So this was it, the essence of a new personal life-and-love arrangement between Prince William and Catherine, all laid out in black and white in the self-same fashion in which both Diana and Prince Charles – in his Mark Bolland days – had leaked out the details of their personal love-styles via helpful ‘friends’ and briefings to newspapers.
Katie Nicholl has since confirmed that, as well as talking to close friends of both William and Kate in June 2007, she had spoken to a ‘senior palace aide’ while preparing the story and had been ‘given the nod’. If Kate agreed to resume her relationship with William, it would now be on a solid new basis that was mutually agreed to lead to an engagement – and eventually to marriage.
It might take a long time. Catherine might have to put up with media derision for hanging around playing ‘Waity Katie’ – but Prince William had finally made up his mind. He was ready to commit. The young man still had his stints to do in both the navy and the air force. In civilian life, he wanted to develop his charity profile as well – and there were definitely ways that she could help him with that. There might also be engagements and foreign tours representing the Queen on which Kate still could not accompany him. She was going to have to be very patient indeed.
But at last Ms Middleton knew where she stood. She trusted the word of the man she loved who, for all sorts of reasons that she had come to accept, felt that he could not commit to marriage before he was thirty years old – and in the end, after three more long years, her trust would be repaid. At the end of a safari holiday in Kenya in October 2010, on the shores of Lake Rutundu, William got down on one knee and extended his hand to offer Kate the beautiful and famous diamond-and-sapphire cluster engagement ring that had been worn by his mother. He had told neither his father nor his brother of his intention to propose to Kate at that particular time and place – though he had spoken to Harry to make sure that his brother was quite happy for Kate to take possession of their mother’s fabulous ring when the time came.
On 16 November 2010 the engagement was formally announced of Ms Catherine Middleton (twenty-eight) to Prince William of Wales (then also twenty-eight). Far from being ‘Waity Katie’, the dragon boat oarswoman had managed to rush her prince forward by two whole years.
‘So,’ asked Tom Bradby, ITV’s political editor, on the engagement night, discussing the 2007 separation that had transformed the royal couple’s relationship – did that ten weeks or so of break-up provide ‘a chance to re-centre yourself’?
‘Yes,’ replied Kate. ‘Definitely, yes.’
‘You were obviously upset when you split up,’ continued Bradby, ‘but all your friends [on both sides] talk about there being a very substantial love that has built up over a period of time that’s part friendship – and more than that.’
‘Well,’ replied Kate, ‘I think if you do go out with someone for quite a long time you do get to know each other very very well. You go through the good times. You go through the bad times – both personally and within a relationship as well. I think … you can come out of that stronger and learn things about yourself.’
Discussing the pain of past emotional break-ups provided a striking new dimension in official royal engagement and marriage interviews – and it was a definite improvement on ‘whatever “in love” means’. Tom Bradby had even discussed that particular hazard with William and Kate in the course of several hours of preparation and rehearsal for the interview, and William cleared the hurdle with aplomb.
‘The timing is right,’ he said. ‘We are very very happy.’
The prince also interrupted when Bradby turned to Kate and asked, ‘You’ve had a long time to contemplate this moment?’
‘Let’s not over-egg the “long” bit,’ joked William.
The informal tone of the interview reflected the closeness that had developed between William and Bradby since the journalist had served as ITN’s rather reluctant royal correspondent in the early years of the century. Invalided home from Jakarta, where he had been hit in the leg by a bullet while covering a demonstration, Bradby – who had recently become a father – had asked for a job ‘that didn’t involve getting shot’, and the royal beat had been the only one available. The young journalist came to the assignment with as little enthusiasm for princes as they felt for the press, but from that unpromising beginning, a friendship had flowered.
Though a decade and a half older than either William or Harry – with whom he would also become friendly – Bradby had a youthful energy that brought him close to the young men, as well as the empathy of a fellow toff who was so bright he could have gone to grammar school. Bradby’s public school, Sherborne in Dorset, was even older than Eton – more than seven centuries older, founded in AD 705 by St Aldhelm – with a rural modesty that gave it more class.
Bradby totally ‘got it’ when it came to his coverage of the royal family. ‘It’s really about us,’ he once said, ‘and why we project so much onto them.’ He was a clear cut above the majority of the royal rat pack – and his personal closeness to the princes also led to a coup that had remarkable consequences.
One day in 2005 William had phoned Bradby, by then ITN’s political editor, to let him know that he had come up to London and would Tom fancy meeting for a beer? The prince wanted to discuss pulling together the videos of his gap year, and the
