Prince Harry will attend an awards ceremony for one of his charities in London as his U.K. comeback continues to compete for attention in the British media with his uncle Charles Spencer's bombshell book about King Charles' response to Princess Diana's death. The WellChild Awards, in London on Monday night, will be a fresh opportunity to try to turn the focus onto one of his longest standing projects, a charity which exists to help seriously ill children and their families. The Duke of Sussex moved back to the U.K. with Meghan Markle and their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, at the end of August and experienced a chaotic first few weeks.
First there was a dispute with Buckingham Palace over a letter describing them as "private citizens," followed by a crisis over Uganda temporarily withdrawing from his Invictus Games tournament for veterans and then security concerns over traffic jams prompted the Sussexes to switch schools. And last week, Prince Harry looked like he might begin a run of straight-forward, positive news stories on Thursday and Friday, with visits to support Invictus in London and Birmingham. That all changed when the serialization of his uncle Earl Spencer's new book Swan Song began.
Prince Harry's charity visits last week were an opportunity to get the narrative of his return to Britain back on track after a turbulent period. His two events appeared to go to plan but royal commentators and news programs were preoccupied with Spencer's book and its claim that the king had seemed "giddily elated" during a phone call after Diana's death. WellChild gives him another opportunity to remind the British public of the contribution he made while he was a working royal family member.
Harry became WellChild patron in 2007, meaning he has been with the charity for 19 years, and the organization is also celebrating 20 years of its WellChild nurses program. The event is annual and in the past has given him an opportunity to show his emotional side, connect with young children and their parents. Harry described the awards in his book, Spare: "I’d attended many times through the years, having been a royal patron of the organization since 2007, and it was always gutting.
The children were so brave, their parents so proud—and tortured." One year, in 2019, it triggered a major argument with Prince William after Harry broke down in tears in front of the cameras. Harry described the fallout in his book. "We’d been filled with hope, and worry, like all expectant parents, and now we had a healthy little boy at home," he wrote.
"But these parents and children hadn’t been so lucky. Gratitude and sympathy converged in my heart, and I choked up." Harry said he later received a call from William, expressing concern. "He said I wasn’t well," he wrote.
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