The Royals with Roya and Kate - Prince Harry at 40: Where does he go next?

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Roya Nikkhah looks ahead to the Duke of Sussex's big milestone in September with an in depth profile in the Sunday Times, and together with historian Hugo Vickers uses this as a starting point in considering whether the birthday might herald a reconsideration of the prince's “gilded exile”, and does his and Meghan's Colombia tour represents a moment of change? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, and after a summer tour of Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, we're back in the studio. Well, I'm back in the studio. Kate's currently sitting on a beach somewhere, I hope. But there is a lot of royal news to discuss, and I can't discuss it alone. So I've invited a very special guest back into the studio, and that's Hugo Vickers. so hugo you've been on the show before but i still think we ought to introduce you what did we land on last time? I think we said royal biographer, royal hierophant, hierophant, royal whisperer. How do you describe yourself Hugo? Well I like to describe myself as an author and biographer but obviously I get labelled as a royal historian and sometimes of course people think it's an official title which it most

certainly is not. But I have been following the royal family one way or another since I was a child. So that goes back quite a long way now. Well, it's an absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. Back my popular demand, Hugo. And I think this is a great chance to take a long view about the royal family. And what strikes me, and I'd like to know if it strikes you, Hugo, is that things change. People change, public perceptions change. strikes me and I'd like to know if it strikes you Hugo is that things change people change public perceptions change and what seems cut and dried about the monarchy often then moves on sometimes

dramatically sometimes imperceptibly and then we've had an interesting couple of months and the last time you and I spoke we were about to go into that period of trooping the colour royal ascot the Japanese state visit and we saw with Trooping the return to a public event by the Princes of Wales. So it's been a very eventful few months, wouldn't you say? It certainly has, and of course, as you rightly say, the month of June is a very important time for the royal family. Lots of ceremonial.

Exactly, ceremonial, garden parties and all those sort of things they do, and obviously there's Ascot and there's Wimbledon. And then as we come to August, of course, they're sort of on holiday. Of course, the king is never on holiday, as you know, but he is up in Scotland, which he likes. And so there is a slightly down time, if you like, a time when the family can get together and relax. I mean, as I say, the king himself is the one person who never gets a day off

and he has to go through his red boxes and all those things and he's still out and about doing various duties. But we don't really see them very much until the beginning of October. Well, we don't see so much of the working members of the royal family, but we are seeing quite a lot of some other members of the royal family, but we are seeing quite a lot of some other members of the royal family which we're about to come on to. Do you know what the national motto of Columbia is, Hugo? No, I know quite a lot about Columbia, but I don't know what the national motto is. Liberty and order, which might be a good one for looking at one of the royals who hasn't been in

Britain very much this summer, and that's Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. So this weekend, Hugo, I've written a big, a very big, I'd like to say, in-depth think piece looking ahead to Harry's 40th birthday, which is on September the 15th. And I've been taking stock of where he's at, a bit of a crossroads. You can read it at your leisure in this week's Sunday Times at thetimes.com and in our beautiful glossy print issue of the Sunday Times magazine and I hope lots of our listeners will read it. I've spoken to a lot of people who know Harry well, some of his oldest friends, those close to him and one of the key questions that kept coming up in those conversations was, is Harry where he wanted to be?

He's turning 40. You know, he left the royal family, stepped back from official working duties a few years ago. Has it all turned out how he hoped? It was a big gamble, I think, quitting royal life and moving to California to reinvent himself there. And has it paid off? And I think that's an interesting thing

I want to sort of talk to you a little bit about now. You know, you, full disclosure, you haven't actually read this piece yet. I haven't, I look forward to reading it as always. Yeah, good. I always like reading your pieces. I'll pay you later. But one of the things I, you know,

I think one of the themes sort of through my piece is, is there another royal way possible for members of the royal family you know Harry and Meghan asked the late queen for a half in half out royal existence going forward and the queen decided at the Sandringham summit in 2020 no that's not possible you're either in or you're out I think we're seeing a little bit of that with Columbia and this sort of quasi royal tour you know what kind of royal tour is it it's not an official tour. It's an unofficial tour, but they're there at the request of the vice president.

