Kate & William 10 magical years: The story of their romance and marriage as you’ve never read – or seen – before
They fell in love… and we fell in love with them: … and now, today and next Saturday, Weekend is celebrating the tenth anniversary of William and Kate’s magical Westminster Abbey wedding with two glorious special magazines.
Brimming with fresh accounts from close friends and those who played vital roles in their story… 50 pages of dazzling photos, including many never seen before… enchanting new insights into what brought them together 20 years ago, how their friendship blossomed into secret courtship, that spectacular wedding day – and their blissful married life with three gorgeous children… So break out the bunting – and enjoy the full, heart-warming tale of the most touching royal romance of our generation.
Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy explore how the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s romance blossomed as they celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. Pictured: William and Kate kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding in London on 29 April, 2011
Prince William had just had his 15th birthday, and he and his mother were talking. They were in her sitting room at home in Kensington Palace chatting, as they often did, about life. He enjoyed these talks.
But that afternoon, in philosophical mood, Diana said something that may well have played a crucial role in his choosing the young woman who will one day be Queen. Their conversation was in light-hearted vein about growing up and about girls.
And then, quite suddenly, his mother’s mood changed as she now offered him, we can reveal, a piece of advice he undoubtedly took to heart. ‘Whatever you do,’ she said, ‘make sure the person you marry is your best friend first.’
Diana, of course, had married a man she barely knew. She had met Prince Charles only a dozen times before their engagement – she barely enjoyed a courtship, let alone a friendship.
Tragically, two months later, Diana was dead. William would never forget her advice that afternoon. He and Kate Middleton were good friends long before they fell in love and, finally, became husband and wife.
Without that marriage, the country would be immeasurably poorer; not just because of the powerful symbolism of a union between a boy born to be king and a girl whose family’s roots reach back to the harsh world of Durham coal miners, but also because the monarchy today unarguably stands at a pivotal point.
The Queen’s glorious reign cannot, of course, continue forever. Charles will be the oldest monarch to be crowned. The family is reeling from Harry and Meghan’s unprecedented and profoundly damaging attack on the very fabric of the institution, and of course, coping with the death of Prince Philip.
Thankfully, the calm, confident sure-footedness of William and Kate, the certainty they bring, the guarantee they offer of a thriving monarchy decades from now, has never been more important or more comforting.
Yet what is so remarkable about their union is how – possibly because of the influence of that conversation between mother and son in Kensington Palace – it so nearly didn’t happen at all…
Shortly after Prince William’s 15th birthday, Princess Diana advised him to make sure the person he marries is his best friend. Pictured: Prince William and Kate Middleton pose in an official engagement portrait taken by photographer Mario Testino in the Cornwall Room at St James’s Palace in London on November 25, 2010
The Duke of Cambridge felt a grim echo of what had happened to his mother, as paparazzi pursued Kate. Pictured left: A casual William in jumper and jeans on his first day as a university student, pictured right: William made full use of the Scottish wind and waves during his time there in 2004
William felt troubled that Kate had no police protection and cameras seemed to follow everywhere she went. Pictured: Practising his swing on the beach at St Andrews on May 28, 2003
He said he didn’t want her to suffer as his mother had
Four years before the nation revelled in the excitement of their wedding William, with heavy heart, made a telephone call to Kate. She had been having terrible trouble with the paparazzi.
In the fifth year of their romance (although the world had only known about it for three) photographers seemed to be permanently camped outside the Chelsea flat bought for their children by Michael and Carole Middleton.
Wherever Kate went, so the cameras followed. It was desperately unsettling for the young history of art graduate, with no police protection to help her. But it was even more troubling for William.
In Kate’s predicament he felt a grim echo of what had happened to his mother – he blamed the paparazzi then, and he blames them still, for Princess Diana’s death in a car being chased by photographers on motorcycles into the Pont d’Alma tunnel in Paris.
He and Kate had talked endlessly about the problem, but it seemed to be one with no answers. There was a solution, of course, marriage – but William wasn’t ready to settle down.
Kate had been with Prince William for five years when he ended their relationship during a phone call. Pictured: Kate and Will on graduation day
Hence ‘Waity Katie’, that mocking soubriquet invented by snobbish royal hangers-on which had become more than just a bad joke; it had wounded the beautiful, intelligent girl who could have had the pick of the crop, and a life of blissful privacy, if she chose.
