Since leaving the royal fold for America five years ago, the Duke of Sussex has had his rare visits to the UK dominated by the angst of battles with his family, the media and the government.
This week, Prince Harry is determined to press the reset button to try to change that negative narrative during a four-day visit, his longest trip back to his homeland since Queen Elizabeth’s death three years ago.
He will again travel solo, without his young family. After losing his battle with the Home Office over his level of security, he reiterated that he does not believe it is safe for the Duchess of Sussex and their children, Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four, to visit.
“I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point. And the things they’re going to miss, well, everything … I miss the UK,” he told the BBC in May.
Meghan has not visited the UK since September 2022 and Archie and Lili have not been here since June that year, when the Sussexes visited for the late Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations.
But those close to Harry say he will not give up hope on bringing them here. There is now an acknowledgment by the prince and his camp that pressing the nuclear button of a public battle with His Majesty’s government and courts was not the wisest idea, a case which is reported to have cost Harry more than £1 million. He will now pursue a quieter, under-the-radar approach — those close to the prince say the government should expect private “lobbying” from the prince on the matter to continue.
A friend says: “He’s not given up hope on bringing his family back to the UK. He wants to be able to show his children where he grew up. He wants them to know their family here. He really would like to come back to the UK much more.”
The couple in Cartagena, Colombia, in August
ERIC CHARBONNEAU/ARCHEWELL FOUNDATION/GETTY IMAGES
The prince’s friends say he is “going to have some fun” this week. Harry’s previous default setting of glowering in courtrooms will switch to what he does best: supporting and championing children, young people, the military and rolling his sleeves up with his charities and patronages.
Tomorrow, the third anniversary of his grandmother’s death, he will be in London for the WellChild Awards hosted by the charity supporting seriously ill children, of which he is patron. On Tuesday, he will head out of town for an engagement focused on helping young people affected by violence. On Wednesday and Thursday, he will attend private receptions and meetings with most of his other charities and patronages, including the Invictus Foundation, the Diana Award and Scotty’s Little Soldiers, the charity for bereaved military children.
Harry’s itinerary, which will be covered by select media considered friendly towards the prince, is said to be “jam-packed with hardly any downtime”, which raises the still unanswered question hanging over the visit. Will Harry and the King meet?
The King with Harry and Archie at the little prince’s christening in 2019
CHRIS ALLERTON/INSTAGRAM SUSSEXROYAL/AP
Charles, 76, and Harry, 40, have not seen each other since February last year, when the prince flew to London for a 30-minute meeting with his father after he announced his cancer diagnosis. The King, who is at Balmoral and still receiving regular treatment, is known to miss his son. But a newspaper headline last week declaring “Harry to meet Charles” was wishful thinking. In fact, as of last weekend, no meeting between father and son was scheduled. That may or may not change in the coming days, but if a meeting happens, there is unlikely to be any public post-match analysis from either camp.
Harry made his feelings clear in the BBC interview after losing his long-running battle with the Home Office over his level of security in the UK: “I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff … Of course, some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book. Of course, they will never forgive lots of things. But I would love a reconciliation with my family.”
• ‘It’s not that the King won’t speak to Harry — he can’t’
Friends of Harry’s say the ball is firmly in the royal family’s court. “He’s made it absolutely clear he wants a reconciliation with his family. It’s on them now,” says one. But those in royal circles see it differently and wish Harry would stop making such public pleas. His unwise choice of words about Charles’s health and repeated suggestion that the King should have intervened in his security battle — something the monarch would never consider, given his constitutional role — have not helped Harry’s cause. As a friend of the King’s tells me: “The water is still pretty chilly on that front.” It is understood there is currently “no direct communication at all at the moment” between father and son.
One thing that is certain is there will be no meeting between Harry and the Prince of Wales. The permafrost between the estranged brothers shows no sign of thawing.
