Prince William (12 page)

‘William asked me what had been going on and could I answer his questions, which I did. He said was that the reason why our marriage had broken up? And I said, well, there were three of us in this marriage and the pressures of the media was another factor, so the two together were very difficult. But although I still loved Papa, I couldn't live under the same roof as him, and likewise with him.' In answer to what effect she thought her explanation had on Prince William, she said, ‘Well, he's a child that's a deep thinker
and we don't know for a few years how it's gone in. But I put it in gently, without resentment or any anger.'

It was Dimbleby's book that followed in the autumn, simply called
The Prince of Wales
, or more precisely its serialisation in the
Sunday Times
, which did the most damage. Inevitably sensationalised and cherry-picked, it gave the impression that Charles was a whinger whose parents had never shown him any affection, that he had loved Camilla for most of his adult life and never loved the wife his father had bullied him into marrying.

The Prince no doubt thought it would be a good vehicle for delivering his message about the serious issues that consumed his time. Instead it turned into an own goal of staggering proportions. His parents were left hurt by the portrayal Charles gave of his childhood and bemused that he should have agreed such access. And Andrew Parker Bowles felt honour-bound to formally bring his marriage to Camilla to an end. They were divorced the following January and he married his long-term girlfriend.

Sir John Riddell was amazed that his advisors had ever allowed it to happen.

‘They released Jonathan Dimbleby and the Prince of Wales on to the Scottish moor together at 9.30 and they came back breathless and excited at 4.30; and when you go for a very exhausting walk with anybody – if you went with Goebbels – after a time the blood circulates, the joints ease up, the breath gets short – you'd pour out your heart to anyone, even Goebbels. Jonathan Dimbleby's charms are huge so the Prince of Wales gave him all that stuff about how unhappy he was when he was a boy – the Queen never spoke to him, the Duke of Edinburgh was beastly to him – and it very much upsets them.

‘Everyone was told this book would finally show what a marvellous person he was; and people were bored out of their wits by Business in the Community and the Prince's Trust; they wanted to know about their private life. We're interested in who they're going to bed with, except we got rather bored by that because we couldn't keep up with it.'

And just as the excitement over one book started to wane, there was another hot on its heels. James Hewitt, having licked his wounds, decided to tell the writer Anna Pasternak about his five-year love affair with Diana.
Princess in Love
hit the bookshelves in September 1994. The Queen can't have been the only person wondering what revelations would dominate the headlines next in this battle between the Prince and Princess of Wales – and which of them could inflict the most damage on their two sons.

The answer wasn't long in coming.

THE PLAYING FIELDS OF ETON

On 6 September 1995, Prince William arrived at Eton College, probably the most famous public school in the world, having successfully passed his common entrance exam. It was a big leap from the cosy surroundings of Ludgrove, and it had a whole new and contrary vocabulary to learn: a ‘school' was a class but more commonly called a ‘div', a teacher was a ‘beak', homework was called ‘EWs', ‘chambers' were elevenses, and the smart outfit he wore, marked with his name and laundry number, was called ‘formal change'. For lessons the next day he would be in ‘school dress', black tailcoat, waistcoat, a stiff white collar with a paper tie and pin-striped trousers, which were apparently adopted to mourn the death of George III in 1820.

Once upon a time, having the right name was enough to guarantee a place in this bastion of privilege, but while that was no longer true when William joined the school, it had no shortage of boys with their own grouse moors and salmon rivers, two or three houses and a brace of Range Rovers. Be that as it may, the education and the quality of the teaching staff, the academic and sporting facilities and the opportunities it provided were second to none. It also boasted three theatres, two concert halls, two major libraries, an intranet and computer terminals in every boy's room.