William had also been struggling with the burden from his teenage years of shielding a younger brother from the vicissitudes of their parents’ stormy marriage, a responsibility he took very seriously. Where Kate’s family life, with a brother and sister and parents who were blissfully happy, was idyllic, William’s was a torment.
He was of the firm belief that if Diana had not married so young – engaged at 19, married at 20 to a man 13 years her senior – her troubled life could have been so different.
And so, working in the Kew head office of fashion shop Jigsaw, owned by friends who employed her as an accessories buyer, Kate’s mobile rang. It was 3pm on Wednesday, 11 April, 2007.
William said he had been thinking about the relationship, and what it meant for them both. Of one thing, he told her, he was sure, ‘The press will make your life unbearable, as long as we’re together. I don’t want you suffering the way my mother did.’
Prince William told Prince Charles that he was finding it hard to settle in at St Andrews, despite the efforts that had been made on his behalf to enable him to live a normal academic life. Pictured: Prince William’s girlfriend, Kate Middleton, arrives for his graduation ceremony on 15 June, 2005
Kate said simply that he made her happy, and that she believed she made him happy. Wasn’t that all that mattered? Yes, but…
They talked for an hour. When the call ended, her romance with the future king was over. They’d been together for five years. Now he’d broken it off.
So just what were the forces that ultimately brought them back together – forces so strong that William was prepared to shed those anxieties, and Kate was allowed to prove to him that she could survive in the spotlight?
Passion, certainly. William’s much-quoted comment, ‘Wow, Kate’s hot!’ when she sashayed in a see-through sheer dress with visible black underwear down the runway at a university charity fashion show in 2002 might never have been murmured in the ear of a friend had she not ignored the original plans for her costume.
A chunky knitwear top was meant to be worn over the diaphanous skirt. But moments before going on Kate suddenly decided – she has never explained why – it wasn’t right and took it off, wearing the skirt as a dress, revealing her well-toned figure. It was a decision, as things turned out, with historic consequences.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, that was the night their relationship matured from friendship into romance. Later that evening after the show they were drinking together, and reported to have been seen kissing. Not everyone, it must be said, was entirely surprised at the development.
A blossoming friendship for wary William
They had known each other for six months as chums since arriving at St Andrews, doing the same course in the first year (he switched to geography after that) and living in the same hall of residence, St Salvator’s – known as Sallies.
Kate had always known the student William was not relaxed, even though huge efforts had been made on his behalf to enable him to live a normal academic life with as little interference as possible.
In phone calls to his father he admitted to Prince Charles that he was finding it hard to settle in and was, frankly, homesick. Despite best efforts, there were always people who were trying, so irritatingly, to get to know him when he dreamed of academic anonymity.
Prince William who pointedly declined invitations to join university clubs, had a very different experience to his father’s at Trinity College, Cambridge. Pictured: Prince William laughs as he meets well-wishers at his graduation ceremony in June 2005
He’d hoped that by avoiding a big metropolitan university he’d be able to merge into local life relatively unnoticed. Now he was finding that in a small town like St Andrews the opposite was true.
He was weary of avoiding eye contact with strangers and pointedly declined invitations to join university clubs. He even went jogging before dawn when he knew the streets of the seaside town were empty.
Certainly, his university experience was so very different from his father’s at Trinity College, Cambridge. There to read anthropology, Prince Charles was accompanied by a retinue of aides, including a private secretary-cum-equerry and a valet. Apart from his police security William was on his own, in a standard room and sharing a bathroom.
Intriguingly, it was Kate to whom he unburdened himself about his unhappiness. She was by now a chum, though with no romantic involvement (long gone were the days when she had a picture of Prince William pasted up in her school dormitory).
When he missed a seminar she would let him copy her notes
At the time she had a boyfriend, Rupert Finch, a dark and handsome fourth-year student reading law. (These days Rupert is a company lawyer with Johnson Matthey, the science and tech company, married, with three children, to Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs, dressmaker daughter of the Marquess of Reading.)
But then, William also had a girlfriend, second-year English student Carley Massy-Birch, a Devon farmer’s strikingly attractive daughter who was, according to her mother Mimi, ‘definitely an item’ with the prince for a couple of months.
