I set out to discover what Prince Harry was really like behind the spotlight

At Prince Harry’s last milestone birthday, his future looked to be set in stone. A road of royal duty ahead, regularly voted the most popular member of his family, and actively in search of someone to settle down with, the 30-year-old Harry was fourth in line to the throne and at the heart of a newly streamlined Firm.

Then, he was weighing up his options as he left the Army, speaking of hopes that he would find someone to have children with, and a job with a wage and “normal people” as colleagues. He was, he said, at a “crossroads”.

He celebrated his birthday, just after his first Invictus Games, with a black-tie party at Clarence House thrown by his brother, with Highgrove champagne sent by his father.

A decade on, as the Duke of Sussex turns 40, and everything has changed.

As the sun rises over his Californian home on September 15, Harry could be forgiven for congratulating himself on achieving part of what he set out to do: he has one of the most famous marriages in the world, with two small children he dotes on.

Gone is the royal duty; the engagements shaking hands with volunteers on a wet Wednesday back in Britain. But gone too are the palaces, the honorary military titles, and many of the old friends who would drag him down the pub or reminisce over their schooldays and Army escapades.

Instead, there is Montecito. Walks on the beach, bike rides, school runs and jellyfish kites flown on the lawn. Flanked by security on the rare occasions he is seen in public, Prince Harry is in demand but under the radar. He works out, occasionally goes out for dinner, hosts new friends at his nine-bedroom home (complete with 16 bathrooms and a swimming pool).

Prince Archie is now five and at a local school, while three-year-old Princess Lilibet, according to her mother, has “found her voice”.

There is much, in short, to enjoy.

But if a 40th birthday is a chance to sit back and evaluate life, Harry has more than most to think about.

Click here to view this content.

That “crossroads” he once felt himself at is long behind him, in the rear-view mirror as he has sped along his path to financial freedom in America, throwing out royal grievances like grenades as he went.

He is seemingly at war on multiple fronts: with the tabloid press, over his British security arrangements, and – via television screens and memoir pages – with members of his own family.

That idea of a waged job with ordinary people is long forgotten, swapped for TV, podcast and book deals, which are no doubt needed to raise the considerable funds required to run a mansion and personal protection team.

The public now knows more about him than they ever dreamed, thanks to Spare (all 416-pages of it), including a memorable account of frostbite around the time of Prince William’s wedding, which left him wondering, in his own words: “What was the universe out to prove by taking my penis at the same moment it took my brother?”

“Time, as the doctor predicted, would fix my todger,” he wrote. “When would it work its magic on my heart?”

These days, the King – weary of conversations about security, and having cancer treatment – doesn’t always answer his calls, it has been reported, while Prince William remains stung by the public accusations the Sussexes have made about his wife, who has also had cancer. If Harry’s recent visit to the UK for the funeral of his uncle, Lord Fellowes, has moved the dial on the brothers’ total estrangement, it has not yet come to light. One eyewitness reported that the pair did not appear to talk to each other at all at the service.

A 40th birthday party, on some scale, will happen in California, Harry’s wife and children at the centre of it.

And the future, for the first time in his life, is Harry’s alone to decide. No longer under the eye of his hated palace officials, his path is his own to choose.

“There is so much good work happening,” a member of their team has said.

Prince Harry’s new circle is small but “amazing”, insists an ally, and Harry is “doing great”. Others, quoted in different Sunday newspapers, claim he’s an “angry boy” feeling “more and more isolated in California”.

“Does he look like a man who is unhappy?” counters a separate source, citing recent smiling photographs of Harry and Meghan in Colombia.

Never has one man been described so differently depending on who you speak to and what you read.

Prince Harry was last seen in action in Colombia, on a four-day DIY tour with his wife in which he was seen trying out his Spanish and salsa dancing. The trip cost the country almost £45,000, with the Sussexes using their semi-public events to espouse women’s empowerment, mental health in schools and digital wellness.

Not entirely unlike his royal tours of old in content, it was low on official handshakes and diplomacy but high on hugs, and scrapped the advice of the Foreign Office in favour of being personally hosted by the country’s vice-president. It caused bemusement in some quarters back in Britain, with the recurring theme of “why?”.

