It may have only lasted 54 minutes, but this week’s Clarence House ‘summit’ left the King feeling ‘currently less irritated’ with Prince Harry than by his older brother William.
So says Tina Brown, the bestselling Royal biographer, in a provocative intervention that has raised fresh questions over the heir to the throne’s work ethic.
In a post on Substack, Ms Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, claimed yesterday that the cancer-stricken monarch is frustrated by William’s ‘underwhelming’ approach to Royal duties.
She contrasted Harry’s ‘buoyant’ series of photo opportunities in the UK and Ukraine this week with William and his wife Kate’s appearances at a handful of ‘groaningly square’ charity functions.
The criticism by Ms Brown, a biographer and friend of the late Princess Diana, reopens the debate over the Prince and Princess of Wales‘s approach to balancing work and leisure, which has seen them accused of prioritising family life over official engagements.
‘The King is, I am told, currently less irritated with the prodigal Harry than he is with his elder son and heir,’ she wrote. ‘Somehow, William’s parenting dedication always seems couched as a tacit criticism of the King’s own paternal deficiencies. And after five confirmed family vacations in the past seven months, William’s first-week-back diary pulsated with two outings: a father-daughter excursion to a Women’s Rugby World Cup pool match and a stroll through the Natural History Museum’s new gardens.’
Perhaps unfairly, Ms Brown’s article failed to mention the cancer treatment which has sidelined the Princess of Wales for much of the past 18 months. What’s more, it proceeded to argue that William’s philanthropy is being overshadowed by Harry, who publicly donated £1.1million to the BBC’s Children in Need project this week.
Harry’s high-profile gift ‘unleashed for William the uneasy question of what exactly the 43-year-old Prince of Wales is doing with the £23million a year he gets from the Duchy of Cornwall,’ said Ms Brown.
The criticism by Ms Brown, a biographer and friend of the late Princess Diana, reopens the debate over the Prince and Princess of Wales’s approach to balancing work and leisure
‘Back when Charles was Prince of Wales, he was a powerhouse of philanthropy, starting at age 27, when he used his £7,400 severance pay from the Royal Navy to seed The Prince’s Trust, which has gone on to raise more than £100million a year. Without wishing to be churlish, I can’t help pointing out that William’s annual Earthshot Prize of £1million (covered by sponsors) to five promising innovators in the climate change space is a little underwhelming.’
Ms Brown’s intervention reignites a debate bubbling away for over a decade. Critics of the monarchy have in the past dubbed the Prince ‘workshy Wills’ while the so-called ‘Sussex squad’ of Harry and Meghan’s vituperative online supporters have even branded Kate the ‘Duchess of Dolittle’.
More on that later. But in the meantime, what’s the truth about the couple’s work-ethic?
The Court Circular, which chronicles every official engagement the Royals undertake, gives us some data. It reveals that William, 43, worked a mere 107 days in the year to September 5. That compares poorly with other family members: Princess Anne, 75, fulfilled the most engagements, with 189 days, while the 76-year-old King, still receiving treatment for cancer, managed 175 days.
Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, completed 129 and 117 days respectively. William and Kate, who managed 37 days, took the whole of August off, along with the second half of July, according to the Court Circular. That in turn suggests they were able to spend the entire summer holidays with their children, at one point travelling to Greece. However, since returning to royal duties on September 5, the royal noses have been closer to the grindstone, with at least one working every day. William has fulfilled five days, while Kate has completed four.
Last weekend, the couple, both rugby fans, juggled engagements at the Women’s World Cup. The Prince of Wales was in Exeter on Saturday watching Wales narrowly lose to Fiji, while the Princess went to Brighton to see England thrash Australia.
These, then, are the numbers. But despite Ms Brown’s criticism they offer only a partial picture. For both the Prince and Princess spend time with charities and pursue other worthy interests not necessarily recorded.
Only a year ago Prince William tried to spell this out by explaining that he was approaching his royal life in a different way. During a trip to South Africa he told an interviewer: ‘I can only describe what I’m trying to do, and that’s trying to do it differently and I’m trying to do it for my generation.
