As he turns 41 today, Prince Harry will no doubt be marking the occasion with his wife and two children.
But the celebrations laid on by Meghan in their Montecito mansion will be worlds away from the antics that earned him a reputation as a party boy as a young royal in the 2000s – a persona that many feared he might never shake.
In fact it was a reputation that he was already cultivating even before he had left school. Mere months before Harry was supposed to sit his A Levels at Eton he was spotted sipping a vodka cranberry while partying at a swanky west London rooftop bar.
According to royal insider Katie Nicholl it was around this time that the prince had his ‘wrists slapped’ to try to entice him to work harder for his exams – but, not for the last time, Harry would not listen.
Indeed during his time as a working royal, and since, this has been a familiar pattern of behaviour.
Writing in her royal biography – The Making of a Royal Romance – Nicholl recalled the time she met the then 18-year-old at the exclusive Kensington Roof Gardens.
Nicholl said: ‘I witnessed Harry’s partying first hand that spring. I was a young showbusiness reporter at the time for the Mail on Sunday and happened to be covering an event at the Kensington Roof Gardens.
‘I had gone outside onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air when Harry suddenly emerged from the VIP room.’ The prince ushered Nicholl to join him as he ‘tried to light a cigarette in the wind’.
Prince Harry and his then girlfriend Chelsy Davy after a night out. The prince developed a party persona that would define him during the 2000s
Prince Harry clenches his fist as he leaves Eton College on June 12 2003. He left the school with a B in Art and D in Geography
‘His protection officers were seated at a coffee table at the far end of the room while Harry sat on the floor surrounded by eight pretty girls all clinging to his every word.
‘One of his friends fetched me a glass of champagne while Harry held court,’ Nicholl said.
She added that the topic of his upcoming A levels were ‘only mentioned in passing’ but once his results were out, Harry’s somewhat dismissive approach to education was clear to see.
He left Eton in August 2003 with a B in art and a D in Geography and while the then Prince Charles said he was ‘very proud’ of the results and that his son had ‘worked hard for these examinations’, rather than revising Harry spent a lot of his time making mischief.
Nicholls wrote, in her Royal biography The Making of a Royal Romance, that weeks before his exams Harry was a ‘regular guest at Highgrove’ and he ‘sneaked off to the Royal Berkshire Polo Club’.
Soon the press caught wind of Harry’s antics and they became tabloid fodder. But despite the negative attention from the Press, Harry was not spurred into studying.
‘It seemed that no matter how many times he had his wrists slapped, Harry would not learn,’ said Nicholl.
Best selling author, journalist and broadcaster Katie Nicholl has been writing about the British royal family for nearly two decades
Katie Nicholl’s book, The Making Of a Royal Romance reveals the time she met a young Prince Harry at a swanky west London bar
Harry at Eton in 2003. According to Nicholl it was around this time that the prince had his ‘wrists slapped’ to try and entice Harry to work harder for his exams but he would not listen
Harry was particularly candid about his time at Eton in his autobiography Spare, describing his arrival at the £21,000 per term school as a ‘shock’.
The Prince found it hard to settle in at Eton but he did eventually make friends who he would join for a cigarette under Windsor Bridge.
The Duke of Sussex also revealed candid details about his time smoking marijuana while at school.
Harry wrote: ‘I took every cig offered me, and in the same automatic, unthinking way, I soon graduated to weed.’
Describing how he and his friends went about it, he wrote: ‘Smoker straddled the loo beside the window, second boy leaned against the basin, third and fourth boys sat in the empty bath, legs dangling over, waiting their turns.’
After he graduated from Eton would consistently find himself at the end of a metaphorical wrist slapping for breaking royal protocol.
In 2005, Harry sparked a major controversy when he was spotted at a fancy dress birthday party wearing a Nazi uniform with swastika armband.
Harry was widely condemned for the costume with the Board of Deputies of British Jews saying the costume was in ‘bad taste’.
Harry kisses Chelsy at a cricket match. The kiss was seen to break royal protocol
Harry leaving Raffles nightclub in London in 2009. Harry’s outings to bars and clubs were of keen interest to the press at the time
The Daily Mail ran a front page calling for the prince to ‘come out and say sorry properly!’ after he refused to make a televised apology.
Clarence House issued a statement at the time which read: ‘Prince Harry has apologised for any offence or embarrassment he has caused. He realises it was a poor choice of costume.’
Two years later, Harry was spotted kissing his then girlfriend – Chelsy Davy – in public not once but on two occasions, most notably at the Concert for Diana that Princes William and Harry hosted on 2007 in honour of their mother, and in the same year during a cricket match in Antigua.
In 2012, leaked pictures of the Duke of Sussex in Las Vegas showed the then-27-year-old Prince playing strip billiards.
The Sun was the only British newspaper to publish the photos at the time despite a warning from the Royal Family that it was an invasion of privacy.
At the time the Palace said: ‘We remain of the opinion that a hotel room is a private space where its occupants would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.’
However, the Firm then decided not to lodge a complaint to the press watchdog claiming that to ‘pursue a complaint relating to his private life would not be appropriate at this time and would prove to be a distraction’.
But the biggest blow to his standing within the Royal Family came almost a decade later, when Harry along with his wife Meghan Markle announced they were stepping down as working royals.
Harry’s publication of his tell-all autobiography Spare revealed details about growing up
Their unprecedented decision to unceremoniously leave the Royal Family blindsided the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, who were ‘disappointed’ to learn about the announcement on TV channels.
Issuing their bombshell statement on the Sussex’s Instagram page, the couple told how they planned to split their time between Britain and North America. One exasperated aide said that ‘people had bent over backwards for them’, questioning: ‘What more did they want?’
Following the interview, the monarch summoned Harry, Charles and William to her estate in Sandringham where a deal was made for the couple to depart royal life. Dubbed ‘Megxit’ by the press, it meant giving up their royal titles, repaying the £2.4million spent to refurbish their Windsor home, Frogmore Cottage, and no more handouts from the state-funded sovereign grant.
In 2023, Harry’s publication of his tell-all autobiography Spare then revealed further details about growing up that his family might wish he had kept to himself. These included Harry’s admission that he took cocaine when he was 17 years old and that he killed 25 Taliban fighters during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, when he flew an Apache attack helicopter – a brag that drew condemnation from fellow military men.
