Mahfouz had met Harry in 2013 and 2014 and donated £50,000 to his charity Sentebale and £10,000 to Walking With The Wounded, of which Harry is patron. The pictures were leaked by American celebrity website TMZ on 21 August 2012, and reported worldwide by mainstream media on 22 August 2012. While on holiday in Las Vegas in August 2012, Harry and an unknown young woman were photographed naked in a Wynn Las Vegas hotel room, reportedly during a game of strip billiards. Subsequently, it was reported that the military had instructed Harry to attend a diversity course. It also criticised all sides for allowing the conflict “to play out publicly” and cited poor internal governance and a “failure to resolve disputes internally” as factors that impacted the charity’s reputation. In March 2025, Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho resigned from their roles as patrons of Sentebale following a dispute between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board, Sophie Chandauka.
Former honorary military appointments
In 2002 The Times reported that Harry would also share with his brother a disbursement of £4.9 million from trust funds established by their great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on their respective 21st birthdays and would share a disbursement of £8 million upon their respective 40th birthdays. At his mother’s funeral, Harry, then aged 12, accompanied his father, brother, paternal grandfather Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and maternal uncle Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, in walking behind the funeral cortège from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussexfn 2 (Henry Charles Albert David; born 15 September 1984), is a member of the British royal family.
- Defence Secretary Philip Hammond stated that “additional security arrangements” were put in place, for Harry could be a potential target, but added that he would face “the same risk as any other Apache pilot” while in combat.
- Prince Harry’s fight to have his official, armed full-time security reinstated when he visits the U.K.
- They are still referred to as “His/Her Royal Highness” in legal and private settings.
- Harry has previously expressed his feelings about the removal of royal security and maintained that the UK was unsafe for him and his family, including wife Meghan Markle and their two children, Archie, 6, and Lilibet, 4.
- Harry withdrew the libel claim in January 2024 and became liable for the publisher’s £250,000 legal costs.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond stated that “additional security arrangements” were put in place, for Harry could be a potential target, but added that he would face “the same risk as any other Apache pilot” while in combat. On 18 September 2012, it was reported that Harry had been moved to a safe location after an attack by the Taliban on Camp Bastion that killed two US marines. On 10 September, within days of arriving in Afghanistan, it was reported that the Taliban had threatened his life. In the same month, it was reported that Harry was top of his class in extensive training undertaken at the Naval Air Facility, El Centro, California. In June 2011, Clarence House announced that Harry would be available for deployment in current operations in Afghanistan as an Apache helicopter pilot.
He joined his father in Turkey to attend commemorations of the centenary of the Gallipoli Campaign in April 2015. The new household released a statement announcing they had established their own office at nearby St James’s Palace to look after their public, military and charitable activities. Previously, William and Harry’s affairs had been handled by their father’s office at Clarence House in central London. Judge Carl Nichols ordered for the redacted versions of the court documents to be released by 18 March 2025.
They are still referred to as “His/Her Royal Highness” in legal and private settings. Writing for The Guardian, Stephen Bates stated that Harry’s “megaphone diplomacy isn’t working” and “his private security needs are probably not near the top of anybody’s priorities”. Referring to the press as “the devil”, he also alleged that “certain members” of his family were “in the bed” with them to “rehabilitate their image”.
- At the beginning of trial, MGN apologised for one instance of unlawful information gathering against Harry and added that his legal challenge “warrants compensation”.
- The publisher agreed to cover Harry’s legal costs and pay damages reported to be in the region of £300,000.
- At the time of the announcement of Harry and Meghan’s decision to “step back” as senior members of the royal family in 2020, 95% of the couple’s income derived from the £2.3 million given to them annually by Harry’s father, Charles, as part of his income from the Duchy of Cornwall.
- In June 2019, it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would split from The Royal Foundation and establish their own charity foundation by the end of 2019.
- He lost the legal challenge in May 2023, meaning that he will not be allowed to make private payments for police protection.
- The Duke of Sussex previously lost his court challenge after Ravec ruled he was no longer eligible for state funded security because he is no longer considered a working royal.
