Never has that old maxim that every picture tells a story been more revealing. The formalities over, an evening of joy, pride and affection swept over the company.
Here was Prince Harry on his wedding day, tie off in open-neck shirt clasping arm in arm the friends who had seen him through good times and bad, all at his side celebrating the happiness of his marriage to Meghan.
It was a snapshot of spontaneous exuberance, and the smiles radiating from all seven were genuine. This was Harry’s ‘Band of Brothers’ moment, a photograph taken just before the night sky at Windsor Castle erupted in a spectacular fireworks display.
Yet, less than seven years later, how would those same figures today reflect on what seemed to the world back then as unbreakable bonds of friendship? Have those bonds withstood the scorched-earth destruction which now scars his relationship with his family, the monarchy and the country of his birth?
This week, with Harry in London to hear his lawyers’ appeal against what he claimed was an unfair decision by the Home Office to remove his police protection, the black-and-white picture suddenly took on a new significance. The reason was the balding figure second in from the left. This is Lord Vivian, the seventh baron of a distinguished Cornish family, but better known to Harry as marketing and PR guru Charles Vivian, with whom the prince shares a love for Africa and its untamed landscapes.
Last Saturday, some 24 hours before Harry jetted in alone from California, Lord Vivian was celebrating his wedding day. And judging by the pictures from Chelsea Old Town Hall it was an occasion just as euphoric as Harry’s back in 2018.
But the prince, who had been invited, was not there, as my colleague Richard Eden reported. The groom offered a pained explanation when asked why the Duke of Sussex had not come. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He has a lot on.’
Later, it emerged that his absence was wrapped up in the reasons that brought him to the Court of Appeal: without taxpayer-funded armed police protection – stripped when he and Meghan quit Britain for their life of exile in the US – his safety could not be guaranteed.
Harry with his ‘band of brothers’ on the prince’s wedding day, which included Lord Charles Vivian, Adam Bidwell, Charlie Gilkes and Henry Warhurst
If Lord Vivian was disappointed, given that his old friend would be in London scarcely a day later, he was not saying.
It is all the more remarkable when you consider that Harry had been present at Vivian’s first wedding and that Vivian was rumoured to have been among the very select hand-picked guests invited to the christening of Harry’s son Archie, an occasion that the prince chose to keep largely private.
But let’s return to that group shot of grinning, happy friends, caught up in the spirit of that warm May evening of Harry and Meghan’s wedding day.
Some might ask about the whereabouts of others known to be close to Harry, Prince William for example, who as far as the watching world was concerned had acted as his brother’s best man as bride and groom exchanged their vows in St George’s Chapel.
On the night before the wedding, he had accompanied his brother to greet well-wishers and royal fans camping out on the streets of Windsor, just as both had done in 2011 on the eve of William’s big day at Westminster Abbey.
Harry later revealed in his memoir Spare that Buckingham Palace had ‘put out the story’ that William was best man when in fact it had actually been ‘my old mate Charlie’. Intriguingly, however, the Charlie he was referring to, schoolfriend Charles van Straubenzee, is not in the Band of Brothers snap. What we do know about the picture is that it was special enough for it to be included in material to promote the six-part Harry & Meghan Netflix documentary series in 2022.
If nothing else, the message it conveyed was clear, that these six men occupied a special place not just in the prince’s life but in
his heart. It is tempting to wonder if they still do. Lord Vivian, for instance, was not the only member of this Sussex squad whose wedding day went ahead in the absence of Prince Harry.
Prince Harry on the second day of a Court of Appeal hearing over what he claims was an unfair decision by the Home Office to remove his police protection
When Jack Mann married two years ago – he is pictured second from right, and met Harry when both were at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst – Harry was not among the guests at the Suffolk church. According to one insider, the ties that once bound this group are no longer as tight as they once were, frayed by distance and the disintegration of Harry’s old life.
Naturally, there is a reluctance among them to discuss the changes that have brought this about; royal friends rarely want to talk publicly about a falling out because the door is always open for a possible falling back in.
Nevertheless, the picture is an indelible reminder of happier times. The six, some of whom were ushers earlier in the day helping the couple’s 600 guests to their seats inside St George’s, represent a cross-section of Harry’s life, from childhood and schooldays to maturity as an adult.
They certainly witnessed the best and the worst of the mercurial prince and they include figures who helped shape him and often provided a shoulder to lean on when times were tough.
So, who are these friends and how important were they in Harry’s story?
From the left they are Adam Bidwell, 49, a strapping Cambridge-educated former rugby player turned financier, known to friends as ‘Bidders.’ One of the most enigmatic of Harry’s circle, his friendship dates back long before the prince met Meghan, when he was frequently in the background during Harry’s adventures as a single man.
The one-time centre for London club Wasps was often at the prince’s side on excursions to watch the England team play at Twickenham and joined him for an F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi, where Harry was pictured enjoying a hookah pipe.
In 2012, he was reported to have been present on Harry’s notorious party trip to Las Vegas when photographs emerged of the prince playing ‘strip’ pool with some obliging girls in a Sin City hotel.
The following year Brighton-born Bidwell was making headlines himself when he enjoyed a romance with Welsh-born mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins. She was pictured in tiny shorts sitting on the athletic Bidwell’s lap at the Glastonbury festival. He is thought to have been introduced to the prince through the television presenter Natalie Pinkham, a mutual friend and once a rumoured love interest of Harry.
