look back on with much joy. Apart from his personal troubles it also ended in tragedy when his dearest friend, Henry van Straubenzee, whom Harry called Henners, was killed in a car crash just before Christmas. Like Harry, Henry longed for a career in the army and he was bound for Newcastle to read business studies under the sponsorship of the MoD, before going on to Sandhurst to begin his army training. Having gone to Harrow from Ludgrove, he had returned to teach for a term at his old prep school and had arranged a Christmas party for the boarders. When the sound system packed up some time after midnight he and a friend went out to borrow a CD player. It was a foggy night and as they travelled back up the long, narrow drive, their car crashed into a tree – the only tree on the drive. Henry died instantly and his friend, who had been at the wheel, was badly injured.
Harry was distraught when he heard the news. The two had been the closest of friends since their Ludgrove days. Grief-stricken, he hardly spoke a word to anyone before arriving with William and Tiggy days later, on 23 December, at the small parish church where the van Straubenzees had hurriedly arranged a funeral. Memories of their holidays in Cornwall, French cricket on the beach by day and barbecues at night flooded through his mind. He had lost both his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, and his great-aunt Princess Margaret that year but their time had come and their deaths were not a shock. At the age of eighteen ‘Henners’ had his whole life ahead of him and Harry had looked forward to many more happy meetings, holidays even, with the best pal he ever had. In January he attended a service of thanksgiving held for his life at Harrow School before returning to Eton, a chastened man.
It was with little emotion that on 12 June 2003 Harry bade Eton – in an arranged photo call with his long-suffering housemaster Andrew Gailey – farewell, writing in the leaving book that his next stop would be Sandhurst. He may have had no regrets about leaving the college, but Harry was sad to be parting from many of the close friends he made there and he remains in touch with a number of them, who have all done well. Not one of them has a bad word to say about the Prince, although several noted that he left Eton with none of the ambition that fired them.
Five sometimes difficult years had come to an end and he was happy to be going home to a private celebration at Highgrove during which his father gave him the welcome news that he had authorised St James’s Palace to announce that he would be the first senior royal for more than four decades to join the British Army. Harry was elated: not only was he now an Old Etonian but he was a candidate for Sandhurst, the Royal Military College. He was to achieve his childhood ambition by becoming one of ‘Granny’s soldiers’. Navy-devotee Prince Philip was not so thrilled although his own joyous experience of piloting helicopters undoubtedly had some effect on Harry.
Although his son had achieved the necessary A levels to be accepted at Sandhurst, and despite a public declaration that he was ‘very proud of Harry’, Charles was understandably disappointed when the results came through. Despite excelling in sports – particularly polo and rugby – and being made house captain of games, after five years at Eton Harry managed only a B in art and a D in geography – more than 90 per cent of Eton’s pupils achieve grades A or B. He had dropped a third subject – history of art – after he got poor results in his AS exams the year before he left (his more academically inclined brother had achieved an A grade in geography, a B in history of art and a C in biology). And this was despite the efforts of an admiring teacher who subsequently claimed that she had helped Harry cheat to get the results he did manage to muster. Sarah Forsyth said that Eton’s head of art, Ian Burke, had asked her to prepare text to go with some of Harry’s work for an expressive project in which pupils are required to explain some of their work and relate it to that of great artists. She shocked everyone associated with lauding the Prince by saying that she assumed she had been asked to do it because Harry was in fact a weak student and that his academic failings were well known at Eton. Adding insult to injury she claimed that a teacher who marked his entrance exams had been desperate to find points for which he could award marks. She went on to suggest that Harry’s work, which had featured in newspapers and included two screen prints inspired by Aboriginal designs, had actually been finished off by Burke.
Ms Forsyth claimed that, unbeknown to Harry, who trusted her, she had on 16 May 2003 secretly recorded him admitting that he had written ‘about a sentence’ of the disputed text. She was sacked for going public with the information but later won a claim for unfair dismissal although the tribunal hearing her case decided to reject her claim that she had done some of his written work for him, allowing a Clarence House spokesman to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by announcing: ‘We are delighted that Harry has been totally cleared of cheating.’