One of the things I mentioned in the piece, and it's actually one of the very last things I write, is in an interview in 2016 with me, Harry said he felt he needed to use his privileged position while he still had time. But he told me, there's nothing worse than going through a period in your life where you're making a massive difference and then suddenly for whatever reason it is whether it's the media or the public perception of you you drop off you want to make a difference but no one's listening to you so I think maybe Columbia

is a chance for Harry and Meghan to be listened to and as you and I speak the Duke and Duchess of Sussex tour in Columbia is leading a lot of news websites across the world actually royals demand attention Hugo and Harry and Meghan are getting a lot of attention in Columbia why? I can see why they've gone to do it because they have to keep reinventing themselves the whole time yeah and I think this is their problem is that they don't quite know which direction they're going I can see why they've gone to do it, because they have to keep reinventing themselves the whole time. And I think this is their problem,

is that they don't quite know which direction they're going. I mean, I hate to be cynical, but of course we wouldn't really take much interest in what they were doing unless it was the fact that he was Prince Harry. I mean, that is the thing. I mean, Meghan Markle, before she married, was doing a lot of interesting things in the Commonwealth, a lot of highly admirable things, and they didn't get the sort of attention that they're getting now. before she married, was doing a lot of interesting things in the Commonwealth, a lot of highly admirable things.

And they didn't get the sort of attention that they're getting now. The purpose of this visit, according to the vice president who invited them, is to, this is a quote from her, to build bridges and open doors that would allow us to join forces in raising awareness and addressing a global issue that concerns all of us, cyberbullying in the digital environment and discrimination, which pose a risk to everyone's mental health worldwide. And the focus of this trip for Harry and Meghan, it's a four-day trip taking in Bogota, Cartagena, Cali,

they're going all over the place, is they're talking a lot about cyberbullying and social media and misinformation, and Harry's been talking about that yesterday. And there is, of course, precedent for this because Sophieie the dutch of edinburgh went to columbia last year towards the end of 2023 but she went at the request of the british government and she went as working members of the royal family do with foreign office officials so she had all the sort of sense checking there and the advice in terms of sort of the pitfalls. And she was there obviously talking about her work in, you know, campaigning against sexual violence and gender equality.

I suppose the potential pitfalls on a tour like this is that Harry and Meghan are going without the protection of sort of safety net of foreign office advice. They've also just lost their chief of staff, Josh Kettler, who... net of foreign office advice. They've also just lost their chief of staff, Josh Kettler, who... Well, that's particularly interesting because we are told that he didn't resign on account of this trip. So why did he resign? I mean, if he had disapproved of the trip and said, well, actually, it's time for me to go. But that sounds to me much more worrying because he's going anywhere and he's going just before they undertake what, as you rightly say, is a very high profile visit. just before they undertake what, as you rightly say, is a very high-profile visit. One member of staff that they did used to have,

who worked with the royal household for years, who went on all these overseas trips with Harry and Meghan back in the day, and with William and Kate, was Sir David Manning, who was Tony Blair's former foreign policy advisor. He'd been our ambassador to America and Israel previously. He was an amazing, wise- wise ale man he still is who would travel on all these overseas trips with and he you know went on the Harry Megan's tour to Australia but he was there to sort of guide and he could see the pitfalls and he could advise and I think without a figure like that and even without their chief of staff now you know what's what's the agenda what's the direction of the trip what are the pitfalls is it dangerous territory for private yes citizen royals

because i don't think that they have a very good sense of direction at the moment the goalposts are always changing they're not quite sure they've tried all sorts of different things and it seems to me that they rely very much on being sort of major news, which in fact, they succeed in doing very, very well. But that's all working for themselves and their causes. And the difference between what Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh was doing is that she was going out on behalf of Britain. And, you know, as you say, with government advice and so forth. There was a report this week, which there was a quote in it that really struck me,

and it was someone connected to the Foreign Office who said the trip was utterly irrelevant to British interests abroad. Well, yes. Yes, but I thought that totally missed the point. Really? Yes, because Harry and Meghan are not here, are not here anymore. They're not existing in California

to represent British interests abroad. They are representing their own interests abroad. They are trying to build their brand as humanitarians, campaigners, activists. So, you know, I read that question, just thought that's just someone here sniping at what they're doing. Fine, that's a view. But it misses the point because they are no longer working royals who are representing the UK royal in the way that Sophie Dutch-Svedenberg was last year. And that's the key difference. It's brand building for the Sussexes.

