by Penny Junor
“Your Majesty… Mummy,” began Prince Charles again, to roars of approval from the crowd. “I was three when my grandfather George VI died and suddenly, unexpectedly, your and my father’s lives were irrevocably changed when you were only twenty-six. So as a nation this is our opportunity to thank you and my father for always being there for us. For inspiring us with your selfless duty and service and for making us proud to be British.” There were once again deafening cheers from the crowd and from members of the Royal Family.
“The only sad thing about this evening is that my father cannot be here with us because unfortunately he’s been taken unwell. Ladies and gentlemen, if we shout loud enough, he might just hear us in hospital.” At this more than a million people roared their approval, stamped their feet and chanted, “Philip, Philip.”
The Duke’s absence was felt all the more keenly on the final day of the celebrations, when the Queen and other members of the family attended a national service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral, lunch at Westminster Hall and an open-carriage procession back to Buckingham Palace. She struck a very lonely figure as she walked up the aisle of the cathedral on her own, followed by Charles and Camilla, then William and Kate, then Harry. It was a stark reminder that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will not be here forever; but also that there are others who will, in the fullness of time, follow in their footsteps.
That message was strongly reinforced by the traditional appearance on the balcony. As an RAF fly-past and a gun salute from the Queen’s Guard brought four days of festivities to a thrilling climax, there were just six people on the balcony. For the first time it was not the familiar picture of the Queen along with generations of her extended family. The Queen was flanked by her son and grandsons, Camilla and Kate. No explanation was offered by Buckingham Palace for this departure from the normal line-up, but the directive had come from the Queen herself, and no one was in any doubt that we were looking at the future: a scaled-down monarchy with a clear and secure line of succession.
“Those of us who have been privileged to work with William and Harry closely for a long time see it as absolutely fundamental to the future of the Royal Family that they remain a working pair,” says one of the Household. “Inevitably, as the Royal Family shrinks over time, the focus will shift more and more on to them and their growing families. That was recognized, of course, on the balcony, when it was three generations plus Prince Harry. Goodness knows what the thinking behind that was from the Royal Family’s view, but for us looking on that was a very heart-warming moment, with Prince Harry being recognized for the central role he will continue to play in the Royal Family.”
LONDON 2012
After eight years of planning (satirized by the BBC television series Twenty Twelve), the London 2012 Olympic Games opened on 27 July with one of the most unimaginable stunts. The eyes of the world were on the spectacular, dizzying opening ceremony, three hours of glorious theater and music, devised by the film director Danny Boyle, in the newly built Olympic Stadium at Stratford in east London. In the midst of the show, called Isles of Wonder, which followed the progress of the British Isles from the early nineteenth century through the Industrial Revolution to the present day, the giant screens throughout the stadium suddenly cut to the actor Daniel Craig, as Secret Service agent James Bond, arriving at Buckingham Palace and making his way along the red-carpeted corridors to the Queen’s study. Looking up from her desk, she turns to him and says coolly, “Good evening, Mr. Bond,” before getting up and leaving the Palace with him, corgis at her heels, and heading towards a waiting helicopter.
Moments later, spectators at the Olympic Stadium heard the roar of a Westland hovering overhead, and a figure, dressed identically to the Queen, jumped out and parachuted into the arena (closely followed by Mr. Bond) to rapturous and incredulous gasps—not least from members of her own family. The thousands of people in the stadium with them, and the billion more estimated to have been watching the event on television around the world, were astonished and delighted. No one knew about it, save the Queen’s closest aides; not even the International Olympic Committee.
Doom-mongers had forecast an organizational disaster, but the sceptics were proved wrong. The Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games that followed were a resounding success and generated extraordinary goodwill—much of it, unexpectedly, towards the Royal Family. The Queen’s willingness to be part of such an elaborate stunt at the age of eighty-five won her nothing but respect and admiration, not least from her grandchildren. Speaking to the BBC’s sports commentator Sue Barker, Harry said that both he and his brother had been slightly surprised by their grandmother’s “secret hobby of parachuting.” William said, “We were kept completely in the dark, that’s how big the secret was. Harry got a sniff of it on the night and the rumor mill was going into overdrive, but in fact she did such a good performance that she’s been asked to star in the next Bond film. I’m thrilled for her.” Harry called her “an unbelievably good sport” and said, “I can’t quite believe it when I see those pictures back.”
But the Queen wasn’t the only member of the family to win respect. The Princess Royal, President of the British Olympic Association, was hailed by sports minister Hugh Robertson as “one of the great unsung heroes of this whole process”; and Zara Phillips, her daughter, one-time Sports Personality of the Year, winning silver as part of the British equestrian team, became the first member of the Royal Family to win an Olympic medal. But William, Kate and Harry, as ambassadors for Team GB, had a significant part to play, too. They were at the events day after day supporting the athletes, most of the time dressed in the Team GB kit. They encouraged the army of volunteers and the genuine military who were all key to the smooth running of the games. They went up to the lounge where the athletes relaxed either to give them a pat on the back or commiserate with them. They really threw themselves into it, admitting that Zara’s event was emotionally the most thrilling for them because of the personal connection. “We as cousins are very, very proud,” said Harry. “It now explains why we never get to see her because she is always riding.
