‘It won’t last,’ my schoolfriend Albert told me, as we staggered down Embankment one summer evening in 2018, a few pints into his birthday pub crawl. I wasn’t sure as to what he was referring. The evening twilight? His youthful good looks? Our ability to walk in a straight line? He expanded: ‘Harry and Meghan. She’s not right for him. They’ll be divorced within five years. Just you wait.’ Then he burped.

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I was surprised by Albert’s comments. I, like tens of millions of other viewers, had been taken in by the royal wedding weeks before. Yes, the presence of Oprah Winfrey and an over-enthusiastic American preacher had been a little gauche. But as Harry ‘n’ Meghan tied the knot in glorious Windsor sunshine, a troubled prince seemed to have found permanent peace with a gorgeous wife.

Being teenagers, Albert and I had a particular affinity with young Harry. Blessed with the nation’s sympathy after his mother’s death, Harry seemed the endearing antithesis to his older brother’s prudishness. Naked romps in Las Vegas, Nazi armbands at parties, courting a stream of blonde-haired Sloanes… he was a Prince Hal for the 21st century, the nation’s endlessly entertaining Hooray Harry.

But, like the young Henry V, Harry’s coming of age was his most endearing. Shipped off to Afghanistan, the........

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