I think it's a great difference. But the royal family, as you know, are working for us. I mean, they go out on all these trips. And in the earlier trip, the Australia trip that you mentioned earlier on, they were working for Britain. I mean, the Queen gave them the whole of the Commonwealth. And because they were both commissioned, I mean, I've seen Prince Harry in the Caribbean.

They love him out there. I've seen him, you know, when I was in St Lucia, the two people I talked to both said, you know, he plays cricket with our kids. We love him. And he was doing it for Britain, you know, and building bridges and relations. And she also seemed to be committed.

It seemed to be an ideal thing. You had William and Catherine doing things in Britain. And the Commonwealth has a huge scope. I mean, a lot of people talk about, and I often think it's quite an unfair comparison. You may take a different view, Hugo, that people draw comparisons between Harry and Meghan leaving official working royal life,

going to California, reinventing themselves in a different kind of way, finding a new life there. And clearly, Harry wanted to do that. He wrote an entire best-selling book about how he did not enjoy the pressures of real life. And that's something I've looked at more in depth in my piece this weekend, Harry at 40. You know, he is easy where he wants to be.

He's pleased with the transition, you know, a lot of it. He is not bound by the confines of raw life and the pressures. He is finding a new way, new way of working. He wants to be humanitarian. He wants to be a mental health campaigner. He wants to be an activist. But a lot of people have, over the years, made the comparisons between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Harry and Meghan, of course, Edward VIII, who abdicated.

And Anna Pasternak, the author of The American Duchess, and of course, you have written your own books on the Windsors said there was a real parallel in terms of non-working royals being invited by foreign governments as private citizens and accepting of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's trip in 1937 which I know you're going to talk about she said they accepted because Edward felt so hurt and angered

by the way Wallace had been rejected by the royal family and he desperately wanted her to experience the pomp and ceremony of a royal tour. Do you think 90 years later these comparisons are unfair? I mean I often think they're just a little bit not well thought through. I don't think it's right to compare the Sussexes with the Windsors but the Duke of Windsor actually abdicated pretty honorably, quietly he went. But having gone, he actually would have really liked to have come back and reinvented himself as a younger brother of the king, returned to Fort Belvedere and taken a part in royal life on his own terms. But he didn't realise that he'd let everybody down, nobody wanted that,

you couldn't have two kings in the country, he had to go. And so, in a way, what he did was he had let Wallis Simpson down badly. He turned her into the world's most hated woman. And so when they went to Germany, that's quite right. He suddenly thought, well, I mean, he got an invitation. He said, well, you know, anyone who'd been through what they called the Great War, the First World War, wouldn't wish anything like this to happen again. And he was meant to be going there to look at housing.

You know, you could have some sort of influence. And stupidly, off he went. Maybe there is a similarity there with Harry and Meghan. Maybe he wants her to be, you know, you could have some sort of influence. And stupidly, off he went. Maybe there is a similarity there with Harry and Meghan. Maybe he wants her to be, you know, respected. I think it's slightly different though, isn't it? Because they're trying to do something totally different. It's interesting you say she was the wife of the exiled duke because one of the things, you know,

I've spoken to a lot of Harry's friends for this piece this week, Harry at 40 piece in the Sunday Times magazine. And a lot of his friends who've known him for a very long time talk about this idea of Harry living in, one friend says, gilded exile. And is that really where he saw his future? You know, he's broken free of the shackle, what he saw as the shackles of real life

and is, you know, forging a life as a different kind of, you know, the Prince of Montecito in California. And, you know, Meghan as the Duchess is, you know, by Prince of Montecito in California. And, you know, Meghan as the Duchess is, you know, by his side, they are a powerful brand, you know, whether you like them or not, and they can be divisive and people have mixed opinions of them. They do get a lot of attention wherever they go. And I see, you know, Columbia and the trip to Nigeria and the new project they've launched, the Parent Network, which we'll talk about in a minute. It's about brand building. It's about building a different kind of brand and you know what is harry's brand going to be going forwards

