While one of Charles’s courtiers tells me that the King misses Harry bitterly. “Harry seems to have forgotten this but his father always absolutely adored him. He always called him ‘my darling boy’ and was so affectionate. People always seem to think that Harry inherited all his charm from his mother, but lots of the things he is good at, being attentive and always remembering people’s names, is something that comes directly from the King”. What people don’t appreciate too is the tricky relationship that the King has long had with the Prince of Wales. Harry himself alludes to it in Spare. Describing one of his last meetings with Prince William and the King, after the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, Harry writes, “then at last I saw them. Shoulder to shoulder, striding towards me, they looked grim, almost menacing. More, they looked tightly aligned. My stomach dropped. Normally they would be squabbling about one thing or another, but now they appeared to be in lockstep – in league”. A courtier admits that William never phones his Dad directly but has to schedule a call through the King’s private office.
