Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Prince Harry was born in St Mary’s Hospital, London, on 15 September 1984. He is the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales. Harry was educated at Wetherby School, Ludgrove School, and Eton College. He spent parts of his gap year in Australia and Lesotho, then underwent officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

About Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex in brief

Summary Prince Harry, Duke of SussexPrince Harry was born in St Mary’s Hospital, London, on 15 September 1984. He is the younger son of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales. Harry was educated at Wetherby School, Ludgrove School, and Eton College. He spent parts of his gap year in Australia and Lesotho, then underwent officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a cornet into the Blues and Royals, serving temporarily with his brother Prince William and completed training as a troop leader. In 2007–2008, Harry served for over ten weeks in Helmand, Afghanistan. He returned to Afghanistan for a 20-week deployment in 2012–2013 with the Army Air Corps. In June 2015, he resigned from the army. Harry launched the Invictus Games in 2014 and remains the patron of its foundation. He also gives patronage to several other organisations, including the HALO Trust, the London Marathon Charitable Trust, and Walking With The Wounded. In 2017, the prince acknowledged that he sought counselling twenty years later. His grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, made him Duke of Sussex hours before his 2018 wedding to American actress Meghan Markle. The couple have a son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor. In 2020, they stepped down as senior members of the royal family and moved to her native Southern California. Harry is sixth in the line of succession to the British throne. He has been described as ‘a top athlete’ and played competitive polo and rugby union and rugby.

One of Harry’s former teachers, Sarah Forsyth, has asserted that Harry was a ‘weak student’ and that staff at Eton conspired to help him cheat on examinations. While Eton and Harry denied the claims, it accepted the prince had received help in preparing for his A-level art and geography exams. Harry and William attended Gordonstoun, which Harry’s grandfather, father, two uncles, and two cousins had attended. It did, however, see Harry follow in his older brother’s footsteps and the Spencer family, as both Diana’s father and brother attended Eton. Harry began accompanying his parents on official visits at an early age; his first overseas tour was with his parents to Italy in 1985. Harry’s mother died in a car crash in Paris the following year, and he and William were staying with their father at Balmoral at the time. Harry, then 12, accompanied his father, brother, paternal grandfather, and maternal uncle, Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, in walking behind the funeral cortège from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey. His parents announced their second son’s given names would officially be Henry Charles Albert David. However, he would be known as Harry to his family and friends. As the prince grew up, he was referred to by Kensington palace, and therefore the Press and the public at large, as Prince Harry. He was baptised on 21 December 1984 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.