Prince Harry on 'paradise' at Balmoral and the night on Deeside his childhood ended

A detailed account of the night at Balmoral Castle when Prince Harry learned of his mother’s death serves as the opening salvo of his memoir Spare with the Deeside residence, which he described as his once ‘Paradise’, also becoming the backdrop to the final moments of his childhood as a restless sleep gave way to news of the tragedy in Paris.

The summer of 1997 at Balmoral had offered the usual, gloriously contented break for Harry and his brother William, who busied their time fishing, shooting, eavesdropping on guests, larking with the footmen and trying to play the bagpipes for the first time.

"To me Balmoral was always simply Paradise. A cross between Disney World and some sacred Druid grove. In fact, it’s possible that I was never happier than that one golden summer day at Balmoral, August 30, 1997,” Harry wrote.

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The night of August 30 – his mother died in hospital in the early hours of the following day – is recalled in detail, as is the environment of the castle, which is charted inch by inch by Harry who cites his acute recollections of his physical environments as compensation for the loss of memory and which he suffered following the death of his mother.

A picture from Balmoral in August 1997, taken around a fortnight before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. PIC: James Gray/Shutterstock.A picture from Balmoral in August 1997, taken around a fortnight before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. PIC: James Gray/Shutterstock.
A picture from Balmoral in August 1997, taken around a fortnight before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. PIC: James Gray/Shutterstock.

That night, he took dinner with his brother, both dressed in pyjamas after their baths and watching the television, waiting on their footmen to bring in their trays of food served on bone china and covered in silver domes.

"Footmen, bone china – it sounds posh, and I suppose it was, but under those fancy domes was just kiddie stuff. Fish fingers, cottage pies, roast chicken, green peas,” he wrote

As they ate, they heard their father “padding past in his slippers”, the familiar sound that indicated it was nearly 8pm, with the migration of adults downstairs for their evening meal, accompanied by the “first bleaty notes” of the bagpipes, around half an hour away.

"For the next two hours, the adults would be held captive in the Dinner Dungeon, forced to sit around that long table, forced to squint at each other in the dim gloom of a candelabra designed by Prince Albert,” he wrote.

Their father then stopped by to see the boys, Prince Harry recalling the smell of his aftershave, Eau Savage, which he “slathered” on his cheeks, his neck and his shirt. The boys were told to be good, not to stay up late. After dinner, the pair went on their usual ramble around the castle to listen in on guests and bumped into the Queen’s Piper, who let them have a puff of his pipes.

To bed, and Harry recalls being scared of the dark – a trait he says he inherited from his mother – and pulled the old, repaired bed covers up to his chin with the door left ajar to let in some light.

He wrote: “How much time elapsed before I dropped off? In other words, how much of my childhood remained, and how much did I cherish it, savour it, before groggily becoming aware of ---Pa?”

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King Charles came into the room to tell him of the crash, placing a hand on his youngest son’s knee. Harry recalled a “shift internally” as he learned of his mother being “quite badly injured” in a car crash and taken to hospital. He wrote of waiting for reassurance that she was going to be fixed, but it never came.

"They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it,” he was told.

Harry wrote: “These phrases remain in my mind like darts on a board. He did say it that way. I know that much for sure. She didn’t make it . And then everything seemed to come to a stop.

"None of what I said to him then remains in my memory. It’s possible that I didn’t say anything. What I do remember with startling clarity is that I didn’t cry. Not one tear. Pa didn’t hug me.”

Harry remained in his room alone, not calling out to his brother next door or his nanny Mabel and not seeing anyone until 9am, when the piper started to play outside.

“Thousands of years old, bagpipes are built to amplify what’s already in your heart…And if you are in grief, even if you’re twelve years old and don’t know you are in grief, maybe especially if you don’t know, bagpipes can drive you mad,” he wrote.

Despite the devastating news, the usual Sunday routine of church at Crathie Kirk followed as the news of Diana’s death was unleashed on the world. On the short drive back to Balmoral, they stopped to look at flowers – “a matrix of coloured dots” – as the rhythmic clicking of press cameras drowned out all other sounds.

"I reached for my father’s hand, for comfort, then cursed myself, because that gesture set off an explosion of clicks. I’d given them exactly what they wanted. Emotion. Drama. Pain,” he wrote.

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Harry added: “The next few days passed in a vacuum, no one saying anything. We all remained ensconced inside the castle. It was like being inside a crypt, except a crypt where everyone’s wearing trews and keeping to normal routines and schedules. If anyone talked about anything, I didn’t hear them.”

He then speaks of his deep belief that his mother was not dead, but playing dead, and simply hiding from her unhappiness.

A trip to Balmoral four years later and a family gathering at the hunting lodge Inchnabobart, deep on the Balmoral Estate, serves a happier memory for Prince Harry. That night, the Duke of Edinburgh tended one of his barbecues of venison fillets and Cumberland sausages while his granny made one of her special salad dressings. Memorably for Harry, he spent the night drinking Martinis with the Queen Mother, then 101, who he called Gan-Gan, and tried to teach her how to say “booyakasha” and flick her fingers like Ali G, the gangster creation of actor and writer Sacha Baron Cohen. The Duke of Edinburgh looked happily on.

“It tickled me, thrilled me. It made me feel...a part of things. This was my family, in which I, for one night at least, had a distinctive role. And that role, for once, wasn’t the Naughty One.”

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