JAN MOIR: Sorry Harry, this is why your do-goodery odyssey in the US has turned into a slow boil of utter cringe By Jan Moir for The Mail on Sunday Published: 01:46, 8 September 2024 | Updated: 01:52, 8 September 2024 e-mail View comments Life begins at 40, as the saying goes. Yet as he approaches his milestone birthday next Sunday, Prince Harry has already done a lot of living. Perhaps even too much.
However, it is not his fault, as he often points out, that he has been in the public eye since birth. He didn’t ask to be born into the House of Windsor or paraded on the hospital steps when he was barely a day old; a little blueblood nugget of princely promise and aristocratic genes, swaddled in centuries of royal breeding. Over the decades since, many different Harrys have floated across the world stage: adorable schoolboy in cap and piped blazer, tragic bereaved son, teenage tearaway, brave soldier, helicopter pilot, best man, worst option.
As his 40th birthday looms, Harry is described on his Archewell website as a ‘humanitarian, military veteran, mental health advocate, and environmental campaigner Then there was Mahiki nightclub regular, husband and father, royal tormentor, exiled prince, self-appointed caped crusader. It is no secret he has also been a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker. But these days, as he struggles to establish himself as an homme sérieux in America, Prince Harry likes to present his most solemn persona to the world.
As his 40th birthday.