Charles and Diana delivered him to the school together, along with Harry, in a public display of smiles and family alliance. As well as the daunting prospect of being a new boy in a new school that was almost ten times the size of the old one, William was also aware that everyone would be curious about him and that everyone
would know what was going on in his family. On top of that he had the press cameras to cope with and the inevitable anxiety about leaving his parents. It was more than the average thirteen-year-old had to handle on his first day at a big school.

Despite their differences, Charles and Diana were united in their choice of this next school for William, and in their choice of house master, the most significant adult in every Eton boy's daily life. Just as Gerald and Janet Barber had been key in seeing William through uncomfortable times at Ludgrove, Dr Andrew Gailey, who presided over ALHG (houses are known by the house master's initials) proved to be another exceptional figure, whose support of William through the next five years, and beyond, was nothing short of heroic. An Irishman with a good sense of humour (vital, particularly when Harry joined his brother three years later), he is a historian and has written numerous books on Anglo-Irish relations. It was a case of the right man being in the right place at the right time.

The town of Eton and the school are interwoven and many of the buildings and shops in the High Street are owned by the school. At the top of the High Street, a footbridge across the River Thames links Eton with Windsor, and thereafter, Windsor Castle, the Queen's main residence. William would often walk to the Castle to have tea with Granny and Grandpa, braving the local youth, who used to take delight – and still do – in duffing up anyone they suspected of being Etonian. In the past boys were only allowed into Windsor in ‘formal change'; now, they are only allowed across the bridge if they are
not
wearing any sort of uniform. Teenagers in jackets and ties are about as inconspicuous as zebras in a pride of lions.

In stark contrast, when the Prince of Wales was at school he didn't see any of his family for months on end. At the Duke of Edinburgh's insistence, he was sent to Gordonstoun in the northeast of Scotland, hundreds of miles from everyone and everything that was familiar. It was a Spartan regime, including runs before breakfast and cold showers, and he was profoundly unhappy there. He would never have let William suffer the same fate.

While the scholars, or Collegers, inhabit College and eat in the most magnificent room in the school, the rest of the boys, known as ‘Oppidans', are distributed between twenty-four boarding houses scattered about the town, typically with fifty other boys, ten to a year group. But unlike most schools of its type, there are no dormitories. Every boy from day one has a study bedroom of his own, which changes every year as he moves up the school.

There are many idiosyncrasies that set Eton apart but one of the most obvious is that day-to-day life is more akin to a university regime than a school. From the age of thirteen, boys have to manage their own time. They can choose whatever extracurricular activities they want – and there is every conceivable extracurricular activity on offer. The only requirement is that lessons and tutorials are attended and that their work is completed and handed in on time. There is an unexpected amount of freedom, but plenty of sanctions for boys who misuse it.

Several weeks into the Michaelmas term, every new boy had to take a Colours Test, set by the older boys. It was supposedly to ensure that they had learned their way around the school and had mastered the vocabulary. In reality it was an alarming initiation ritual, and if any boy slipped up they were made to sing the Founder's Prayer in Latin while standing on a table, and any boy who was seen to falter was dragged onto the floor and bashed with cushions.

Although always referred to as ALHG, the real name for Dr Gailey's building was Manor House. It is situated in the centre of the school, next to School Library and ‘the Burning Bush' (an elaborate wrought-iron street lamp). Like all the boarding houses, it has two separate doors, the Boys' Door, leading into the boys' living area, and the door to the Private Side, where the house master lives with his wife and family, if he has one. Dr Gailey was married with a young daughter, but the wives, unlike at Ludgrove, have no role as far as the boys are concerned. Each house employs a woman known as a Dame (except in College where she is called Matron), whom the boys address as ‘Ma'am'. She looks after the physical welfare of the boys and deals with laundry, administration, catering
(in those houses with dining rooms) and domestic issues. William's Dame was Elizabeth Heathcote, said to be ‘a bit firm but very nice'.

Security was an obvious issue in a school as spread out as Eton, and where townspeople and boys intermingled so freely. The grounds stretch to four hundred acres and include a rowing lake. Many of the classrooms are similarly spread out and to reach them boys must cross public roads and walk through narrow pedestrian passages between buildings.

