‘Gilded exile’: Prince Harry’s friends speak anonymously in bombshell report
As Harry’s 40th birthday approaches, friends have contributed to a bombshell report painting him as an “angry boy” not enjoying his “gilded exile”.
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In a world full of uncertainties and persistent change and the soon-to-be rise of our AI overlords, I think there is one thing we can say with plenty of confidence – come September 15 when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex turns the big 4-0 there will be no groaning Ottolenghi gift basket full of hand-selected artisanal salts from his elder brother Prince William. (Though the chef’s signature dried limes do seem somehow appropriate.)
Nor does it sound particularly like Harry should be excitedly waiting for any elaborate balloon arrangements, poetry-a-grams or envelopes stuffed with Borders gift certificates arriving from his old mates in the UK with a group of his former friends having finally let loose – and how.
As the big day approaches, as we metaphorically stroke our beards and wonder how is it that former friend-of-fun, boyish Harry is about to hit such a milestone birthday, the Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah has published the bumper story to end all bumper stories.
A seeming parade of the duke’s former pals have spoken out to Nikkhah and they have not held back.
By now we all know Oprah Harry, and Netflix Harry, and Lawsuit Harry and Invicuts Harry, but this 2024 version? Meet the “angry” Harry who is reportedly not enjoying his “gilded exile” in the US, a man who is “desperate to be admired more”, whose friends “cannot forgive” him, and who wants to be back in the UK and “top of the pops” like his brother and sister-in-law William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Ready? Appropriate flotation and sanity-saving devices at the ready as we plunge in?
Cast your mind to Old Harry. He of the lager who reportedly loved nothing more than a lager or seven at his South Ken local, the Builders Arms? Well, so do his pals.
One friend told Nikkhah, “He used to love a night out in the pub and hanging out in the country with friends. Maybe he has grown into a different person, but do I think he’d really suit the Californian lifestyle? No … The Harry I know, I can’t imagine that gilded exile in California is where he wanted to end up.”
“He used to have lots of friends coming round to see him, army mates, polo friends, then they just tailed off,” another source, and someone who has spent time inside his various homes, told the Times. “Then it was the yoga guru, the wellbeing guru, everyone saying we must eat less meat and fly less.
“It was sad to see.”
Many of his former friends “cannot forgive Harry’s decision to air the family laundry,” Nikkhah writes.
The duke’s choice to go ahead with a six-hour tell-all TV series and to pen his 400-page memoir has seen his group of chums “shrink”, the Times report sets out, seemingly like a nice bit of Scottish cashmere foolishly dumped in the dryer.
One friend, who is also a friend of William’s, has said that the Sussexes “could have left with dignity and decency and not trashed the institution,” but instead “they’ve made money from trashing his family.”
One of the duke’s closest intimates (someone “who has faithfully kept Harry’s secrets”) had previously told the Times, after the release of Spare, “I can’t believe he’d stoop so low. It’s outrageously disloyal.”
Sure, that life out in the cold might now include a Californian mega-mansion that boasts more loo’s than probably Buckingham Palace has below stairs and all the lovely freedom the duke can fit in the hand basket of his bicycle – but it sounds like it has come at a very high personal cost.
“He’s an angry boy,” one of his oldest friends has now told the Times. “Things haven’t turned out how he wanted. I think he misses being over here [in Britain] desperately and wants to be admired more. Anyone who knows him feels he’d rather be top of the pops here with everyone loving him, as they do with William and Kate.”
The same friend is one of “the few” who still get “the odd WhatsApp from him”.
Is that a lonely image or what? Good thing, based on Harry & Meghan, he seems to have really gotten into tending his hummingbird feeder.
Going on Nikkhah’s reporting, it would not appear that the duke has replaced his old social circle with a bright and exciting new Montecito ones where they enjoy regular drumming circles and throwing caution to the window and occasionally drinking a full-fat latte. (You devils, you!)
The only name that the Times report mentions is Canadian music mogul David Foster who is 74-years-old and whose wife Katharine McPhee (who went to school in LA with his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex) has previously said they are “like father and son”.
Definitely sounds healthy and not at all like a bit of Psych 101 displacement given his own father, as a recent People report detailed, won’t take his son’s calls.
Contrast this current situation with Harry’s 30th birthday when Charles handed over the keys to Clarence House and “gave him the run” of the massive property, according to the Mail at the time, to throw a black-tie event that featured a private performance from Ellie Goudling. A decade on and Harry can’t even get his father, who is being treated for cancer, to find a crisp 15-minute window in his diary to see him after flying ten hours from Los Angeles.
When Harry turned 30 in 2014, it was accompanied by a parade of laudatory articles, all praising his evolution from nightclub habitué to serious chap, having recently founded the highly successful Invictus Games. The prince, the consensus went at the time, seemed to have come good and the tone and tenor was of pride in what he was doing with his position.
And now? Now he sounds like a man largely disconnected from his former life, his former social circle and who has yet to build strong support networks in his adopted home.
However, as another friend told Nikkhah, “he has no regrets.”
“He made his decision [to leave] for his family — that was the right choice,” explained the pal. “But did he get what he wanted? No. The perfect scenario was to get what they originally asked for — ‘We’d like to move and still be semi-royals.’ So they’re finding another way of doing it.”
Hopefully that ‘other way’ might one day include more friends.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as ‘Gilded exile’: Prince Harry’s friends speak anonymously in bombshell report
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