There is also an acknowledgment from those close to Harry that several long-running legal battles, which have taken up vast amounts of his time, energy and money, have been “a major distraction”. His fight with Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, over allegations of historical phone hacking and unlawful information-gathering, is set for a nine-week trial in January, but may end in an out-of-court settlement. With most of his legal preparation done for that case, friends say Harry is now “in a really good headspace, looking forwards”.
That mindset will come as a relief to many who feel that after laying his soul bare with more than 400 pages of family grievances in his memoir Spare, and eternal legal wrangles, he has been battling old demons rather than getting on with his life. As one former adviser of Harry’s said on the eve of his 40th birthday last year: “All he does is spend time looking back. If only he could wrench his neck around and look forwards.” Those close to Harry say he is determined to remain “forward-focused” in the coming months.
Harry at the High Court in London for a privacy case in 2023. Such battles have cost much time, money and energy
SUNDAY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL.
What does the future look like? Friends say there is a “Sentebale-shaped hole” in his life, referring to the charity he set up in 2006 with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in memory of their late mothers, to support children affected by HIV and Aids in southern Africa. Since stepping down as Sentebale’s patron in March amid a very public and bitter row with the charity’s chairwoman, Sophie Chandauka, he has been thinking about how to fill that hole, either with a new charity or by working with another organisation.
One close friend who may get a call is Sir Elton John, a firm friend of the Sussexes who previously lent them his villa in the south of France while they were working royals, and has been a vocal supporter of the couple since their departure from royal life. His eponymous Aids foundation has a global reach and could be a good fit for a prince looking for new ways to support children affected by HIV and AIDS.
Harry also needs to keep earning. A lot. Multimillion-pound deals for his book and with the streamers Netflix and Spotify are in the rear-view mirror, but there are still hefty security bills to pay and a reported £6 million mortgage on the Sussexes’ sprawling home in Montecito, California.
As Harry receives no public funding from the sovereign grant or privately from the royal family, overseas trips, such as this week’s visit to the UK, cost him six-figure sums. He pays personally for the travel and accommodation of his entourage.
Harry has rejected offers from the King to stay at Buckingham Palace and the hotel bills mount up. While Meghan, 44, is busy building her As Ever brand selling homeware, rosé wine and raspberry spreads, Harry is thinking about his next “commercial venture”. Those close to him say it will not be a sequel to Spare, or another tell-all Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary. His next project to boost the Sussex coffers will be a “social enterprise with a social conscience”.
In July, much was made of a meeting in London captured on camera between Harry and Meghan’s American chief communications officer Meredith Maines, their UK-based director of communications, Liam Maguire, and Tobyn Andreae, the King and Queen’s director of communications. Both camps say descriptions of a “peace summit” were overblown.
Harry and William marked their mother’s birthday together in 2021 — but are not now in touch
DOMINIC LIPINSKI/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The meeting was to “open the lines of communication” and avoid a repeat of the Palace being blindsided by surprises like Harry’s BBC interview and diary clashes. In May, for example, Harry unexpectedly turned up at a travel conference in Shanghai, while Charles undertook an historic visit to Canada for less than 24 hours to open parliament.
No such attempt has yet been made to open lines of communication with his brother’s team and Harry’s engagements this week will clash with William and Kate on manoeuvres. A source close to Harry says: “At the end of the day, as he’s no longer a member of the institution, he doesn’t feel bound to de-conflict his diary with the institution.”
A “focal point on Harry’s horizon” is July, 2027, the date of the next Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style games for wounded, sick and injured military personnel that he founded 11 years ago. Whether his family join him in Birmingham will depend on how successful his security lobbying proves.
It is Harry’s hope that his father, as head of the armed forces, will support the event. Charles’s decision will depend on how family matters pan out over the next two years, but scenes of Harry flanked by Charles and William, laughing together at the inaugural games in London in 2014, are unlikely to be replicated.
Back in Montecito, Harry, an increasingly keen surfer, is relishing fatherhood and has started introducing Archie and Lili to the California waves by taking them to “surf camp”. As he prepares to return home to a less sunny climate on the family front, a friend says: “He is excited to be on the ground, helping his organisations where he can. He’s pumped for the visit, he’s happy.”