Those feelings of guilt and frustration lessened somewhat once he was older. In 2017, he told me, as we talked one to one in Kensington Palace, that he now didn’t think journalists and photographers “were all bad. There are some exceptions.”
I remembered this comment two years later at the end of what had been a hugely successful tour in South Africa, for them both, when a sad and bitter-looking Harry took part in an ITV documentary detailing his Royal visit: “Everything I do reminds me of [my mother],” he said. “Every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash it takes me straight back, so in that respect it’s the worst reminder of her life.” In other words, he still hated being in the spotlight.
Yet, the fact is that now he and Meghan could choose to live a completely private life away from all forms of media. We see, instead, the pair opting for global visibility, even inviting chosen media into their LA home. In particular, they are photographed – almost constantly – even when that could easily be avoided.
Take, for example, the Sussexes’ “private visit” to a Los Angeles cemetery in November 2020 to honour fallen soldiers and mark Remembrance Sunday in the UK. They could have gone alone and paid their respects quietly. Instead, the pair enlisted celebrity fashion photographer Lee Morgan, and their office released the resulting pictures to the UK.
Ditto their four-day faux-Royal tour in New York City a year later, when the couple had their own photographer following them around – some thought for a future Netflix documentary – as well as the regular press photographers.
Looking back to the start of the relationship, when Meghan met Harry, she must have been delighted at first that here was guaranteed glamorous PR for free as the Prince’s girlfriend. But the closer they got, the more frustrating it must have been to realise that her meat-and-drink need for publicity had to be curtailed because of his need for privacy. Harry’s need was so deep, he projected it on to her when he issued an unprecedented appeal to the world’s media for his then girlfriend to be left alone, claiming she had been subjected to a wave of “abuse and harassment”.
