Cheeky monkeys!
to visit Balmoral themselves later in August, when Prince George was expected to start learning fly-fishing himself.
As the summer drew to a close, though, it was time for a return to school.
Lady Louise Windsor, like so many other youngsters, had been denied the chance to take her GCSE exams before the summer because of the pandemic, but her results based on grades predicted by her school teachers meant she was starting A-level studies at school in Ascot.
In a rare newspaper interview in June, her mother Sophie, Countess of Wessex, had said: “She’s working hard and will do A-levels. I hope she goes to university. I wouldn’t force her, but if she wants to. She’s quite clever.”
It was back to school, too, at St Thomas’s, for Prince George and his sister Princess Charlotte, and mum Kate managed to meet up with other parents in Battersea Park.
Keen-eyed among them might have spotted the Duchess wearing a sweet necklace tribute to her three children.
The All The Falling Stars necklace is engraved with the letters G, C, L in honour of George, Charlotte and Louis.
The three excited youngsters had a very special lesson in conservation later in September when they got to meet veteran broadcaster Sir David Attenborough in the garden of their London home at Kensington Palace.
Sir David, 94, was attending a private viewing of his new documentary,A Life On Our Planet, hosted by Prince William.
The screening was held in the grounds of Kensington Palace to allow for social distancing, and because Prince William shares Sir David’s passion for campaigning on environmental issues.
PRINCE George and Princess Charlotte were thrilled to meet the famous TV naturalist whose previous documentaries they had seen, and Sir David gave Prince George a fossilised giant tooth from an extinct shark.
young royal looked enthralled as he studied the tooth of a carcharocles megalodon, a shark that was once a huge sea predator.
Sir David had found the 23 million years old tooth embedded in soft yellow limestone during a family holiday on Malta in the late 1960s.
All three Cambridge children were said to be “massive fans” of Sir David and before the meeting they got to record questions for him and receive videoed answers which were broadcast a week later.
It was the first time any of the children had been heard speaking publicly.
Prince George’s question perhaps explained the relevance of the shark’s tooth he was subsequently given.
He asked: “Hello David Attenborough, what animal do you think will become extinct next?”
Sir David replied: “Let’s hope there won’t be any.There are lots of things we can do when animals are in danger of extinction. We can protect them.
“About 40 years ago I was with some mountain gorillas in the centre of Africa.
Mountain gorillas were then very, very rare – only 250 of them left.And we showed pictures of them on television around the world and people thought how terrible it would be if these became extinct. “So they subscribed lots of money and lots of people came to help and now, there are over a thousand of them. So you can save an animal if you want to and put your mind to it.
“People around the world are doing that because animals are so precious. Let’s hope there won’t be any more that’ll go extinct.” Princess Charlotte said: “Hello David Attenborough. I like spiders, do you like spiders too?”
Delighted Sir David said: “I love spiders.
FAMILY TIME: The Cambridges enjoyed a trip to the panto, their first public appearance as a family of five. Young Archie, left, was the centre of attention in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Christmas card, an image taken by Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland
I’m so glad you like them! I think they’re wonderful things.
“Why is it that people are so frightened of them? I think it’s because they’ve actually got eight legs, which is much more than us.
“If you’ve got eight legs you can move in any direction so you can never be sure which way that spider’s going to go. So people don’t like them and they don’t like those hairy legs either.
“But spiders are so clever. Have you ever tried to watch one build its web? That is extraordinary. How does it make this circular web like that? Try to watch and see how they do it – it’s marvellous.”
Two-year-old Prince Louis stole the show, however, with his blunt question: “What animal do you like?”
Sir David replied: “I think I like monkeys best because they’re such fun.They can jump all over the place and they don’t bite. Some do but they’re very careful, and they’re so funny. I like them a lot.
“Mind you, you can’t have monkeys sitting around the home because that’s not where they live.They live out in the forest.
“So what can you have at home that you like? Well, which would you choose? A puppy or a kitten? That’s a very difficult question. I think I’d go for a puppy.”
Prince George was clearly being troubled by the issue of extinction, as his father the Duke of Cambridge revealed a week later when he launched his Earthshot Prize – five £1 million awards a year, for ten years, for the best solutions to environmental problems.
He said his eldest son had been left so saddened by a Sir David Attenborough documentary about extinction that he had told his dad: “I don’t want to watch this any more.”
Prince William admitted he was “struggling