Prince Harry was just a 12-year-old boy when he lost his mother, Princess Diana.
In the years that followed, the prince, now 41, has often spoken about his anguish at ‘not having that many memories of my mother’.
It wasn’t until he started therapy that he began to recall details of their time together that was tragically cut short after the Princess of Wales died in a fatal car crash in Paris nearly 30 years ago.
Writing in his memoir Spare, Harry confessed: ‘All my life I’d told people I couldn’t remember the past, couldn’t remember my mum, but I never gave anyone the full picture. My memory was dead.
‘Now, through months of therapy, my memory twitched, kicked, sputtered. It came to life. Some days I’d open my eyes to find Mummy… standing before me. A thousand images returned, some so bright and vivid that they were like holograms.’
These included memories of his mother stuffing his school socks with sweets, jumping up and down on Diana’s waterbed with his brother Prince William, and even enduring terrifying paparazzi chases while sitting in the backseat of the car.
The Duke of Sussex revealed that, during therapy, he was asked to carry a bottle of his mother’s favourite perfume – First by Van Cleef and Arpel – to help jog his memory.
After sniffing the familiar scent, which he compared to ‘a tab of LSD’, Harry’s brain was almost instantly taken back to a particularly joyful moment in his mother’s Kensington Palace apartment.
Prince Harry was just 12 years old when Princess Diana tragically died in a car accident on August 31, 1997. Writing in his tell-all memoir Spare, Harry, now 41, revealed how after ‘months’ of therapy he was finally able to recall a number of suppressed childhood memories
In the memoir, which was released in January 2023, Harry recalled his mother having a waterbed – meaning that the mattress was filled with water, rather than springs or foam.
Describing the cheerful times he and his older brother would have together in her room, the prince wrote: ‘Willy and I would jump up and down on the mattress, screaming, laughing, our hair standing up straight.’
Fond memories of breakfasts with his mother also hit the prince, who said that rather than tea or coffee, Diana ‘loved’ eating grapefruit and lychees in the morning.
Harry also recalled accompanying Diana and William ‘for a chat with Christy, Turlington, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford’, adding: ‘Very confusing. Especially for two shy boys, at or about the age of puberty.’
In a 2017 documentary titled Diana: Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William also recalled the rather peculiar moment he returned from school to find the three fashion models ‘waiting at the top of the stairs’.
He said: ‘I was probably a 12 or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall, and I went bright red and didn’t quite know what to say and sort of fumbled, and I think pretty much fell down the stairs.
‘I was completely and utterly awestruck. But that was a very funny memory that’s lived with me forever about her – loving, embarrassing and being the joker.’
Describing the cheerful times he and his brother would have together on Diana’s waterbed at Kensington Palace, the prince writes: ‘Willy and I would jump up and down on the mattress, screaming, laughing, our hair standing up straight’
If Diana was celebrated for her activism and compassion in the public, the ‘People’s Princess’ was also known for her wicked sense of humour – with Prince Harry comparing her to a ‘total kid, through and through’.
During Harry’s time at Ludgrove – the prestigious Berkshire boarding school he attended from the young age of eight to 13 – he was bound by the school’s strict rules.
However, Harry recalled how his mother would stuff Opal Fruits into his sock while ‘gigging’ – even though the school banned children bringing in outdoor sweets.
‘I remembered both of us laughing as we buried the sweets deep in the sock, and me squealing,’ wrote Harry.
‘”Oh Mummy, you’re so naughty,” a young Prince Harry had humourously quipped.
Elsewhere in the book, Harry recalled how Diana also used her playful side to evade press intrusion.
In April 1990, Diana, Harry and William took a trip to Richard Branson’s exclusive 74-acre Necker Island, set in the British Virgin Islands, for a private and relaxing holiday.
But it wasn’t long before photographers, who had been tipped off about their location, descended on the picturesque beach by boat.
During Harry’s time at the strict Berkshire boarding school Ludgrove, he recalled his mother helping him bypass the rule that outdoor sweets were forbidden by stuffing Opal Fruits into his sock, ‘giggling as she did so’
In April 1990, Diana, Harry and William took a trip to Richard Branson’s exclusive 74-acre Necker Island, set in the British Virgin Islands. When photographers swarmed the beach by boat, Diana and the princes used water balloons to soak the photographers
Harry also detailed a rather terrifying run-in with the press while he and William were being driven to a tennis lesson by Diana. ‘She leaned her head on the steering wheel and wept while the paps kept clicking and clicking,’ Harry writes
Harry had longed to relive his mother’s infectious laughter, yet feared it was a distant memory. But sat in his therapist’s office, it suddenly rang ‘loud and clear’. The prince ‘cried with joy to hear it’
Annoyed by the intrusion, Diana suddenly had a brilliant idea when she looked towards the water balloons that her young sons, then aged seven and five, had been playing with all day.
‘Mummy quickly rang up a catapult and divided the balloons among us. On the count of three, we began raining them down on the heads of photographers,’ Harry recalled.
Ken Wharfe, Diana’s personal protection officer from 1987 to 1993, has previously told the Daily Mail that William and Harry had strategically planned to take down the ‘flotilla of paparazzi’ during their holiday.
Recalling their clever counter-attack, Mr Wharfe: ‘As the boats landed, the children began to fire off a stack of coloured water bombs – the photographers didn’t know what had hit them.
‘Soaked and battered, they retreated. To be fair, they had the grace to see the funny side.
‘William was glowing with pride when he ran to tell his mother, and was very much a hero in her eyes.’