‘Back when Charles was Prince of Wales, he was a powerhouse of philanthropy, starting at age 27, when he used his £7,400 severance pay from the Royal Navy to seed The Prince’s Trust,’ writes Brown
‘And to give you more of an understanding around it, I’m doing it with maybe a smaller R in the royal, if you like, that’s maybe a better way of saying it.’ This can be summed up in seven words, say his supporters: ‘Never mind the quantity, feel the quality.’
He is, they argue, immersed in projects that go beyond the window-dressing of simply turning up. Take the Earthshot Prize, a high-profile environmental award his Royal Foundation oversees. The Prince’s involvement goes far beyond being a figurehead and handing out prizes. He is also involved in strategy and attends decision-taking meetings.
The same is true of his commitment to eradicating homelessness. ‘His idea is about concentrating on fewer but more consequential issues and working behind the scenes,’ says a friend.
‘It is an approach he has long been keen to try and was something his mother was working towards just before her sad death.’
What’s more, supporters say, the couple have a lifetime of engagements ahead of them and both the Royal Family and the country will benefit from them bringing up three well-adjusted children.
Be that as it may, William’s announcement of doing things differently prompted a tart observation from Ms Brown that he was a ‘performative pinhead’.
When he had listed his working priorities as ‘impact philanthropy, collaboration, convening and helping people’, Ms Brown countered: ‘In short, everything his father has been doing for 50 years.’
As for philanthropy, the Prince’s friends insist he is a generous donor to charities. ‘He just doesn’t do it with a press release,’ says one insider. By way of an example, we understand he made a substantial donation to the victims of the Grenfell fire tragedy.
In truth, critics have been carping about William and Kate’s approach to Royal duties for well over a decade. And before he packed his bags for California, Harry was also in the firing line.
Ugly headlines began to appear in 2015, when it turned out that Prince Philip, then 95, had undertaken 250 engagements. This compared poorly with the younger generation: reports stated that William, Kate and Harry had only done 198 engagements – combined.
Then, Harry was single. William and Kate, whose eldest child George turned two that summer, had moved from Anglesey in Wales to Anmer Hall in Norfolk, the ten-bed country home given to them by the late Queen.
Officially, William began work as an air ambulance pilot. However, in 2016 it was revealed that the role required him to work just 20 hours a week, with a source telling The Sun: ‘He’s hardly ever on shift… with the Duke it’s more off than on. He had at least four weeks off over Christmas, which has to be staffed the same as normal weeks.’
In his autobiography Spare, Harry complained that the story saw Prince William dubbed ‘workshy Wills’ with the papers ‘awash with stories about Willy being lazy’. This, he said, was ‘grossly unfair’ as the Prince was busy ‘having children and raising a family’ at the time. William and Kate’s second child, Charlotte, had been born in May 2015.
Harry said he initially did not understand why the press was going after his older brother who, along with his wife, Kate, felt ‘unfairly persecuted’. However he came to believe the media was punishing William for not ‘playing their game’.
Figures published later that year suggested William had completed 122 royal engagements over the previous 12 months. Eleven other royals, including the Queen, had carried out more engagements than William.
Criticism grew following Commonwealth Day in 2017, when William failed to join his family at Westminster Abbey and was instead snapped partying in a nightclub in the Alpine ski resort of Verbier.
Shortly afterwards, his approval ratings dipped below Prince Harry’s. It was, perhaps, not entirely coincidental that William then announced he would be giving up his air ambulance job so he and Kate could throw themselves into full-time Royal duties. The couple then began spending most of their time at Kensington Palace, with George and later Charlotte attending St Thomas’s Day School in London.
That was eight years ago. In more recent times, complaints about the couple’s working practices have largely died down. There was a kerfuffle in 2023 when Omid Scobie, the biographer regarded as a mouthpiece for Harry and Meghan, called him ‘Lazy Wills’ in the Dutch edition of his book Endgame, but the text was updated to say he merely has a ‘workshy image’.
Last August, William was criticised for refusing to fly to Australia to support the England women’s football team in the World Cup final, despite being FA patron.
It was perhaps inevitable William would be compared unfavourably to his prodigal brother’s headline-grabbing whirlwind of visits this week. But as one ally points out: ‘The Windsors will be back on the road doing the same thing next week, the week after and the week after that. Where will Harry be?’
The danger for William – and indeed for the Royals – however, is that razzle-dazzle always wins over dull and dependable.