he would like it to be as humanitarian and activist the one key thing i think that i'm not sure he's got to grips with is focusing on the future and you know a lot of people i've spoken to think he feels he's very focused on the past and keeps looking back at the past and talking about the past but you know and one person says you know if only he could wrench his neck forwards but I saw a little I detected a little sort of change in that when they did their interview recently with CBS a couple of weeks ago and this was to launch their new initiative the parents network which is bringing together parents and families whose children have been affected some of taking their lives through online bullying and cyber abuse and actually harry didn't dig up the past he sat and listened as you know megan talked about wanting to protect their children it was

megan that talked about you know recalling her she said she drew the through line between her experiences you know inside the royal institution and when she was in the UK, all the online abuse she suffered and how that made her feel. You know, she talked about her suicidal thoughts in the Oprah Winfrey interview a couple of years ago and how that had prompted, you know, them to think about setting up this initiative. But Harry didn't, you know, he didn't talk about the past.

And I wondered what you sort of thought of that interview, whether it was a sort of turn in direction for them or it was just sort of more of the same. I mean, it's very difficult because he, you know, he's part of an extraordinary institution and then suddenly he's cut free from that. He's gone off on his own and it's a brave step into an unknown world. What worries me is that I think when you, you know,

I mean, you know much more about him than I do, but whenever I see images of sort of Range Rovers and things coming to the airport and security people, that's jolly expensive, and they've got to keep moving the whole time to finance this life. And I've been actually to Montecito. I know exactly where they live,

and that's pretty lush and expensive too. And there are lots of people around keeping the show on the road. And the moment that they, and they're relying to a large extent on celebrity with a royal connection and and unless they keep coming up with new initiatives and new goods they're going to disappear like so many other celebrities and once that happens i think the future is

looking at look rather bleak i think one of the things we talked about earlier in the in the podcast was the idea of change and members of the royal family, you know, take different paths. We look at Diana, Princess of Wales, who actually was due to go to Colombia in 1997 before she died. And I think that's possibly one of the reasons that Harry was very interested to go. You know, he's talked a lot about

following in the footsteps of his mother with some of his work with HIV and AIDS, with Santa Barley. I know he was very interested in going to Colombia because he was interested in what his mother was going to do there. But actually when she broke free from the royal family and, you know, divorced the then Prince of Wales and lost her HRH, she found her freedom and she was starting to forge a new path and her star burnt very brightly in America. Another one of the things

I've looked at in the piece is, you know, is Harry making his mark in America? And it's interesting, someone who used to work with him very closely went to America and said, you know, is Harry making his mark in America? And it's interesting, someone who used to work with him very closely went to America and said, you know, I'm not sure they've done is find, you know, really find their spot. They've slightly fallen out of the conversation. This person who worked with him went recently to America to network and everyone was asking about the King and Kate's health rather than Harry. But on the counter of that, I think he has got what he wanted, a lot of what he wanted. He wanted a settled, calm family life, which he didn't feel he had growing up.

And I don't think he felt he was going to be able to get when he was here in the royal family because of all the pressures. He seems very happy and settled in that. On the counter of that, people who know him say he always was in a rush to have his own family. He always desperately wanted that. But is that enough for him? If you're Prince Harry, you want more. And as someone said to me, which is a sort of quote from the piece that's really stuck with me,

what is the purpose of Prince Harry and what's Prince Harry's purpose? He loved the army. He was very good at his job. The work within Victor's Games is great and fatherhood was the role he most wanted. So perhaps those are enough for him. But everything else is a bit woolly.

I always thought he wanted more from life. I can't help but think he must be wondering, where do I go from here? Where next? It's, you know, the new life he's found hits the spot for him in a lot of ways, but it's come with very heavy sacrifices in terms of the things he's given up, his links with the military.

He hasn't given up his links with the military, the honorary military titles. He's given, he's sacrificed a lot so long as he's got a very happy home life a nice stable marriage and two small children to bring up I'm sure that'll give him great happiness let's hope that continues

I think you can't really talk we can't really talk about Harry and I've certainly looked at it a lot in this Harry at 40 piece without looking at how things have changed in his life specifically the family dynamics we had more than 400 pages of that in spare his book last year and of course he talked a lot about it in the Oprah interview in 2021 Harry and Meghan's tell all Netflix documentary it was a lot about the family

dynamics there. But as part of the change in his role of no longer being a working royal, moving to America, forging a new family life, getting his own family there, the family dynamics and relationships here with his father, his brother, William, the king, have been shattered, I think it's fair to say. And it's very sad that the brothers are estranged.