He’d met Carley while auditioning for a part in a college play based on a JD Salinger story (he didn’t get it) and they embarked on what her mother describes as ‘a regular university romance’. He found her fun, but Carley couldn’t take the secrecy and special planning on which William insisted.
‘She got bored with all the drama,’ explained a friend after they broke up. In later years Carley would have a brief acting career, appearing in a number of Radio 4 plays, before settling down to marriage with Frenchman Florian Franke.
Kate suggested that William should switch to a geography course, when he confided that his biggest mistake was his degree course. Pictured: Prince William leaves St Salvator’s Chapel after his graduation ceremony on 23 June, 2005
Meanwhile, meeting around the campus as friends, William and Kate were entirely relaxed in each other’s company. The tall, slender brunette who liked an early morning jog soon became one of the group who joined William for breakfast before lectures.
She was different from the kind of girls he had dated in the past – the socially ambitious offspring of his father’s polo-playing circle – and he found her natural and unaffected ways comfortingly reassuring. When he missed a seminar she would cover by letting him copy her notes.
Her room in halls was not far from his, although on a different floor, and sometimes they walked to lectures together. With others they played tennis and met up in the local pubs.
The budding friendship, it must be said, did not go unnoticed. Fellow students would joke to her, ‘Bet you’ll be wearing a tiara soon’. Certainly, some of the other girls in her year, a number of them from well-connected families, were positively suspicious of the middle-class girl’s easy closeness to the Queen’s grandson.
Meanwhile, in his uncertainty at St Andrews, William had been talking to his father and to his former housemaster at Eton, Dr Andrew Gailey, about dropping out. And yet, tellingly, it was after talking to Kate about it that he made up his mind to stay.
She had also been uncertain about whether to remain at St Andrews, she told him, but on the whole thought it better to stay. She felt that having invested so much time there, it would be mad to chuck it in.
When William told her he thought his biggest mistake was his degree course, it was Kate who suggested switching to geography. Which he did.
The passion show! With unseen pictures from THAT catwalk, this was the fashion show when Kate let her hair down – modelling a see-through dress and leaving William transfixed…
Kate’s biggest gamble – and how it paid off
Her own uncertainty may well have had something to do with the fact that, as has been well documented, her original university choice was Edinburgh, particularly as it specialised in the history of art, and that she had previously accepted a place there.
Her sudden switch to St Andrews followed the announcement that William was going there. It is tempting to wonder if family ambitions really did motivate this change. It certainly induced a rush of last-minute applications from young women around the country and the world, especially America.
Indeed, at Kate’s school, Marlborough College, it was suggested she write a letter of apology to Edinburgh. So why did she make the change? Not even her housemistress Mrs Ann Patching was sure.
‘After she left school, Catherine made some different decisions,’ she said. ‘But why she made those decisions, I don’t know.’
Kate’s original university choice was Edinburgh, however she switched to St Andrews following the announcement that William was going there. Pictured: Kate at Prince William’s graduation on 23 June, 2005
One of those decisions, of course, was to take a gap year, which meant she would arrive at university at the same time as the prince. For his part, William had made it plain in a pre-university interview that he was not drawn to people because of their background. As he said, ‘I just hope to meet people I get on with. It’s about their character and who they are.’
As things were to turn out, no one fitted that requirement better than Kate Middleton, known to her family as Catherine. Hers was a background that some royal princes would have viewed with disdain.
But Princess Diana had dedicated herself to making sure that her sons were brought up to understand and value life lived outside palace walls. ‘Not everybody drives a Range Rover and takes several foreign holidays a year,’ she would tell William, and later Harry, while shepherding them to meet homeless people.
Kate’s family, it has to be said, were anything but homeless. Her parents were running an online party goods business which was doing well. They also possessed all the qualities Diana had taught William to cherish and admire – ambition, tenacity, but above all the warmth in which William was to immerse himself in Kate’s family home in Berkshire.
Diana’s thoughtful son found the impressive story of social mobility in Kate’s family moving, even inspirational – and it would add a compelling dimension to their romance.
A girl from a very different background
The key was that there was never a flicker from her of pursuit
William loved the fact that Kate’s mother Carole had been brought up in a council flat in Southall, Middlesex, being wheeled about in a large Silver Cross pram that had to be lugged up and down the communal stairs.