The Sussexes’ new style of overseas tours is “embarrassing”, says a long-term royal observer. But the sole reporter who covered the Colombia trip for Harper’s Bazaar was won over, saying their “warmth and compassion” showed the “intentionality they bring to the way they use their platform”.

As for the rumours that Harry is now estranged from all of his old friends, supporters are quick to disagree. “Of course” he keeps in touch with his former circle, says one staunch Sussex ally, but it doesn’t mean he wants to come back. Some old friends back in London still talk with him via an occasional FaceTime or WhatsApp, albeit they find some of Harry’s new world “baffling”.

News reports that a “blueprint” for the Prince’s return to the UK in some form is being drawn up – a so-called “Operation Bring Harry In From the Cold” – have been quashed by those familiar with his working plans. He has “no interest” in returning to royal duties, a source told the Telegraph. His admirers object hugely to the idea that he is looking back, pining for any part of his former home.

His day-to-day life does indeed seem enviable.

There is meditation (a 30-40-minute session each day, scheduled in to make sure it happens) and exercise (formerly at Barry’s Bootcamp in LA, more recently with personal trainers).

He chats with his staff, enjoys the garden, marvels at the local birds, does the school run, and walks the dogs. He and the Duchess have been seen occasionally at local steakhouse Lucky’s and upmarket Italian restaurant Tre Lune. The friends they are seen with are high-powered: millionaires, billionaires, business leaders, successful entrepreneurs, producers.

Even their chickens are well-connected. When Ellen DeGeneres, the comedian and fellow Montecito resident, noticed her chicken Sinkie being bullied by other birds after breaking its leg, it was the Sussexes she called on to rehome in their large coop. “I love to rescue,” Meghan has said.

Harry has video calls with his team and some of his old charities, sometimes wearing sheepskin slippers under his desk as he works in a shared office with his wife.

“Normally when you see him around here, he’s walking his Labrador on the beach or on his bicycle followed by his security in a Range Rover,” says a neighbour. “They keep themselves to themselves. I haven’t seen Harry around much.”

The Duchess is spotted slightly more regularly, at the farmer’s market or out to lunch with friends, and she is said to have joined a mahjong group – a traditional Chinese board game getting a new lease of life with Gen Z and described by its players as “the new book group”.

“It’s paradise living here,” says Richard Mineards, a well-connected society columnist for the Montecito Journal who lives, he jokes, a “tiara’s toss” from them in the exclusive area of Riven Rock.

“They live rather splendidly, it couldn’t be a nicer place.

“It’s a very wealthy community, we have a lot of people giving a lot of money to our cultural organisations as well as charities, but we don’t see them.”

The couple are conspicuous, he added, for their security, particularly after first moving there during the pandemic: “We have got a lot of very rich and very famous people here, and none of them have a security retinue like the Sussexes.”

“The community is waiting for them – they’re gnashing at the bit. The cachet of a Duke and Duchess!”

Instead, the Prince’s friends told a US tabloid magazine recently, he has a tight group of friends for “understandable reasons”.

There are some subtle signs of American “celebrification” too – Harry’s accent has shifted to swap “t”s for “d”s, and details of his designer outfits have started to appear in news reports alongside those of his wife’s wardrobe.

His status as an ex-royal royal is convoluted. He is still a prince, the son of a king and brother of a future king. Archie’s nursery, he showed us via Netflix, has a formal photograph of his late Grandma Diana wearing a tiara on its wall.

He has asked new acquaintances in California to call him “Harry”, but wants his children to be Prince and Princess, believing it will affect their security status. He and Meghan no longer have HRH status, but were addressed formally as “Your Royal Highness” at points of their tour in Colombia.

There is no question that the Sussexes’ deals have come rolling in as a result of their former titles and status – one glance at their new website displays their full titles and a coat of arms, which looks remarkably regal to the untrained eye. But the site’s biography of Harry describes a “humanitarian, military veteran, mental health advocate, and environmental campaigner” with no mention of his birthright.

“The people they work with and in the countries they seem to want to visit largely don’t know or care about the ins and outs of Harry leaving the working Royal family,” one source said. “They will always see him as the grandson of the Queen [Elizabeth II] or son of Diana. The technicalities of whether he’s an HRH… I don’t think it means much to ordinary people.”

