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With summer break in full swing for Prince George, Princess Charlotte<\/a> and Prince Louis, they’ll be enjoying long days outside with their family in Norfolk and Balmoral<\/a>\u2014with time carved out for royal events like Wimbledon<\/a>, of course. But Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell<\/a>, tells Marie Claire that summer break looked much different for Prince William and Prince Harry amid their parents’ split<\/a> in the ’90s.<\/p>\n When asked what summer looked like for Diana and her boys at Kensington Palace, Burrell\u2014speaking on behalf of Casino.org<\/a>\u2014says their time together was far too brief. Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated in 1992<\/a>, and from then until her death, she “only ever had the boys for two weeks every year because she gave them up,” he shares. “She said it’s important for them to grow up with her cousins, with the Royal Family at Balmoral.”<\/p>\n Burrell continues that Diana made the choice knowing William’s destiny<\/a>. “Summer was fun for her, but she realized that the rest of the year and the time away from boarding school, that they would be with their father and their friends,” he says. “She realized that they were growing up and they had to be integrated into the Royal Family because William one day will be King<\/a> and Harry will be there to support him.”<\/p>\n Princess Diana is seen during a 1990 trip to Necker Island with Prince Harry, Prince William, her sister, Sarah Mccorquodale, and her sister’s children, Emily and George McCorquodale. | Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n “She willingly gave them up,” Burrell adds. “She missed them.” Burrell\u2014who worked for Princess Diana for a decade before her 1997 death<\/a>\u2014explains that unlike the Royal Family, who own various properties across the U.K., Diana “had nowhere to take her boys.”<\/p>\n “She only had Kensington Palace, so she had to take them away on a holiday, and it was usually a beach holiday,” he tells Marie Claire. In the summer of 1997, Prince Harry and Prince William enjoyed one last vacation with their mother before joining Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Scotland. Burrell shares that during “the last summer of [Diana’s] life, they’d been to the Mediterranean, and they played on jet skis, and they’d had fun. Then she brought them back home so that they could go to Balmoral.”<\/p>\n “That’s why they were at Balmoral at the time of the princess\u2019s death, because they’d had the two weeks with Diana in the summer,” he adds. “She’d usually take them to Necker Island, or somewhere remote.”<\/p>\n Burrell says Princess Diana, seen with William and Harry at Eton College, “lost” her kids to boarding school and the Royal Family. | Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Princess](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/21f524e103f0ce3487b28b0ede0e5eda.jpeg\"\/)
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