Harry back in UK for statue unveiling
The Duke of Sussex has arrived back in the UK, giving him time to view the statue of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, privately ahead of its unveiling next week.
Prince Harry, 36, will spend five days in self isolation at Frogmore Cottage, Windsor.
The public has been urged not to leave flowers at the base of the statue, which will be unveiled in the gardens of Kensington Palace on Thursday (local time), to stop it becoming a shrine.
The sculpture will stand in the Sunken Garden of the palace.
Commissioned in January 2017 by the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, the statue will recognise her “positive impact”.
A six-strong committee headed by Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the Dukes’ former private secretary, has spent the intervening years liaising with all involved and sourcing funds from private investors said to include Sir Elton John and David Furnish. The statue was designed by Ian RankBroadley, whose portrait of the Queen appears on all UK coins.
But for all the attention that has gone into this project, its unveiling has come to represent a more poignant moment than anyone could have foreseen. For in death, the late Princess is expected to bring her two warring sons back together.
On Thursday, the brothers will stand shoulder to shoulder, united in her name. The statue is expected to be brought into the grounds of Kensington Palace in the coming days before being erected on a plinth overlooking the pond.
Royal correspondents have been denied access to the event, with just one Press Association reporter allowed inside the grounds alongside a photographer and two camera operators.
From Friday, the public will have unrestricted access to the garden, which is open throughout the day. But all concerned are determined that it will not become a place of pilgrimage, lost in a sea of flowers.
“Any flowers or tributes left there will be removed and placed at the Golden Gates, where they have always been permitted,” a source said.
William and Harry, who were 15 and 13 when the Princess was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997, commissioned the statue after a catalogue of problems with the £3.6 million ($7 million) Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park.
When the statue was commissioned in 2017, the brothers said: “It has been 20 years since our mother’s death and the time is right to recognise her positive impact in the UK and around the world with a permanent statue.”