Springtime for Harry and Germany

Josh Surtees

In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson yonks ago. The great poet was banging on about the unrequited love of a young man whose sweetheart had chosen a richer suitor.

Prince Harry doesn’t have such trifling problems. Hardly an oil painting, he’s done well to bag the rather stunning Ms Markle.

By the time you read this, if she doesn’t bolt at the last minute, the newlyweds will be nursing hangovers and may already have begun procreating a new mixed race royal line.

I had hoped Harry would shave for the big day. A beard may have worked for George V – who came top of a Daily Telegraph “best royal beard” poll – but when one peruses monarch mugshots going back to Ethelred the Unready, William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard), Richard Lionheart et al – one notes that only a few rocked facial hair.

Charles the First’s Three Musketeers-style ‘tache combo pre-dated the hipster movement by almost four centuries, but contemporary fashion commentators believe he was merely trolling Louis XIII.

Before the wedding, Esquire magazine’s style editor begged Harry to keep what she described as, “a very good beard…the perfect shade of red (as only a man born of British blood could have it).”

She’s wrong on so many levels. Harry is a mix of British, German, Greek and Danish for a start. But let’s not drag race into this!

Why am I talking about beards? Perhaps to demonstrate how inane royal weddings are. This is simply two people getting married. The pomp and circumstance mean nothing while four million British children live below the poverty line and homeless people freeze within sight of Buckingham Palace.

Once Lizzie pops her clogs, dismantle the monarchy. For social equality to work, level the playing field, top down.

As a Brit I feel duty-bound to say that Meghan’s arrival makes the Windsors slightly less dull. They’ve certainly never had as beautiful, charming and interesting a royal bride. Her dad is a bit bonkers, her mum is a dreadlocked yoga instructor. Meghan identifies as a feminist and spells her name with an unnecessary ‘h’.

It must be said that her mother walking her down the aisle might have made more of a feminist (and racial) statement than the Charles handover, but maybe her cutie pie mum was too shy.

What tends to happen with royals is they are forced to retreat into dullness – at least publicly. With every step scrutinised they can’t take the risk of being controversial – except Edward VIII of course, who befriended Hitler and abdicated the throne to marry a divorced American.

You might have spotted some similarities with young Harry, who is also marrying a divorced American and once wore a Nazi uniform (complete with swastika) to a fancy-dress party.

That picture is what sticks in the mind (as well as his bare bottom, snapped candidly at a Las Vegas pool party). One shudders to think what his bachelor party involved. A re-enactment of Kristallnacht, perhaps?

While his stint in Afghanistan might have knocked some sense into him, judging by his recent hunting trip with German aristocrat Franz-Albrecht Oettingen-Spielberg, where Harry killed 15 wild boars two weeks after getting engaged to the committed animal-lover Markle, he’s clearly still prone to bouts of stupidity.

I slept through Kate and Will in 2011, recovering from an all-night rave. For Charles and Di in 1981, my mother took me (18 months old) to an anti-royal wedding event in a London park with bands, assorted hippies and feminists all united in their disgust at snooty 31-year-old Charles marrying 19-year-old barely-out-of-school Diana. Asked if they were in love, Charles had scoffed “whatever love means.”

It started badly, it got worse…

I was determined not to miss Harry and Meghan. So, having declined the British High Commission’s invitation to a live screening in favour of entertaining my royal-loving mother-in-law, who insisted on watching the build-up from 4 am, we dined on a regal breakfast of cucumber sandwiches, bacon and eggs, scones with jam, pots of sugary tea, and we channelled our inner Reginas.

What a spectacular wedding. From the American preacher to the gospel choir, the young British cellist and the Jamaican priest with her closely cropped hair, the ceremony had blackness, modernity and feminism running through it. Hats off to the royal couple for that.

Harry has certainly grown from the ten-year-old boy who Diana’s bodyguard Ken Wharfe remembers making racist jokes about a Sikh bus conductor, but I fear that Markle still has a fight on her hands to make a fully rounded man of him.

Once more unto the breach, dear Meghan. Or close the wall up with our English dead. Follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”