DASHING HARRY
THE 30 MOURNERS WHO WILL FAREWELL PHILIP
PRINCE Harry is back in his old home inside Kensington Palace, a stone’s throw from brother William, and a squad of 30 royals and insiders are ready to support the Queen at her beloved Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.
It is Harry’s first visit to Britain since the messy Megxit deal and just weeks after he and wife Meghan Markle bared their souls to Oprah.
The Queen has told son Prince Andrew that the peaceful passing of her husband of 73 years at their Windsor Castle home was a “miracle” but that there is now a “huge void” in her life.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s COVID-restricted funeral will be held at Windsor Castle on Saturday at 3pm local time (midnight AEST).
As Prince Harry bunkers down in quarantine at Nottingham Cottage, his former home inside the palace in central London, details of his grandfather’s final moments have been revealed.
His passing was “so gentle”, his daughter-in-law, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, said following a church service at the Royal Chapel of All Saints in the grounds of Windsor Great Park.
“It was just like somebody took him by the hand and off he went,” she said.
The grieving Queen attended a private mass in Windsor Castle.
The royal family has rallied around Her Majesty since the duke’s passing last week, with regular visits from Sophie, 56, wife of her youngest son Prince Edward, 57, and Prince Andrew, 61, who all live near Windsor Castle.
Prince Harry, 36, slipped into Britain late on Sunday night local time, but was not photographed at London’s Heathrow Airport.
“I saw him getting into an escorted car,” a witness told The Sun newspaper.
Prince Harry travelled alone because Meghan, 39, expecting the couple’s second child within months, was too pregnant to fly.
He was greeted with snow in London on his first day back in the UK from sunny California, where he moved after stepping down from royal duties in March 2020.
Prince Harry returns with
some trepidation following his sit-down interview with new neighbour Oprah Winfrey, in which he claimed Prince Charles stopped taking his calls and that the Royal Family was “racist”.
Prince Philip thought that Prince Harry and Meghan’s interview with Winfrey was “madness” and that “no good would come of it”.
The duke had also told friends that Prince Harry and Meghan’s American move was “not the right thing, either for the country, or for themselves.”
But Prince Philip, who died 62 days before 100th birthday, was philosophical in the end.
“It’s his life. People have got to lead their lives as they think best,” he told friends, according to biographer Gyles Brandreth.
Australia will be represented by Commodore Guy Holthouse at the duke’s funeral, which will take place entirely within castle walls.
The ahead-of-his-time ecoPrince will be carried in an electric Land Rover, instead of a traditional gun carriage.
There will be a procession from the state entrance of Windsor Castle to St George’s Chapel.
The duke personally oversaw the arrangements for his funeral, codenamed Operation Forth Bridge, and had ordered a $1600 woollen and cardboard coffin.
A former White House butler, Lynwood Westray, told an American news outlet of the duke’s refusal to stand on ceremony.
Prince Philip insisted that he poured Mr Westray, an African American butler, a drink when he was alone in the Red Room in the White House in 1979 following a function. “If you let me pour it, I’ll have one with you,” the duke said, according to Mr Westray.
Prince Charles, Prince William
and Prince Harry, along with Prince Edward, and Prince Andrew, were expected to follow the coffin in the procession.
The Band of the Grenadier Guards, of which the Duke of Edinburgh was colonel for 42 years, will lead the procession.
Military guns will be fired by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery from the east lawn of Windsor Castle each minute during the expected eight-minute funeral march.