Kate’s maternal grandfather, Ron Goldsmith, was a painter and decorator. His wife Dorothy was known to friends as ‘The Duchess’ since they all knew Silver Cross prams were what the Royal Family used and she’d insisted on having one as well.
(Providential, perhaps, and surely not lost on Prince William since his mother was always known as ‘Duch’ to her Spencer clan.) All Dorothy wanted for her family, in fact, was to improve their lot in life.
She was ambitious for them – a trait which, as we now know, she passed on to her daughter Carole, Kate’s mother.
Michael Zhi-Wei Choong, a close friend of William’s at St Andrews, said the Duke of Cambridge would join rugby training. Pictured: William holds Kate close, oblivious to the crowds at the party on 9 October 2004
For most of the 19th century her family had been coal miners. It was a hard life of disease – mainly TB – and early death. Dorothy’s own grandfather John Harrison was a Durham miner working down the pit at Hetton-le-Hole until he was trampled in a freak accident by a startled, runaway pit pony.
Only with the arrival of the 20th century did the family fortunes begin to change. Dorothy’s father Tommy, born in 1904, avoided going down the pit by training as a joiner. Then he moved south to seek work, putting down roots in Southall, west London.
And Southall is where the Kate Middleton story really begins. It was there that her mother Carole was born in 1955, and later her colourful Uncle Gary, he of the £5 million Ibiza villa, La Maison de Bang Bang, where years later an undercover reporter was allegedly offered drugs by Mr Goldsmith, now 55.
Carole inherited the poise and ambition of her own mother. When she applied to British Airways for a ground staff job, brother Gary recalls his big sister practising her flight announcements into a tape recorder.
Kate could be shy, but Will revels in fun
Michael Zhi-Wei Choong, a close friend of William’s at St Andrews, watched the relationship with Kate develop. Here he gives a fresh insight into those heady days…
‘I was in the rugby team, that’s how I knew William,’ says Michael. ‘Rugby was core to the social scene at St Andrews. He would come to training, just wanting to be normal. He’d always remember you and say, ‘“Hey, how are you doing?” He was a really nice guy who could get any girl he wanted.’
While Kate and William were getting to know each other, Michael recalls Kate dating Rupert Finch, a good-looking fourth-year law student who was considered quite a catch. ‘Rupert and Kate were very different,’ he says. ‘He was a big character, almost a bit overwhelming. He did a lot of socialising and belonged to an elite boys’ club called the Poker Club.’
William and Kate soon grew closer, but it was the Don’t Walk fashion show in March 2002 that sparked speculation about their relationship. Michael was present at the casting.
Michael said he thinks Kate was trying to make a statement with her choice of outfit at the university’s catwalk. Pictured: Now it’s time for a twirl as the young prince shows he knows how to lead
‘Kate was a bit of a star, a bit of a deal,’ he says. ‘She liked the idea of being a model, but she was shy and not particularly comfortable in the spotlight. I remember someone telling her an anecdote to help her relax, and she started laughing.
‘William had organised a big table right next to the catwalk but it was odd he would go to such a high-profile event, and that Kate would wear that outfit. It was really out of character for her – I think she was trying to make a statement.’
Some have claimed William kissed Kate at the after-show party, but although Michael wasn’t there he believes that is unlikely. ‘He would never have expressed his affection in public,’ he says.
Michael thinks they became a couple in the summer of 2002 before they moved into a four-bedroom apartment with two friends for their second year.
‘They deliberately kept it under wraps,’ he says. ‘They knew they wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend and as a disguise they said, “We can all live in the same house together, it will look like we’re just friends.”
‘Socially you didn’t see them together that much. She would come down to the rugby and be pleasant to all his friends but you never saw them really lovey-dovey.
‘They’re quite chalk and cheese characters actually. Kate has to make an effort to be outgoing, she’s not one to play up to the camera. But Will’s a natural – he revels in it. Sometimes he’d hire a house with his mates and they’d go a bit crazy, singing songs and drinking. He had mates in London too. He wasn’t going to let people say he couldn’t enjoy himself.’
Michael recalls how Kate’s 21st birthday party caused problems, because it coincided with that of Virginia Fraser, who’s now married to William’s close friend Oliver Chadwyck-Healey. ‘Kate had a big fallout with Ginnie,’ says Michael.