My understanding is they haven't spoken for the best part of two years, not since the late Queen's funeral in September 2022. And, you know, Harry made a mad dash back to the UK when his father announced he had cancer earlier this year. I saw him for less than 45 minutes. When he came again in May, he didn't see the king. And as I revealed in the Sunday Times,

the king offered him accommodation, royal accommodation. And Harry had asked for that. Then he decided to stay in a hotel. So they didn't meet. Those family bonds, you know, are broken at the moment. People close to the king often say, you know, he's leaving the door wide open for his son. He'll always, you know, love his son.

We don't really see that. We don't really see, you know, the permafrost seems pretty frozen, certainly between the brothers. And I think that relationship with his father is incredibly strained. Well, I think that Spare, of course, was ghosted by a very clever writer,

J.R. Moringa, who'd written a book called The Tender Barb, which was all about a bad relationship with a father. So you could, he also ghosted Agassiz's book, which was much the same. Great book. So yes, indeed, but you could see what was going to happen. He threw a lot of javelins at his family in that book.

And I think it's highly commendable of the king. He's never responded at all publicly to any of these things. And so I take the view that the door is indeed left open. Now, it's not very easy for Prince Harry to come through the door because, first of all, he says he can't bring his wife to England. He can take her to Columbia, apparently, which is much more dangerous than England, but he can't bring her here because he doesn't have security, etc.

He probably would have a certain amount. Anyway, for various reasons, he doesn't. So he pops over from time to time and there are these brief meetings but i commend the king hugely on his restraint because to have had all those things said about you and about your second wife yeah is pretty unattractive was really interesting when spare came out there was an absolute blanket across the board of the households of not responding and not briefing against it and not giving it more oxygen. They didn't need it.

It was the fastest selling non-fiction book in history. What was interesting was, you know, some of William and Harry's friends, really old friends, said to me, and I mentioned this in the piece, you know, about Harry, is that they've kept secrets for years and they couldn't quite believe that Harry had spilled the beans. They felt that was, you know, very is that they've kept secrets for years and they couldn't quite believe that Harry had spilled the beans they felt that was you know very disloyal and you know they friends said to me we've got books worth on Harry that we'd never publish it's the same

mistake isn't it it's like when the king collaborated with Jonathan Dimbleby and thought that by sort of throwing open everything and letting him look into his life you know things would go away no of course it didn't it fueled all sorts of other things and Diana and letting him look into his life, you know, things would go away. No, of course it didn't. It fuelled all sorts of other things. And Diana and Andrew Morton, the same. They should never do it. But we have, you know, when I look back at, I mean, I've been doing this job for more than 12 years now. You've been following the roles for a lot longer.

You've, you know, we've all witnessed, we're all aware of, you know, the 1980s and 90s with relationships breaking down in the royal family, marriages breaking down. The family has had a very difficult time. This is another evolution of a difficult time. But why does it matter if the royal family isn't united, Hugo? Why does it matter if these feuds are sort of running under the surface, brother to brother, you know, king to son? Well, I think, unfortunately, of course, at the time of, for example, after the abdication,

the George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen mother line was very much, you know, Sunday lunch, a walk in the park and afternoon tea with the two daughters and establishing a sort of very nice, cosy family monarchy, which is quite difficult to maintain when things go wrong. And they went wrong. They've been going wrong one way or another over the years. There were problems with Princess Margaret, obviously, and all those divorces and so forth. But actually, I think what we, the general public, want, if possible, is a united family. And we like to see them working away for us, us, the general public, the United Kingdom, whatever. And those are the ones that I admire hugely, which is, you know, there aren't so many of them

out and about doing things anymore because, for various reasons, the monarchy has slimmed down, not quite in the way that the king wanted it to. Do you i mean because the monarchy is we often talk and we often write about the royal family being the sort of glue that holds the nation together sometimes a big you know national moments of celebration big national moments of mourning if the family is fractured and if these you know fissures continue and the relationship between harry and william isn't mended and i don't think it will be anytime soon the relationship with father and son continues to be strained I think it will be for a long time does it does it become harder for the monarchy to maintain that image of

unity and national unity it's not easy I mean Tommy Lascelles who was the um you know the private secretary during the well he was one of the private secretary during the abdication for George VI in the beginning years of the Queen. He said, the monarch is rather like a rose bush. Every now and again, you have to cut off a head to keep it going. And if you think about it through history, that's what's happened.

