We read Prince Harry’s book to tell you everything about his life

Highgrove House, the private residence of the then Prince of Wales, a 40-acre estate in Gloucestershire, (a slightly more casual alternative to the 8th and 9th floors of Kensington Palace, the official residence of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son) appears often in this book. It was here that King Charles liked to spend his free time, it was here that he dragged Harry to see Shakespeare’s plays (“all torture,” he writes, recalling what he thought of those forced exits). Despite this, in Highgrove is the “headquarters” where he took refuge as a child with his brother William: they called it Club H and it is located in the basement. “When I needed to be alone,” he writes, “there was nothing better than a bomb shelter in the English countryside.” In these gardens, designed by Rosemary Verey, the prince planned epic battles with his toy soldiers as a child. This place holds carefree moments and also unhappy memories: his mother’s funeral and also his first meeting with what Prince Harry calls “the other woman”, Camilla.

sandringham estate

On the other hand, the royal residence of Sandringham, in Norfolk, is an estate of eight thousand hectares, a place very dear to Queen Elizabeth. For this reason it has become one of Harry’s favorite places, where for a very short time Carlos played with him as a child and where the royal family met for Christmas. However, like all old houses, it had a number of amusing drawbacks that he was nonetheless fond of, as he recounts in his memoirs: ‘I was always sensitive to heat, like my dad. We often joked about it.’ We weren’t made for this world,’ we’d say, ‘two bloody snowmen.’ The dining room at Sandringham, for example, was our version of Dante’s Inferno. The temperature in the house was cool almost everywhere, but in the dining room it was tropical. Dad and I waited for Grandma to get distracted, then one of us got up and ran to a window trying to open it with great effort. ‘Ah, blessed fresh air.’ But the corgi they always betrayed us. The draft made them squeal, so Grandma would ask, ‘Is there a draft?'”

Holidays in Klosters