Prince Harry and Prince William were last in church together for the funeral of their uncle, Robert Fellowes, and I’d bet good money that the next time they will be together will also be in a church.
It will be a happier occasion this time, the marriage of their cousin, Peter Phillips (Princess Anne’s son) to public NHS nurse Harriet Sperling, a suitable bride for the unflashiest young royal.
Peter and Harriet announced they were engaged last week. They have not yet named the date but a spring wedding is on the cards.
And both Prince Harry and Prince William will be invited, I understand, setting up one of the most emotionally charged family encounters in recent years should both decide to accept.
My regular readers will know that I don’t tend to report royal stories based on palace briefings or official sources. Many of my scoops over the years have come instead from people I know socially; school friends, friends of friends who’ve grown up with, dated, been to school with, hunted, dined partied or otherwise found themselves in the orbit of the Royal Family.
It’s not necessarily better or worse than the well-sourced work of many of my peers, it’s just a different lens. And as I settle into Substack and ask you to reach into your pocket and support my ongoing work here, forgive me if I briefly mention that my own family’s royal connections stretch back decades.
My great, great uncle Christopher ‘Sykey’ Sykes was a great, although sycophantic, friend of Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales, and there’s a longstanding rumour in my family that my grandmother, Camilla Russell, had what was often referred to as a “romantic friendship” with King George VI (Queen Elizabeth II’s father).
The king and queen would go to my grandparents house for dinner once a year and, on the king’s recommendation, my father, as a child, saw the same stammering specialist, Lionel Logue, as the king, made famous in the movie The King’s Speech (Logue was past his prime my dad came along, and his cures didn’t work).
My grandmother moved to the country when the king died in 1952, saying, hilariously, that there was no longer any point being in London.
What’s all this got to do with William and Harry? Well, just that if you really want to know what’s going on between the two, you have to listen to what their actual friends say.