A sign of his status emerged when it was revealed that the prince had invited him to become an ambassador for his African charity Sentebale, which he founded in memory of his mother Princess Diana. In 2019, he travelled with Harry on a trip to Lesotho, where the charity was launched, and to witness the prince opening a dining hall at the Phelisanong children’s home.
The same year he joined the prince and Meghan at a polo match, remembered because it was one of the few post wedding occasions when the duchess was photographed with Kate.
Urbane and discreet, he rarely if ever speaks publicly about Harry. Intriguingly, this week he used a social media channel to ‘like’ a post about another of the band of brothers, club owner Charlie Gilkes.
Next to Bidwell, is Lord Vivian, 58, who celebrated his wedding last Saturday to Saweda Kamara, a US-born compliance director. Their reception was held at the fashionable Nomad Hotel in Covent Garden, once the site of Bow Street magistrates’ court and police station.
His friendship with Harry bloomed over their love for Africa and they were introduced by another figure from the photograph, Harry’s longstanding mentor Mark Dyer. One of London’s best-known marketing operators – he co-founded City PR firm Pelham – Vivian, full name Charles Crespigny Hussey Vivian, succeeded his father, a soldier and hereditary peer, in 2004.
In 2011, Harry was a guest at his first marriage to American jewellery designer Elizabeth Wimpress and both Vivian and his fiancee were among the 1,900 invited to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding.
Now a partner with communications company Tavistock, he spends several months a year in Africa and is thought to have helped behind the scenes with several of Harry’s charity trips to the continent.
At Vivian’s side is Henry Warhurst, 40, who runs a bespoke car storage business and is married to a niece of Harry’s former nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Nicknamed Wago, his company, Henry’s Car Barn, provides storage for classic and high value cars.
He married Tamara Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, whose mother is Tiggy’s sister, in Wales in 2016. Tamara is said to be one of only a few of the prince’s friends with whom Meghan was reported to get on well with.
The two women were said to have bonded at another society wedding, because they eschewed the drinking and high jinks taking place and kept to themselves.
On the other side of the beaming groom is Charlie Gilkes, nightclub mogul and one-time escort of the Princess of Wales’s sister Pippa Middleton. Smoothie Gilkes, whose brother Alexander has a son with former tennis star Maria Sharapova, is one of those rare figures who is friends with both Harry and William.
The 40-year-old entrepreneur was a friend of Harry from his days at Ludgrove prep, the royal boarding school. He runs the Inception Group, which owns society haunts such as Bunga Bunga and the Mayfair cocktail bars Mr Fogg’s.
His wedding in Puglia, Italy, in 2014 to Anneke von Trotha Taylor attracted a raft of royals, including Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie and of course Harry. Pippa and her parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, were also guests.
For years his royal connections were good for business, but after the recent imposition of the Government’s higher minimum wage and National Insurance costs, Gilkes was gloomy. ‘I am increasingly hearing the business model is broken for hospitality businesses in the UK and operators are looking to open in other territories like the United Arab Emirates with a less hostile environment for business,’ he said. ‘For many bars, pubs and restaurants, this is the final nail, and they won’t survive.’
Next to Gilkes is Jack Mann, 42, whose father Simon was an SAS officer and former British mercenary who was jailed for leading a failed coup to overthrow the government in Equatorial Guinea.
Jack followed his father into the Army and met Harry as they underwent officer training. He undertook tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan and later worked in Libya for a private security company. Then, in 2015, he set up his own security business Alma Risk.
It was Harry’s absence from Mann’s wedding to osteopath Isabella Clark in July 2023 that first raised questions about his friendship with the former soldier.
Rumours circulated that long before this there had been ‘issues’ over a dinner party and reports that Meghan wanted to see the guest list and other details. Matters were not helped amid claims that the duchess was not happy that the seating arrangement had her and Harry sitting separately.
Another of Harry’s friends, Thomas van Straubenzee, godfather of Princess Charlotte, was at Mann’s nuptials.
Completing the band is the oldest member – Mark Dyer, 59, known to Harry as ‘Marko’. Dyer, a former equerry to the then Prince Charles, has been a fixture in Harry’s life since boyhood. And when the crisis at Sentebale blew up amid claims of racism and misogyny last month, Dyer was one of the trustees who loyally resigned after Harry stepped back from the charity.
A surrogate and trusted father figure, he played a key role in Harry’s life after the death of Princess Diana. A former Welsh Guards officer turned pub owner and businessman, Dyer also managed to navigate the pitfall of being friends with both royal brothers. He arranged both princes’ gap years and his son Jasper, who is Harry’s godson, was a pageboy at the prince’s wedding.
In Spare, he is the finger-waving figure sent to confront the teenage Harry over his drug use. When Harry admitted to smoking cannabis, it was Marko who escorted him to spend a day at a residential centre for drug users in Peckham, south London, at the insistence of his father.
And when his school years ended, Harry’s closeness to Dyer grew as the pair travelled together to Australia, Argentina and Lesotho during the prince’s gap year. Later still, when Dyer was diagnosed with stomach cancer, Harry was in constant touch with his confidant.
In interviews Harry has admitted his decision to quit royal life cost him a number of close friendships. What an added tragedy it would be if those he has lost includes some of the Band of Brothers.