‘Everyone wanted to go to Ginnie’s party too so it was really awkward. So there was that needle, it created tension. They didn’t change the dates and people had to choose. It was really stupid, because Will and Ollie were good friends. Will just went to Kate’s party in the end.’
At the start of the third year Kate and William moved into Balgove House (inset), again with two housemates – Alasdair Coutts-Wood and Oliver Baker – and Michael saw the set-up first-hand. ‘It was quite funny,’ he recalls.
‘I went to a party there and you could go into Oli and Ali’s rooms, but Will and Kate’s rooms – they had separate rooms – had security tape over the doors so you couldn’t open them. It was only on William and Kate’s doors. There was an annexe too, like a porter’s lodge, for the police. They had secret security staff as well, but you started to recognise them after a while.’
He says that Kate’s accent is rather different now to the way he remembers it. ‘She’s notably posh now, but she didn’t speak like that at uni. The way she talks now is very conscientious.’
He never heard Kate talk about what job she might like either. ‘It was never clear what she wanted to do. No one ever really cracked that nut. At the time it was an in-joke between us that they’d been going out for a long time and they might get married, but we just didn’t expect it to happen…’
Natalie Clarke and Mark Branagan
At Heathrow she met Michael Middleton, a flight despatcher. His family history of banking and the Leeds textile industry was very different. A comfortable upbringing included being privately educated at Clifton College in Bristol.
Carole went to a local state comprehensive, left school at 16, briefly worked with Prudential insurance company in Holborn, and returned to gain four A-levels. She wanted to teach but the long training involved would have stretched the family finances.
Finally came her move to BA, and meeting Michael, six years her senior. They were married on 21 June, 1980 – their anniversary two years later just happened to be the day Prince William was born.
For a couple of years, when Kate and Pippa were still toddlers, the family lived in Jordan where Michael worked as a BA manager, and life revolved around socialising at the British Embassy. Kate attended a local nursery where she learned some Arabic and listened to verses from The Koran.
Had life continued that way it would have plotted a very different future for the children. But Carole ‘wasn’t convinced I wanted to be an expat mum’. She also ‘had this strong feeling that I hadn’t achieved anything. I got married at 25, had Catherine at 26.’
The rapport between the pals who became partners was clear at a gala dinner in St Andrews in 2004 (pictured)
By the time they returned to Britain in 1986 Kate was four and Carole was pregnant with third child James. If Carole was going to achieve anything, it was now. And so Party Pieces was born, initially at home.
Carole had spotted a gap in the market and busied herself on the kitchen table, starting off by preparing party bags for the parents of her daughters’ school friends.
Some family money had been left in trust to Michael for his children’s education. But by the time Kate was arriving at Marlborough, Party Pieces was flying, aided now by Michael who had given up his airline job to join the family business.
The Middletons were soon very well off indeed.
No one could have been more thrilled than ‘The Duchess’. Here, surely, was social mobility beyond her wildest dreams. Sadly, Carole’s mother was to die, aged 71, in 2006, too early to see her granddaughter become a princess, married to a future king.
This, then, was the circuitous route which brought Kate into William’s orbit. Curiously, though, in a remarkable parallel to the Queen, who was just 13 when she first met Prince Philip at Dartmouth where he was a naval cadet, Catherine Middleton first clapped eyes on Prince William years before St Andrews – she was only nine, he five months her junior, and they shared a playing field.
Poor William. As the most famous schoolchild in Britain, everyone knew who he was. He and Kate were on opposite sides in a hockey match, with hard-playing Kate being in the mixed team of St Andrew’s prep school in Pangbourne taking on the boys of Ludgrove.
They were not introduced, at least not formally, but may well have bumped into each other. (It actually happened again when she was at Marlborough College and William arrived from Eton for a school event.)
A decade later as university chums – but not yet lovers – Kate took great delight in reminding William of their near-meeting as nine-year-olds.
A budding romance – and a very clever deception
Now at university, arriving at the same time for the same course, they met. As Kate recalled in their engagement interview: ‘I turned bright red and sort of scuttled off, feeling very shy about meeting him.’
It wasn’t too long, however, before, seeing him every day around the campus – and in the university pool where they often swam together early in the morning – she was as relaxed with him as he was with her.
Now he was walking to lectures with another delicious young lady
Kate, it must be said, is more like her father in that quiet and unobtrusive manner that William liked. Crucially, he never felt threatened by Kate Middleton. Never was there a flicker from her of pursuit. Here was the key element of their growing friendship. Besides, in those early days each was attached to someone else.