The school took William's security very seriously. When a boy idly sitting at his bedroom window spotted William walking down the street, he thought it would be funny to point a laser pen at him. Seeing the red dot homing in on its target, William's PPOs immediately thought he was a sniper. The boy found himself looking down the barrel of a much more serious weapon – and, rumour had it, was soon looking for a new school.

Every boy was visible to the outside world on a daily basis, yet because the school had such a long history of educating children of the rich and famous, including Princes from other parts of the world, the arrival of the Queen's grandson was not entirely out of the ordinary. It didn't take long for people's curiosity to fade and he was soon treated like any other boy, both at school and in the town, and that was possibly William's salvation. Boys and locals alike became surprisingly protective; a few tried to make money out of the new arrival, offering items of ‘William's' uniform to gullible tourists, but on the whole they would question anyone hanging around with a long lens and never give truthful answers when quizzed about William.

Sports played a major part in his life at Eton. Boys are divided into two groups during the summer: those who choose to row are called wet bobs; those who play cricket are dry bobs. He chose rowing, but swimming was where he excelled. Eton has an Olympic-sized indoor pool and William was the Under-16 60-m Freestyle champion in his second year. A year later he won both the Senior 50-m and 100-m Freestyle competitions and later broke the
school 50-m record (in 27.94 seconds). He also took up sub-aqua diving, which became a major enthusiasm, and played on the school water polo team.

On land, he played all the major sports for his House, except cricket. These included football and rugby in the Michaelmas Half, hockey and rowing in the Lent Half and athletics, rowing and tennis in the Summer Half. He also played rugby for the 3rd XV until he broke a finger badly, which required an operation. Thereafter, he concentrated on the Field Game and the Wall Game, two hybrids unique to Eton. (It's said that the only other place these games have been played is Ford Open Prison.) Both games are a type of football, but of the two, the Wall Game is the least explicable. Two teams of sweaty boys covered in mud form a ‘bully' or a scrum up against a high red-brick wall and push against each other, endeavouring, I am told, to free the ball. It rarely happens; goals are scored every hundred years on average, and if the scrum moves more than a couple of feet in either direction it's considered an exciting match.

William's other great interest was the Combined Cadet Force, which he joined in his first year in the sixth form. His father came to watch the CCF Tattoo on College Field in the summer of 1999, when William won the Sword of Honour for the top First Year Cadet.

But possibly his greatest achievement was being elected a member of Pop, bestowed on the best-liked and most successful boys in the final year. (There are only nineteen members.) It used to be a debating society but today it consists of prefects elected by their peers, and with the title they receive all sorts of privileges including the right to wear wing collars, white bow ties, spongebag trousers and colourful waistcoats of their own choice. William had several, including one with the design of the Union Jack.

THE QUEEN CALLS TIME

Inquisitive tourists, even devious journalists, were comparatively easy to keep at bay during William's five years at Eton, but it was far more difficult to protect him from what was going on beyond Eton and its curious customs. No sooner had his smartly polished shoes hit the forecourt of Manor House than his mother's love life was once again all over the newspapers – and there was no chance of pretending there had been a problem with the newspaper delivery in a school the size of Eton, full of bright and inquisitive teenagers.

This time the man in question was the England rugby captain, Will Carling, whom Diana had met while working out at the Chelsea Harbour Club gym in south-west London. She was obsessive about exercise (a classic symptom of bulimia) and trips to the gym formed part of her early morning routine. Like most boys, William was mad about rugby and Will Carling was a hero; at twenty-two he had been the youngest England captain, and the most successful. William had watched him play and met him several times with his mother. He was a regular visitor at Kensington Palace, and the boys were thrilled when he had given them each a rugby shirt. Discovering there was more to his mother's friendship with Carling must have come as a shock.