“The support from the British public is something else,” he said. “We’ve had the chance to be at quite a few of the events, and just to feel the buzz of the British public getting behind the teams is astonishing.” Like William, he had been afraid that they might be seen as freeloaders, taking seats when so many people in the country struggled to get tickets, but the public made it very clear that they were pleased to see all three of them—and they ended up seeing many more events than they anticipated and watched more on television. They didn’t look like royals, and that no doubt was part of it; all three looked like genuine sports lovers caught up in the excitement of watching people performing at the peak of their game. But, as always, there was a wider agenda. Harry joked about his money being on Usain Bolt for gold “because obviously I’m not allowed to compete,” but then talked about the positive effect the sprinter had had on young people. “There’s kids back in Jamaica now who started running or doing track events simply because they look up to him… he’s a wonderful example for his country, for the nation, for the world.” And they both hoped these Olympics—and their own efforts—would encourage and inspire future generations to get involved in sport, “rather than sitting in front of the TV and playing computer games.”
Surprisingly, it fell to Harry, as the most senior member of the Royal Family, to preside over the closing ceremony. William had to return to work at RAF Valley and so Harry and Kate took center stage. It was by far the most high-profile engagement of his twenty-seven years, and he carried it off with extraordinary confidence and self-possession. In a stirring written message, he said, the Games would “stay in the hearts and minds of people all over the world for a very long time to come. I congratulate all the athletes who have competed. They have shown us that there are few boundaries to human endeavor.” The spirit of the Olympics represented “a magnificent force for positive change.” The a
thletes, he said, had “captured the imagination of the world.”
CONDUCT UNBECOMING
Harry was riding the crest of a wave. It hadn’t been many years since people at Buckingham Palace had been sidling up to Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton and expressing concern about Harry’s wild behavior. “You’ve really got to find something to keep Harry busy,” they were saying; “you’ve got to find a way of dealing with Harry.” Now the more enlightened ones were saying, “How the hell are we going to use Harry? How are we going to capitalize on this guy and all that he’s got?”
But hardly had the plaudits been expressed before Harry was making headlines again, with a spectacular fall from grace. A drunken game of strip billiards with a bunch of girls in an expensive Las Vegas hotel room had been captured on one of the girl’s mobile phones and sold for a song. Images of the third in line to the throne wearing nothing but an African necklace and bracelets appeared online on a gossipy American website, TMZ. Initially, the British press, post-Leveson, merely reported the story, accompanied by other photos of Harry during his stay in Vegas. “Harry Grabs the Crown Jewels,” “Palace Fury at Harry Naked Photos,” “Harry Naked Romp.” But the Sun finally broke rank and put one of the images on the front page alongside the headline “Heir It Is! Pic of naked Harry you’ve already seen on the Internet.”
Harry, it seemed, was back to square one, the loose cannon back to his old antics: no self-control, no judgment, too much money. However, Harry was on the verge of deploying to Afghanistan again. It was the last time he would be able to let his hair down with his friends for the next four months; and if things were to go catastrophically pear-shaped, perhaps for ever. He had completed years of disciplined training and was about to put his life on the line—along with hundreds of other servicemen and -women—and to see and do the things that most of those judging him couldn’t begin to do or stomach.
Paddy Harverson feels he was badly wronged. “It was a nasty betrayal by a girl who pretended she was on her phone, took a picture, sent it to her boyfriend and it was in the newspapers. It was nasty, the press were really nasty and the Sun was disgraceful. They waited twenty-four hours before taking the brave decision and dressed it up as ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘right to know’ but then put a banner across the top, ‘Souvenir Edition.’ It was rank hypocrisy; a cheap shot. You can make an argument about judgment but he didn’t break any laws, he was on holiday. And we knew and the press knew—but of course no one else knew—that he was on his way to Afghanistan, which put it in a different light. He was particularly upset about someone at a party making money out of him. Every time it’s private, there’s money in it. I hope these individuals sleep at night. These are their lives, it’s not some career, they have to live their whole life with this nonsense.”
“Perhaps because the conflict’s been going on for so long now,” says another member of his team, “we’ve become inured to just how bloody dangerous going to Afghanistan is. Had he been shot down and captured, it would have been unimaginably horrible—I mean unimaginably horrible. As a soldier you don’t dwell on these things but it’s there and you know it’s there, and like every soldier going out to conflict, beforehand it’s incredibly important that you have a chance to let off steam. It’s not just a by-product of what they do, it’s not a tradition that’s grown up; it’s releasing a part of themselves in order to give themselves over to something which might end their life and may prove utterly catastrophic for them. You can’t take that away from any soldier, whether you’re Prince Harry or Sergeant Bob Woods.”
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton believes it was not all bad. “If you’re trying to hook in to the fifteen-to thirty-five-year-olds—what the media call the lost generation, who these guys down at Westminster simply can’t reach—the generation that tweet their feelings and don’t vote, you’ve got to be of the age and you’ve got to be credible.