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In January 2020, lawyers issued a legal warning to the press after paparazzi photographs were published in the media. The BBC wrote to Kensington Palace apologising for the “factual inaccuracy” as George’s godfather was William van Cutsem, but it did not apologise for the comment itself as it was part of the show’s “irreverent humor”. Mr Justice Fancourt concluded Piers Morgan and other editors knew about the phone hacking at their publications and were involved in it. In June 2023, Harry testified in the court case accusing former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan of horrific personal attacks and claimed that his phone had been hacked dating back to when he was still at Eton. At the beginning of trial, MGN apologised for one instance of unlawful information gathering against Harry and added that his legal challenge “warrants compensation”. In January 2025, the two parties settled with NGN paying more than £10 million in pay outs and legal fees in the settlements involving both Harry and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s closest advisor quits as head of their charity
In October 2008, it was announced that Harry would follow his brother, father and uncle in learning to fly military helicopters. As was the case with his brother, the royal family and the tabloid press agreed Harry would be allowed to study free from intrusion in exchange for occasional photograph opportunities in what became known as the “pressure cooker agreement”. It did, however, see Harry follow in his elder brother’s footsteps and harry casino the Spencer family’s, as both his mother’s father and her brother attended Eton. Harry, who recently lost a legal battle with the British government over his security, said in May that he wanted to repair his family relationships despite past emotional tensions.
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Following the first court hearing of the case by the High Court, it was revealed that Harry had ‘exceptional status’ and the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) still determined his personal protective security on a case-by-case basis. In January 2022, it was reported that Harry had been in a legal fight since September 2021 over the Home Office’s refusal to allow him to pay for police protection. The Government of Canada announced RCMP security would not be provided after March 2020 when the couple’s status changed. In June 2023, Harry broke royal protocol by criticising the UK government in his witness statement to a court.
In January 2022, the couple mutually filed a legal complaint against The Times for an article reporting on Archewell raising less than $50,000 in 2020. A September 2020 article by The Times claiming an Invictus Games fundraiser had been cancelled due to its affiliation with a competitor of Netflix, Harry’s business partner, became the subject of a legal complaint issued by the Duke. News Group Newspapers, publisher of the Sun, emphasised that they had done nothing “unlawful” in sourcing the stories and no illegal payments were made. It was alleged that the Sun had made two payments amounting to £4,000 to the partner of a royal official in relation to stories published in June and July 2019 which detailed the nannying and god-parenting arrangements for Harry and Meghan’s son Archie. In April 2020, the Duke and Duchess announced that they would no longer cooperate with the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror and the Express. The case was settled later that year with Splash UK agreeing to no longer take unauthorised photos of the family.
The Sussexes visited the UK and Germany in September 2022 for a number of charity events in Manchester and Düsseldorf. In April 2021, Harry returned to the UK to attend the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Because infant son Archie travelled with the Sussexes, this was “their first official tour as a family”.
Then, in December, the full-scale review of the Duke of Sussex’s security by the official body that assesses how royals and VIPs are guarded commenced. Harry lost his full security cover when he and Meghan stepped back from frontline royal duties in 2020. On Jan. 4, The Mail on Sunday reported that the committee had found that the criteria for the top-level security measures had been met. He is currently fifth-in-line to the throne, although he is no longer a working member of the British royal family after giving up his senior role in 2020. Agnatically, Harry is a member of the House of Glücksburg, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg, one of Europe’s oldest royal houses. On 18 January 2020, Buckingham Palace announced that, following their decision to step back from royal duties, from 31 March 2020 the Duke and Duchess would not use their Royal Highness styles in practice or publicly.
Military ranks
His appearance marked the first time a member of the royal family had been cross-examined in court since Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, appeared as a witness in court in 1891. In his lawsuit, Harry sought damages in excess of £200,000 from the publisher of the News of the World and The Sun and alleged an earlier agreement between News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the royal family which would see he and William not take legal action in return for an apology had not been honoured. At the time of the announcement of Harry and Meghan’s decision to “step back” as senior members of the royal family in 2020, 95% of the couple’s income derived from the £2.3 million given to them annually by Harry’s father, Charles, as part of his income from the Duchy of Cornwall. In January 2020, the Duke and Duchess announced that they were stepping back from their role as senior members of the royal family, and would balance their time between the United Kingdom and North America. He adds in his memoir that he smoked cannabis at Eton and in Kensington Palace gardens, but he later told a court that “he never smoked in his father’s house”.
The brothers also received the original lyrics and score of “Candle in the Wind”, by Bernie Taupin and Elton John, as performed by John at Diana’s funeral. Harry and his brother William inherited the “bulk” of the £12.9 million left by their mother on their respective 30th birthdays, a figure that had grown since her 1997 death to £10 million each in 2014. His mother died in a car crash in Paris the following year while he and William were staying with their father at Balmoral Castle.