Prince Harry and Meghan have now spent 77 months away from the UK — a long and turbulent chapter that has seen the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, his father King Charles receive a cancer diagnosis, and the birth of their daughter, Lilibet.
Their return, however, appears to be gathering remarkable speed. The Sussex family are said to be preparing to leave Montecito, with their arrival in Britain expected imminently. “H arrives this weekend,” a friend said yesterday.
That is an unusually swift turnaround. Word of the move emerged only last Wednesday evening, while King Charles is understood to have been told just three days earlier, on the Sunday, that plans were being made for a return.
Since then, speculation has surged around the world. Where will Prince Harry and Meghan live in the UK? Could they spend Christmas at Sandringham? Which school might Archie and Lilibet attend? Are they truly considering a base near Jeremy Clarkson in the Cotswolds? And has Meghan been drawn back across the Atlantic by the possibility of an acting role in Guy Ritchie’s hit series The Gentlemen?
Answers to several of those questions are now beginning to emerge — and some are unexpected. Together, they offer a revealing glimpse of the direction the Duke and Duchess of Sussex may be taking, a development that has caught many observers off guard.
In July, I reported that Harry was considering a return to Britain and that there was hope the couple might be able to “unpick” Megxit. The claim was met with considerable scepticism at the time, yet events now appear to be moving in that very direction — and far faster than anticipated.
Sources say the driving force behind the relocation is Prince Harry’s deep determination to secure what he sees as the best possible education for Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five. In his view, that means a school in the UK.
Friends say he and Meghan have discussed the idea “for years”, but the plan became much more serious last year, when they began requesting prospectuses and holding conversations with headteachers.
Friends say Harry and Meghan have been kicking the idea of their children going to school in the UK ‘for years’
‘Meghan has been aware of Harry’s views and discussing with him how they will bring the children up for years. It is not sudden,’ says a friend.
The friend adds that the King was told ‘long before the weekend’ that sending the children to school in the UK was what they hoped to do, and the King also understood that Harry felt Archie was far too young to start boarding, so it would mean a family return to the UK.
His school will indeed be in, or close to, the Cotswolds, and the Sussexes are looking for a country house nearby with a budget of around £8million.
The intention, according to Harry, is to be here for at least the next decade.
A friend says: ‘The way he sees it is that he will be here for the next 12 to 15 years, minimum. He sees himself as a full-time father and he will be here for them spending every Saturday watching Archie play rugby. That is the agenda.
‘He and Meghan are the best and most committed parents. They are the people who tell their kids: ‘no tablets [screens] at the dining table’.
‘There is no hankering after a royal status or royal engagements, it is not about that. He specifically doesn’t want to do that. This is about Harry wanting what is best for them and he wants them to be raised British, in Britain, and go to a public school. That is what the move is about.’
Archie will start as a day boarder – a pupil who stays longer than the normal school day but goes home to sleep – in year three at a leading private prep school in September and his sister Lilibet will join the pre prep, or infants’ school, of the same establishment.
Archie will start as a day boarder – a pupil who stays longer than the normal school day but goes home to sleep – in year one at a leading private prep school in September
Harry’s friend says: ‘The King has been well aware of what Harry wanted for some time and on their visit in July he knows that they were looking around schools. William has also been aware for about six months. There is no question of anyone being ‘blindsided”.
When he appeared on former rugby player and Traitors star Joe Marler’s podcast last month, Harry did indeed describe himself – partly joking – as a ‘full-time dad’.
The plan now is that he will indeed be the key at-home parent, while Meghan travels back and forth to their home in Montecito, California.
Her As Ever business is based in California, and sells the Californian lifestyle – rosé wine, flower sprinkles and jams. Their production company, Archewell, has offices in Los Angeles and staff there who are developing a number of film and TV dramas.
Former actress Meghan is noted for her drive and ambition for both ventures, while Harry has often appeared at sea in his post-royal life. It has been reported that one of his ideas for a podcast involved tasting hot chocolate in different countries.
In 2023, Bloomberg said he pitched a podcast concept to Spotify centred on childhood trauma, in which he wanted to interview controversial public figures such as Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Meta supremo Mark Zuckerberg to explore how their early formative experiences shaped them into what he described as ‘sociopaths’.
You get the sense that him stepping away will not be a loss.
So Meghan will be left to try to earn money and keep their media dreams alive in America (they still have a ‘first look’ deal for their projects with Netflix) while Harry returns to Britain, living probably not far from Highgrove where he was raised, and continues with the British-based patronages and charity work which he has undertaken throughout the Megxit period.
Lilibet will join the pre prep, or infants’ school, of the same establishment that Archie attends
It seems likely that he will add in some new charities, in the areas of veterans and mental health.
Meghan will ‘come and go’ and is apparently already plotting out which weeks she will need to be here, and when she will be in California.
