Prince Harry had a close relationship with Prince William and Kate Middleton and got on well with Queen Camilla, too, a former royal butler has revealed in a new book.
In his upcoming book, The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life of Royal Service, Grant Harrold makes a number of revelations about the royals from his seven years working for King Charles.
Let’s take a look…
In his tell-all memoir Spare in 2023, Harry made some scathing comments about Queen Camilla.
Harry claimed that he and William begged their father Charles not to marry Camilla.
He wrote: “We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. ‘Just please don’t marry her. Just be together, Pa.’ He didn’t answer. But she answered. Straight away. Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown (with Pa’s blessing, we presumed).”
In his book, serialised in The Telegraph, Grant describes Charles on his wedding day to Camilla as the “happiest” he’d ever seen him.
Grant also says he was confused over Harry’s comments about Camilla in Spare. He promises that Charles, Camilla, William and Harry “got on so well”. He says he doesn’t “understand what Harry’s said”.
He insists he saw the four of them getting on well, “having dinners together” and drinks.
Harry was close to both William and Kate before ‘rift’
Elsewhere, Grant has said that despite people thinking that Harry, 40, was “left out” by William, 43, and Kate, this wasn’t the case.
Grant writes: “They involved him. He used to go out with Kate. William would be away, and Kate and Harry would be off doing stuff together.”
He adds that Harry and Kate would “go shopping” and “go to pubs” together. Kate, 43, and Harry’s ex-girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, got on well with each other, too, according to Grant.
“I think when people say, ‘Oh he was left out,’ he really wasn’t,” the former butler adds in the book.
Harry himself spoke about his close bond with William and Kate before things turned sour. Gushing over the moment he met Kate for the first time, Harry wrote in Spare: “I liked [William’s] new girlfriend.
“She was carefree, sweet, kind. She’d done a gap year in Florence, knew about photography, art. And clothes. She loved clothes. Her name was Kate.”
Harry called Kate the “sister I’d never had and always wanted”. Harry also gushed over being a doting uncle to William and Kate’s children.
Harry, William and Charles would be ‘silly’ together
During Grant’s time with the royals, he says brothers William and Harry were “so close” and “the banter was great”.
He adds: “They used to go around being silly with each other and winding each other up, jumping out at their dad from corners and making him laugh. It was just like a family. The king used to do things to make them laugh and giggle.”
It’s a marked contrast to their current relationship. Rumours of a fallout began to arise in 2018, before intensifying when Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped back from being senior working royals in 2020 and moved to California.
In his memoir, Spare, Harry claimed that he and William had a physical altercation in 2019. He alleged that William referred to Meghan as “difficult” and “rude” and then “grabbed” Harry by the collar and “knocked me to the floor”.
He said earlier this year that his father wouldn’t speak to him, too.
What Charles was really like to work with
Grant also speaks highly of the king in his book and enjoyed working for him when he was the Prince of Wales.
When first meeting the king, over Duchy lemon biscuits, Charles reportedly asked Grant: “Do you really want to work with me? Can you put up with this, because it’s very different?”
“I remember saying it would be an absolute dream come true,” Harrold writes. “He said it could be a tough environment but he really hoped I could do this.”
Grant goes on to describe Charles as “very calm” and a “very gentle character” who “didn’t once raise his voice”.
The former butler adds that the king “does get perceived as out of touch and he’s not”.
Royal butler’s trip to Camilla’s house
When Grant first began working for Charles, he didn’t yet live with Camilla. However, she’d visit his Highgrove residence frequently, and the butler remarks that there wasn’t any police protection.
“I remember one time turning up at [her house] at night – he asked me to take something to her,” he recalls. “I remember getting there and she opened the window upstairs and looked down and went ‘who’s there?!’ I went ‘It’s Grant!’. She said ‘Grant, what the hell are you doing here at this time?’ ‘I’ve had to bring this over for you.’ ‘Oh no, that’s crazy you shouldn’t be coming at this time of night!’ She was trying to offer me tea at 9.45pm.”
Shock over Charles keeping his name as monarch
Charles had reportedly discussed one day becoming king with Grant, telling him that “when that job comes you lose a parent”. Charles became king following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Grant recalls asking Charles what he’d be called. The then Prince of Wales reportedly replied: “I could be Charles, but I could also be George VII,” with his grandfather having been George VI.
Harrold adds that he was “shocked” when the king announced he would reign under Charles III rather than George VII.
What Prince Philip thought of Harry and Meghan’s wedding
Grant reported live from Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, and as he watched the royals leave the ceremony – which included a 14-minute sermon by American bishop Michael Curry – he claims to have heard the late Prince Philip make his feelings known.
“Once all the formalities were over, we watched as the happy couple, and then the other members of the royal family, filed out of the chapel,” he writes. “When Prince Philip came out he turned to the Queen and said, ‘Thank (bleep) that’s over.’”