“There was a scheme we went to in Manchester Moss Side three or four years ago and I had an opportunity to talk to some of the guys who worked with the young gangs. They were really interested in Harry. They said he’s a good guy. I said ‘Why do you think that?’ and they said, ‘Well, he comes from a broken family, like us, he gets himself into all sorts of shit and gets all sort of shit poured over him because he’s like he is, like us, and he’s just come back from Afghanistan so, like us, he understands violence.’
“So looking at Las Vegas with the benefit of twenty/twenty hindsight: how has it affected his image with that fifteen-to thirty-five-year-old bracket? Not at all negatively. How has it affected his image with my mother sitting reading her Telegraph in Suffolk? Actually, my mother and others like her probably think he’s rather a saucy boy so not that badly. But there is an element, a constituency out there that will have been quite offended by it.”
What everyone agrees is that he could get away with this sort of behavior as a single twenty-seven-year-old—particularly given the extenuating circumstances—but that it can’t go on for much longer. “Then the lovable-rogue bit turns to the slightly seedier royal and you’ve got a problem.”
“We’ve all misbehaved in our teens and twenties,” says one of the team, “and people will expect that. But I don’t think people expect you to be a playboy in your thirties, forties and fifties. I suspect that happens because you don’t have a hard center to your life. If you’re really committed through your profession, through your flying, your Foundation, to things you really care about, I suspect you’re much less likely to fall into this trap. It’s not foolproof at all but there’s nothing like a vacuum for inviting disaster and I don’t think either of the Princes is interested in living in a vacuum.”
“Las Vegas was an aberration,” says Lord Dannatt. “I think he regrets that and I think Jamie and the others regret allowing him to be put in that position or him getting himself into that position. It was a bit of a failure all round, really. At the time I thought, oh my goodness, this is quite unnecessary and, given recent behavior, rather out of character. Disappointing. All of that was in the past but then he went back to square one. Snakes and ladders: he got to ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and hit that long snake that comes down to about three. But I think the public who love him anyway, forgave him, and then he was in Afghanistan and he was flying his helicopters and I think they discounted the behavior.”
The Army would have been a little less forgiving. “He would have tapped the boards in front of his commanding officer, I am quite certain. An Army officer, forget Prince or not a Prince, does not appear in public with no clothes on—section 64, conduct unbecoming. Royal Marines can, it’s a different issue, but that’s by the bye. Royal Marines love taking their clothes off, but soldiers don’t and Army officers definitely don’t. I am absolutely certain they dealt with it informally; the commanding officer will have given him a good old-fashioned bollocking. Quite right too.”
His commanding officer was Tom de la Rue. “Las Vegas was interesting because it came in his final pre-deployment leave period, and all I’ll say is that because it was literally two weeks before he deployed, my focus, the focus of his squadron, and of anyone else for that matter, was purely and simply on getting him deployed on the 6th or 7th of September in good order. Las Vegas was not something that I dwelt on. There were all sorts of stories in the press—from left of arc to right of arc—and I do remember that some of them were rather extraordinary. Nevertheless, they were all founded on pure speculation.”
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
“Harry has got the ability to make this thing last a thousand years or bring it crashing down; he really has,” says someone who knows him well. “He’s the umbilical, the credibility, the connect; and where he has got to be—where he is in kit form at the moment—is globally recognized. What he’s got to transform himself into is, not just the most popular man on the planet under thirty, but in his own way a statesman and an ambassador with a capital A for the whole country and the realms. It’s the Beckham effect. When Beckham went to China, he opene
d doors for the British Ambassador that had been closed for two years. The Governor of the province, whom the Ambassador had been trying to get hold of for his whole tour, turned up at the airport to meet them both. Beckham was there on a footballing thing. You could overlay Harry on that. He’ll have his wild moments, and his Las Vegas moments, but he ain’t going to have them when he’s in work mode. He’s not going to do it; he’s too clever. He’s brilliant.
“And I don’t think he’d stand a chance of brilliant if he wasn’t quite dangerous with it. As long as it’s two steps forward and one step back. Las Vegas was a real shock to him—so I think we’re moving in the right direction.”
Speaking of the Vegas incident, Harry said, “I probably let myself down, I let my family down, I let other people down. But at the end of the day I was in a private area and there should have been a certain amount of privacy that one should expect. It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much Army and not enough Prince. It’s a simple case of that.”
He was angry about the invasion of privacy and angry with the press, but he felt mortified that after all he had achieved that year this should have happened. “He’s got a pretty thick hide, so he’s used to the way he is, and bumps along with that. Quite right too. He’s not going to beat himself up.” He also had Afghanistan to focus on. And as one of his aides said to him, “It’s not what I wanted to see but don’t get hung up about it because nobody died and it would be far worse if you fell short of expectations in your Apache. Let’s keep it in perspective. It’s the sort of thing we all did but, fortunately, we don’t all have the glare of the world’s media on us.”
