Traumatised Prince Harry wishes he could move to Africa

Harry and Meghan reveal they find public life almost unbearable, yearn to move somewhere like Africa.

Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex have would like to move to Africa.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would like to base themselves in Africa and plan to dedicate their “life’s work” to the continent.

Prince Harry, who has said he feels “more like myself” in Africa, said Cape Town would be an “amazing place for us to be able to base ourselves”, as the couple reveal they are struggling to cope with the pressures of life in the UK.

Speaking to the British broadcaster Tom Bradby for a documentary on the couple’s South African tour last month, Harry said: “I don’t know where we could live in Africa at the moment. We’ve just come from Cape Town. That would be an amazing place for us to be able to base ourselves.”

Earlier this year, The Sunday Times revealed that Buckingham Palace was exploring plans for the Sussexes to move to Africa. In the program, however, which will be broadcast on ITV on Sunday, he acknowledged the difficulties and “judgment” that a permanent move to Africa might prompt, making it unlikely for the time being.

“With all the problems that are going on there, I just don’t see how we would be able to,” Harry said, adding: “I think it would be a very hard place to live when you know what’s going on — but, then again, you’re sort of slightly disconnected from it.”

World Exclusive; Meghan tells me of the intense pressures of a life in the spotlight and the toll it has taken on her behind the scenes. pic.twitter.com/tpmeomj5UV

— tom bradby (@tombradby) October 18, 2019

Harry also revealed that regardless of whether he, Meghan and their baby son, Archie, moved to Africa, they would still focus on tackling the continent’s problems.

He said: “The rest of our lives, especially our life’s work, will be predominantly focused on Africa, on conservation … there’s a lot of things to be done. There’s a lot of problems here, but there’s huge potential for solutions.”

In clips released ahead of Sunday’s broadcast, the couple spoke about the challenges of living in the public spotlight and media scrutiny. Meghan, 38, said it had been a struggle to cope “on top of just trying to be a new mum or trying to be a newlywed … and especially as a woman”, and said that “not many people have asked if I’m OK”.

Harry, 35, has also said that his grief for his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales is a “wound that festers … every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash”.

Bradby writes on Sunday: “It doesn’t take a genius to work out the basic psychology at play. Harry still believes that the press, or at least the game she was forced to engage in with it, killed his mother. He now fears, in the most deep and atavistic way, that history may repeat itself with his wife.”

Although the tour proved “such a fantastic trip in so many ways”, it ended in controversy after the surprise announcement that Meghan was taking legal action against a newspaper that had published a private letter she wrote to her estranged father.

Bradby says he “couldn’t quite shake a sense of sadness” over his “powerful impression that this young family, happy in themselves” were finding it hard to cope with what he says Meghan described as “existing, not living”. He found both Harry and Meghan “came across as more vulnerable and bruised than the spoiled, petulant, arrogant and entitled caricatures sometimes tied to the public whipping post”.

The couple in Johannesburg during their recent tour.

He also says many reports of the couple’s “difficulties, splits and tensions within the wider royal family” were “by no means all exaggerated or untrue”.

This is the third time Bradby has worked with Harry on a film about his charitable efforts in Africa, but as the journey wore on, “another human story gradually emerged, of a couple who clearly feel under the most extreme pressure and seem, at times, to be buckling beneath it”.

Bradby says he first met Meghan before her engagement to talk to her about the attention she was already receiving from the British press. Since then, the attention had become “uncomfortably intense”.

When Bradby met them before their African tour “he found them “bruised, even a little defensive. I was to discover in the course of the film that this wasn’t even the half of it.”

The Sunday Times