Instead, in some quarters, Harry has become the unwitting face of the anti-monarchy movement. One source campaigning for slavery reparations in the Caribbean told the Telegraph that there are real hopes he will use his family links to pressure King Charles (and therefore Britain) into a formal apology for the former British Empire’s actions.

In Colombia last month, the vice-president called Harry and Meghan a “symbol of resistance”.

Click here to view this content.

A prince in self-imposed exile is proving too good a story for those with an agenda to pass up. But the message coming loud and clear from Team Sussex? They’re ready to look forward and move on. “The Duke and Duchess are committed to their mission: Show Up, Do Good,” we are told.

Next up, shortly after his birthday, Harry is planning a trip to New York for meetings with four of his familiar organisations: African Parks, The Halo Trust, The Diana Award and eco-tourism company Travalyst. They seem set to re-establish Harry’s own long-term projects, as well as positioning him as Diana’s son. He usually travels back to Britain for the annual WellChild Awards, which take place in September – he is a long-term patron of the charity for seriously ill children. Then the next Invictus Games will be held in Vancouver in February.

If only his security in the UK could be permanently settled in line with his wishes, a Sussex source tells US celebrity magazine People, it would be “swords down” on his interviews. Until then, the need to make serious money remains.

The Sussexes’ commercial deals have not always been smooth sailing. The Netflix deal, announced to huge fanfare, is still there. At the start, there was talk about Archewell Productions being on a level with the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground or Shondaland, the mind-bogglingly successful TV juggernaut founded by producer Shonda Rhimes that is home to Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton and Scandal.

Some programmes have been made – the six-part bombshell Harry & Meghan, an Invictus documentary, and a series about activists – but there has been the ever-present issue of staff departing and criticism from outside the industry over how long things have taken to come to fruition.

Click here to view this content.

They have parted ways with Spotify, with that unflattering but lingering description from an executive who called them “f—ing grifters”.

There was a time, one source joked, that “they seem to be losing their Sus-sex appeal”.

But there are projects coming up: producing a romcom, Meghan’s cookery show, and a polo documentary, which Harry is undeniably well-placed to make. On the money-making front, the Duchess has launched a new lifestyle label, American Riviera Orchard, unveiled in April when she sent 50 jars of jam to “friends” including reality star Kris Jenner and model Chrissy Teigen. Not yet off the ground, it has recently run into difficulties securing a trademark.

The Duke’s memoir Spare is coming out in paperback in October. Plus the Sussexes have launched The Parents’ Network to support those who have lost children to online harm, and there is mention of an Archewell Foundation-supported project to help US voters spot “deepfakes” ahead of their election.

Neither Harry nor Meghan want to dwell on the past, their allies insist. But back in Britain the popularity polls remain unforgiving. The latest YouGov survey shows around three in 10 British people having a positive view of Harry up against 60 per cent feeling “fairly negative or very negative”.

Many of those who worked with Harry in years gone by remain fond of him, even as some of them admit to being deeply frustrated at his choices. The horrified reaction in royal circles to his memoir, documentary and many interviews scarcely needs repeating. More recent articles, in which Harry’s friends lamented his security frustrations and lack of family warmth, were described, sadly, by one source as a “howl of rage”.

With Harry 5,000 miles away, the Royal family back home has been dealing with battles of its own. The illnesses of the King and Princess of Wales have focused minds in the palaces, with all energies – personal and professional – going towards keeping the show on the road and nursing the monarchy’s star players back to health. There is simply less time to ponder other dramas.

While Prince William may once have dwelt on his relationship with his younger brother, one friend said, “his wife is the centre of his world. His father is ill. It brings things into focus”.

As a member of the Royal family, Prince Harry – the self-described spare – was always acutely aware of his place.

Conscious that the younger generation are always the more glamorous and fascinating to the public, allowing them to win column inches and broadcast time for their favourite causes, he once said he would use his own platform “until I become boring, or until [Prince] George ends up becoming more interesting”.

Strangely, that ticking time limit has disappeared. Outside of the Royal family and the inevitable march of time from one monarch to the next, he can now be as famous as he likes for as long as he likes, and do as much or as little work as he pleases along the way.

Outside of the palace institution he felt held him back, away from the British tabloid press he hopes to end, Prince Harry’s future is finally his alone to define. The question that remains is whether it will bring him the happiness – and the contentment – he hoped it would.