The plan is for Christmas to be in Montecito – so no awkwardness for the Royal Family gathering at Sandringham – and for lots of time during the school holidays to be spent as a family in California where Meghan’s mother Doria lives.
Harry and Meghan also have a number of ‘Cali friends’, notably the Argentine polo player Nacho Figueras and his wife Delfina, plus the make-up mogul Victoria Jackson.
There will also be breaks as a family at the holiday house they bought in Portugal a couple of years ago, close to Harry’s cousin Eugenie’s home.
‘Meghan will need to spend quite a bit of time in the US,’ says a friend. ‘She can’t just dial in, she will need to be there.’
Perhaps this explains the confusing briefings by the Sussex communications teams over the past week. At first it was briefed to People magazine that they were going to spend an ‘extended period’ in the UK so that the children could go to school here.
Then the Sunday Times was told: ‘It’ll be an extended period of time. It could be six months, it could be a year, it could be more. I don’t think even they know yet. They might suddenly go, “Why don’t we try Canada for a while? Why don’t we try Australia?”
A friend said the King was told ‘long before the weekend’ that sending their children to school in the UK was what Harry and Meghan hoped to do
But that made no sense – not in the context of relocating with young children to put them in a new school. Clearly someone on the team was keen to play up the idea of the Sussexes as an ‘international couple’, rather than paint them into a corner by suggesting they were moving lock, stock and barrel to the UK and staying here.
The reality seems to be that the move is long term, but that it will involve school terms in the UK and holidays in the US for Harry and the children, and more time than that in the US for Meghan.
Naturally, the prospect of geographical separation between the couple, who were married in 2018, is not a narrative which Team Sussex want to promote. Indeed, the idea of it has set a hare racing about the state of their marriage.
Celebrity journalist and gossip columnist Rob Shuter reported on Friday that their marriage is in serious trouble – and moving back to the UK is their ‘last attempt to save it’.
Shuter wrote: ‘I’m told Meghan did not want to return and remains deeply uncomfortable with the idea. Harry, however, is miserable in California and increasingly unhappy with the life they have built in Montecito. That unhappiness is now putting enormous strain on their marriage.
‘They are not in a good place. Harry is deeply unhappy, and Meghan knows she cannot keep asking him to live a life that is making him miserable.’
My source agrees. ‘Meghan is not doing this because she wants to,’ they say. ‘She is doing it because she believes she has to. She does not want to lose Harry, and she knows something has to change.’
Journalist Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast has been telling a similar story. He said in his Substack: ‘The Times’ source describes them as an “international couple”. I suspect it may turn out to be more of an international person, and that the international person is Meghan.
The plan now is that Harry will be the key at-home parent, while Meghan travels back and forth to their home in Montecito, California
‘We know Harry wants to come home. He has made it very clear how much he misses England, right down to that telling “currently I may live in the United States” in his Remembrance Day essay [a heartfelt tribute to the military and “the things that make us British” published in November last year]. He has no old friends in California to speak of apart from David Langdown, who is his head of security.
‘It is no surprise he is miserable. It is no surprise he is excited about coming home.’
A friend of the couple tells me it’s wrong to think these plans point to strains in the union, however. He says: ‘The marriage is not in bad shape, far from it, and this plan has been agreed by them both. They both feel it’s the best thing for the children and they both want to do this. You will see how happy they look when they are here. It’s very possible to have the kids at school in the UK and Meghan still working on her business in California.’
Harry for his part has previously described marrying Meghan as one of the best decisions of his life and has dismissed rumours about the state of their marriage, expressing pity for the ‘trolls’ who spread such stories.
In the short term they will stay with friends or family in the area where they are house-hunting. Harry is apparently being supported by his late mother’s family, the Spencers.
He’s happy to embrace the ‘Spencer side’ and feels this comes across as less alarming to those enemies he has made in the UK, who well remember the accusations of racism towards his own family and the nation, and his sour insistence that he was owed an apology for the way he and Meghan had been treated.
‘He feels that it sends the message that he’s not a threat,’ says the friend. ‘He doesn’t want to threaten anyone. He hopes to carry on reconciling with his family. It may take time, but he was very buoyed up by the time he spent with the King and Camilla over the summer, and the whole family are really excited about coming to live here.’
As for his security and who pays for it – those questions are still to be answered. It might even end up saving Harry money as he does complain that simply living in California costs him $2million (£1.47million) a year in security. But, cautions the friend: ‘Setting up a new household in the UK will definitely take lots of money. You couldn’t do it if you were on your uppers.’
As to Meghan and her role in The Gentlemen – which was apparently being discussed but was then withdrawn – the friend says: ‘It would be nice if it happened but that’s not the motivation for the move. The move is not about Meghan returning to acting, and makes no sense if that’s what it was. You wouldn’t relocate a family for an acting job which wasn’t yet contractual and was only going to last for a few weeks in any case. This is about settling the kids in a British school, and raising them here in Harry’s native culture.’
