It is a love that crosses oceans. Less than a week after Prince Harry took a 2,700-km detour from his Caribbean trip to visit Meghan Markle in Toronto, she returned the favour. Last week, she flew to London to stay in his Kensington Palace cottage. Jet lag didn't stop them behaving like a loved-up couple out of a Richard Curtis film - buying a Christmas tree at a Battersea market and heading to the theatre to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
At 32, Harry, the "naughty" boy Prince, seems to have grown up. His nights spent falling out of clubs are long gone. Instead, in May, the Prince inaugurated a second Invictus Games - the paralympic sporting event he set up for military veterans, and which was held this year in Orlando, Florida. He also made a successful return to the Caribbean on behalf of the Queen: his first solo overseas tour, in 2012, took him to Belize, Bahamas and Jamaica, while this year's 15-day state visit included Antigua and Barbuda, which he last visited as a 12-year-old with the late Princess of Wales.
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He has also campaigned vigorously for Heads Together, the mental health partnership he helped set up with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and which is one of The Telegraph's Christmas appeal charities.
If, for Prince Harry, 2016 has been about duty, it has also been about the heart. According to a friend of Prince Harry and Ms Markle: "They are both clearly crazy about each other. They're very serious, and have told friends they are very much in love."
The focus of a new ITV documentary about the Prince, to be shown on Monday, will be his other great love: his charity work. The programme follows him to Lesotho, the African country where he founded Sentebale a decade ago. Set up with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, Sentebale helps desperate children, many suffering from HIV and Aids.
Harry's Aids work echoes Diana's charity campaigns. Next year marks 20 years since her death. It was the kind of epic shock which, combined with his parents' divorce a year earlier and global media attention, could have destroyed the future of many boys. Instead, barring those few scrapes in nightclubs and Las Vegas hotel rooms, Harry has flourished.
"His father was very supportive after Diana's death," says Hugo Vickers, author of biographies of the Queen Mother and the Duchess of Windsor. "He had to be both a father and a friend to both boys, and he has been. And Harry gets on very well with Prince William. You can tell from their body language. They're always together, always chatting, always sustaining their jolly jokes. Prince Harry is rather easier-going, but then he's got an easier job.
"He's carved out a niche for himself with the Invictus Games, the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy, and his charities. As the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have more babies, the further he gets from the throne. Princess Margaret was always very supportive of the Queen, but there was an element of frustration. Harry, however, isn't worried about being king."
![The cheeky Prince Harry has turned into a serious royal, as captured by a new film - no wonder his love life is blossoming](/web/20161220163830im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/e/8/6/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtdvpd.png/1482107446575.jpg)
Prince Harry was never academic at Eton, but he did develop strong friendships; many contemporaries remain close friends. "He already had that easy charm when he was at Eton," says a friend of Prince Charles, who has known Harry since he was a boy. "So open and friendly - a delight to know."
I saw that charm when I met Prince Harry in Turkey last year for the centenary of the Gallipoli. I was among a group of descendants of Gallipoli combatants - my great-grandfather was killed in the campaign. We gathered on the flight deck of HMS Bulwark to meet Prince Harry and Prince Charles. Both were real professionals, asking attentive questions about our ancestors. When I started telling Prince Harry about my great-grandfather, he politely interrupted to fill me in with the details: he had read the Foreign Office brief closely.
![Prince Harry on the first day of an official visit to the Caribbean on November 20.](/web/20161220163830im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/t/s/l/u/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtdvpd.png/1482107446575.jpg)
He is surprisingly tall, at 6ft 2in towering over his 5ft 10in father. And he has a genuine charm - that indefinable quality which is so overpowering when you bump into it. All the Gallipoli descendants remarked on it; a mixture of teasing, joking, self-deprecation and curiosity. And, when girls are around, the charm has a hypnotically seductive power.
"When I had a chat with him at Westminster Abbey in 2013, I could see his effect," says Vickers. "It was like the Beatles, with crowds of screaming girls leaning over the barrier."
![The cheeky Prince has turned into a serious royal, as captured by a new film - no wonder his love life with actress ...](/web/20161220163830im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/k/x/o/n/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtdvpd.png/1482107446575.jpg)
It made a difference that the Gallipoli trip involved his beloved Army, in which he served for a decade. Prince Harry did two tours in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. It was just before his second tour, in the summer of 2012, that Harry was photographed naked, wrapped round a naked girl in a Las Vegas hotel suite, where they had been playing strip billiards.
"General Sir Mike Jackson told me that, if you were about to go into the frontline in Afghanistan, you deserve to be in a hotel room in Las Vegas with lots of girls," says Vickers. "Harry was let down by his security. I'm not even sure he is that naughty. It's good that he was a tearaway when he was young, rather than leaving it late. Anyway, it seems the naughtier he is, the more popular he becomes."
Yet this was the year that Prince Harry made a seamless jump from enjoying himself to taking his royal duties seriously. Those duties are increasing as the Queen steps back from foreign tours.
Harry has just returned from a two-week trip to the Caribbean, representing his grandmother at the 50th anniversary of Barbados's independence. He also visited Antigua and Barbuda to mark its 35th anniversary of independence, as well as St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, and Guyana.
"Anyone who thinks he was having a holiday in the Caribbean should have a look at his schedule," says Vickers, who was in the Caribbean, following the royal tour. "He was working extremely hard.
"There was some pretty stodgy ceremonial stuff, and it was all a bit chaotic in Barbados because of a freak storm. But his speech was very good. And he's very good at interacting with children, playing tennis with the Governor-General. Then he can put on his uniform and decorations, and take the salute for an hour."
Tomorrow's front page: First pictures of Prince Harry and girlfriend Meghan Markle pic.twitter.com/uPGUYHLk8T
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 14, 2016
All those royal duties must become a repetitive grind - "but Prince Harry has developed the same sense of purpose as the rest of the Royal family", says Vickers. "He's never late for anything, never been on a bender before a royal engagement. He's a good sport."
And what of his finally settling down? Will Meghan get her charming prince? She'll have to have nerves of steel to manage the press attention - and that of other girls.
A friend witnessed that attention in a London nightclub when Harry was single. "It was extraordinary," he says. "Harry sat at a table in the club with his friends, and a series of pretty, young women took it in turns to sit next to him."
"Anyone who marries him will be compared to the Duchess of Cambridge, like Fergie was compared to Diana," says Vickers. "But Meghan Markle looks like she can handle it. On paper, everything's wrong - what with her being divorced - but it looks like she'd suit him. Jolly well let him marry her!"
Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English.
The Daily Telegraph
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