There had been one bright spot on the horizon as Harry cleared out his study at Eton: he had excelled in the school’s Combined Cadet Force and been promoted to the highest rank of cadet officer. Although, unlike his brother, he failed to win the Sword of Honour awarded to the school’s leading cadet, he led a detachment of forty-eight cadets as parade commander in the Eton Tattoo in front of a crowd of hundreds which included his clearly proud father and an assortment of the army’s top brass. If he had entertained doubts before about his ambitions to join the army – and for a while he thought about joining his friend Guy Pelly at the Cirencester Agricultural College – then that experience set his life-long dream in concrete: he was going to be a soldier.
His army life would have to be put on hold, however, and not just for the traditional gap year. Despite having passed with flying colours the army’s pre-Regular Commissions Board assessment to test his aptitude for a military career, his father had decided that after the shocking surprises and disappointments of his Eton years, Harry must go away for two years – far away, to work hard ‘in his own best interests’.
Just as all this was happening, James Hewitt – who had encouraged if not inspired Harry’s military ambitions – released a statement that really set tongues wagging. The former cavalry officer emphatically announced that he was not Harry’s father:
I can absolutely assure you that I am not. Admittedly the colour of his hair is similar to mine and people say we look alike. I have never encouraged these comparisons and although I was with Diana for a long time I must state once and for all that I’m not Harry’s father. When I met Diana he was already a toddler… I have to say he’s a much more handsome chap than I ever was.
There were some who failed to accept Hewitt’s declaration. One intellectual, who sees Charles regularly, says:
I know what the official line is but I still find the resemblance extraordinary. Quite recently I was sat at a table with James Hewitt and, never mind his hair, when you look into his eyes it’s like you are looking into Harry’s; there is not a scintilla of difference.
Hewitt’s declaration certainly disappointed those who had sought to profit by proving the contrary was true. One European tabloid newspaper had engaged an attractive blonde – Harry’s type! – to ensnare him in a honey trap, probably in Spain where his reputation as a lover of the night life was growing. Her job was to get close enough to him to run her fingers through his hair and snatch a strand or two. The ‘evidence’ would be examined for its DNA which would then be compared to Hewitt’s. Scotland Yard’s Specialist Operations department was alerted and the plot was thwarted, although not before Britain’s most senior police officers had been briefed and a worried Charles had consulted his lawyer, Fiona Shackleton.
And as for Hewi
tt’s announcement, as far as Harry was concerned it meant nothing. Prince Charles, his real father, had beaten Hewitt to the punch. Aware of how cruel gossip can be at such an upmarket establishment as Eton – where parents all claim to be privy to what goes on in the very top circles – Charles had summoned his younger son for a heart-to-heart meeting prior to his start at the college and warned him that he would hear such rumours and to assure him they were not true.
Harry listened to his father’s difficult speech without interrupting. He had always looked up to Hewitt, a war hero, a real-life tank commander in the First Gulf War and a likeable man. At one stage in his life he had been something of a mentor to the boy, who longed to follow in his soldiering footsteps – and Charles knew it. It was, by the account relayed to me, one of the hardest moments in the heir’s life, for in his candid explanation it was impossible to conceal that Diana really had been in love with the dashing Household Cavalry officer. Despite the pain it caused the Prince to deliver the message, he handled it with great courage.
Harry thanked him for that but he hung on to his admiration for his mother’s soldier lover until Hewitt subsequently sold his story of the affair, an error of judgement that allowed a slavering tabloid-reading public to lap up the sordid details.
8
COMING OF AGE
Harry had hoped that after five arduous years at Eton, interspersed with his wild breaks at Highgrove, he would spend much of his gap year playing polo in Australia – he was already a member of the Beaufort and Cirencester clubs and given a season or two’s further experience was expected to join Britain’s elite group of 100 professional players. His father, however, had other ideas. Certainly he would be going to Australia but as a £100-a-week jackaroo (and his father would allow him not a penny more), a farm labourer, not as a fledgling polo star. Disappointed by the poor academic grades Harry had attained and concerned that he was still not over his wild days, Charles (who regarded himself as an academic despite having achieved no better than average results as an undergraduate) told him he was sending him off to far-flung corners of the world for not one gap year but two. In year one he would be rounding up cattle, shearing sheep and fixing broken fences on a farm Down Under, and in year two he would be doing even harder manual work ‘somewhere in Africa’, putting off his much anticipated entry into the army until 2005, even though he had already passed the pre-Regular Commissions Board assessment with flying colours, virtually assuring him of a place at Sandhurst Military Academy.
Harry Page 12