Prince Harry may indeed be one of those heads. Right, we've talked a lot about the spare today. Let's talk briefly about the heir because this week we had a video released by Kenston palace with the prince and the princess of wales it was lovely to see her off duty up in norfolk congratulating all the olympic team gb in an interesting collaboration with snoop dog do you know who snoop dog is here i do um fit people weren't talking about snoop dogg and Snoop Dogg's relationship with the whales is no.

What really made the headlines was the hair not on William's head, but that it appeared on his chin, his beard. What did you think of the beard, Hugo? And I know you, you will be able to place this in historical context. Well, indeed. Well, first of all, can I just say I have a huge sympathy for Prince William at the moment because, you know, his wife has been unwell and his father has been unwell. He's got a weight of the world on his shoulders. He does. Handling it quite well, I think. Yes, I think handling it very well. And sometimes people do grow beards on holiday. I personally hope he won't retain it too long. But I am one of the few people that you will ever meet, I suppose now because time has passed, that in May 1975, I saw the present king with a moustache.

Where were you? I was in Westminster Abbey and he was being installed as Great Master of the Order of the Bath. And he'd been up in the Arctic and had grown a beard. I remember the Queen Mother actually said they couldn't shave because it was so cold. Thus he grew a beard. But because he was a soldier, he was not allowed to have a beard. So he cut the beard off and he retained the moustache for long enough to take part in the ceremony, the Order of the Path, which is in the morning.

I've never seen a photo of him with a moustache. Oh, yes, you have. There are lots of them around at the moment. I'm going to look them up. And that evening, because he was going back into the Navy, the moustache came off. Did it suit him? No. Do you think the beard suits William? No.

There you go. That's the definitive answer. I like the beard. I think the beard's a good look for William. I'd like to see it survive the summer holidays. I suspect it won't. Our producer Callum is showing us lots of images of Charles looking extremely dapper with a moustache. Look at that. There you go.

Hugo, you were there. I was there. Rooted in history. Now, we must pay tribute to and a very happy wish, a very happy birthday belatedly to the Princess Royal, who has turned 74 this week. She has. And always topping the list of hardest working royals. And has made what looks like a good recovery from a really horrible, horrible accident. Must have been extremely worrying for everybody. But then, you know, typical of her that she was out doing an engagement and

then spending a lot of time in Paris, supporting the Olympic team. Becoming a style icon with her with her bucket hat, which all Gen Z got very into. You see, my theory about Princess Anne, I'll tell you exactly what happened. It's that one time when her first marriage was breaking down with Mark Phillips, she was in Africa, and the press went out because they thought there was going to be a reunion, and there wasn't. And so the editors all said, well, you're out there on expenses, have a look at what she's doing.

And they were amazed, because she was working so hard. And at that point, her image began to change. The other way her image changed was when Diana came along, who could be the beautiful princess to leave Princess Anne to be the executive princess, which is what she's so good at. The executive princess, but she never courts media attention. That's the interesting thing about her. She just gets on very quietly and does her job. The Queen and Prince Philip and Princess Anne have that unique quality that they couldn't care less what you think about them. They just get on with the job or got on with the job. We should do the same.

with a job. Keep calm, carry on. We should do the same. Well, on that note, Hugo, it's been a joy to have you on. That's it for this week's episode. Next week, it'll be Kate's turn to host a special guest. It's going to be a really good one as Kate's joined by the late Queen's former press secretary, Elsa Anderson. How much intel can she squeeze out of her? You'll have to tune in next week to find out. So do follow the show, tell your friends about it, like, rate and subscribe to the podcast, all of the above. And don't forget this weekend and going forward, you can read my exclusive Harriet Forty piece in the Sunday Times Magazine and online at thetimes.com. But bye for now.