Harry by Chris Hutchins Read Free Book Online

I?
    ‘W ho am I?’ a puzzled Harry asked his father after one of his first days at nursery school. He had himself been asked the question by a fellow pupil at the Notting Hill school, who merely wanted to know his name, but at the age of just three and struggling to integrate with strangers for the first time, Harry had begun to wonder what all the fuss was about whenever he was seen (and photographed) in public. The question moved Prince Charles to sit his younger son down and tell him exactly who he was.
    It was a highly emotional encounter since the father had to tell his son that he was two people: to him, Diana and his brother William he was Harry, a much loved little boy who enjoyed playing with his toy soldiers and pretending to help out with the garden at their country home. But to the outside world he was something quite different: he was Prince Henry of Wales, fourth grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, third in the line of succession (behind his father and his elder brother) to thethrones of sixteen independent sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms – not just the United Kingdom but Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Granada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis. He is also third in line to the position of Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He was always to be addressed as ‘Your Royal Highness’ and one day he would be a duke as well as a prince.
    What he also told him was that his mother came from a family with grander heritage than his own. Charles’s ancestral grandmother was a member of the Germanic House of Hanover, which didn’t take over the British throne until the succession of George I on 1 August 1714, whereas Diana’s family, the Spencers, date back to the 1400s as leading members of the British aristocracy, although they had started out in pre-Tudor times as sheep farmers – something Earl Spencer was reminded of while speaking pompously in the House of Lords. Spencer was interrupted by the Earl of Arundel who said, ‘When the things of which you speak were happening, your ancestors were keeping sheep.’ To which Spencer retorted, ‘Yes, and when my ancestors were keeping sheep, yours were plotting treason.’
    Diana’s noble family descended in the male line from Henry Spencer who claimed to be a descendant of the cadet branch of the ancient house of le Despencer and the male-line ancestor of the Earls of Sunderland, the Dukes ofMarlborough and the Earls Spencer. In addition to Diana, another prominent member of the family was Winston Churchill, whose family had been linked to the Spencers by the marriage of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, to Lady Anne Churchill, daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. Althorp, where Diana is now buried, has been the family seat for 500 years.
    Quite a lot for a three-year-old to take in and especially confusing for him when his mother challenged the grandness of Charles’s proclamation by telling him he was a human being who was growing up in a position to help ‘ordinary’ boys – something Harry has never forgotten.
    The Prince had arrived at 8.50 sharp for the first of his twice-weekly mornings (graduating later to five) in September 1987 wearing blue shorts, a blue polo sweatshirt and carrying a Thomas the Tank Engine school bag over his shoulder. Prior to leaving home he had cried about being separated from his mother despite an enthusiasm to follow in his brother’s footsteps. But, placated by his police guardian , he dried his tears and grew excited by the waiting crowd of photographers, making faces at them before he stepped inside. Then, anxious to please, he had bounded forward to shake the hand of his headmistress but, following protocol, she reached over his head to shake the hands of his parents,. It was left to his father to pat him on