One evening at a freshers’ party William was, so very politely, trying to shake off the unwanted attentions of a particularly persistent girl. At that moment Kate came up on a rescue mission and put her arms around him, enabling William to tell his pursuer, ‘Oh sorry, but I’ve got a girlfriend.’
As the girl faded, he and Kate moved away giggling, and William mouthed at her, ‘Thanks so much.’ As one observer that night recalls, ‘Kate was the only girl in the room who could have done that – and who William would have allowed to do it.’
Students would gossip about seeing Prince William walking with Bryony Daniels, the beautiful daughter of a Suffolk landowner. Pictured: Catherine with her father Michael in St Andrews before graduation
Michael Choong, who played rugby with William said he and Kate never showed affection in public. Pictured: Kate’s mother Carole attends the ceremony
Will’s prank with a pellet gun
Jules Knight, actor and ex-member of the vocal group Blake, studied art history and moral philosophy with William and was part of William and Kate’s circle of friends.
‘St Andrews has the feeling of a private house party because it’s cosseted,’ Jules told the Daily Mail.
‘Kate and Will could go for a drink and hold hands and no one batted an eyelid. The odd comment, the odd smile or touch, was enough to know they were very fond of each other.
Jules Knight (pictured) said no one batted an eyelid when Kate and Will held hands
‘Will and I were the only ones on the moral philosophy course and we’d play noughts and crosses in lectures and take the mickey out of each other. The bodyguards sat in the kebab shop down the road. Though they were low-key, they were omnipresent.’
Jules recalled one party when there was chaos after William set off an alarm.
‘He switched off the power to stop it, but that switched off the security cameras too. Suddenly we were surrounded by bodyguards who kicked the door open demanding to know what was going on.
‘Another time when Will and I were walking home late, he grabbed a pellet gun from my jacket and held it up in the air. In seconds two guys materialised looking alarmed, so Will threw it on the ground and walked off.’
William was known for being unpretentious. ‘He never seemed to have more money than the rest of us but he was generous, often buying shots for everyone in the pub.
‘He was down-to-earth about his home at Highgrove and once invited me to stay after a party because I’d had too much to drink. I woke up, hungover, and the butler said, “Would you like any breakfast, sir?”’
Lisa Sewards
It is surely an indication of how he viewed Kate at that time in that he’d seen her endlessly in a swimming costume at the pool and never made a move to develop their relationship beyond a platonic friendship – not until she strode down the catwalk in that slip of a dress.
After this, to his relief, he found that Kate was prepared to go along with the planning and secrecy that went with the role of being a royal prince’s girlfriend. Indeed, she found it fun.
Despite the kisses that some said they’d seen the night of the fashion show, it wasn’t generally known she was now his girlfriend. For their part, the couple went to great lengths to keep their secret. Not even when Kate and William, together with two others, shared a flat in their second year – in aptly named Hope Street – did anyone think they were an item.
The foursome were William, his Eton chum Fergus Boyd – a godfather to Prince George – Army officer’s daughter Olivia Bleasdale, and Kate. William had asked Kate to join the group.
They gave supper parties, the girls cooked and William and Fergus did the shopping and the washing-up – everything in the open in cheery, typical student style. Except for one thing – him and Kate. Their passionate relationship remained not for public consumption.
Prince William, it must be said, didn’t do this for himself. To the world at large Kate would have been viewed as just another girlfriend. He did it for her and her family, whose lives, he knew from bitter experience, could be made unbearable by media attention.
Now he could be found walking to geography lectures with another delicious young lady, Bryony Daniels, the beautiful daughter of a Suffolk landowner. Around the campus they were photographed together, generating the inevitable gossip.
Bryony was, of course, in on the deception. Indeed, it’s a true measure of just how deeply William already felt about Kate that such a deception was necessary. Could he, arguably, already have been looking into his future?
Over the next three university years their relationship deepened. One of their circle, Michael Choong, who played rugby with William and is these days a property developer in Scotland, recalls, ‘They never showed any affection in public. Kate was good for him.
‘She was very loyal and did not gossip. William was naturally gregarious – he’d always get a round of beers in at the pub – but Kate was less so and hated having her picture taken.’
He adds, ‘Will used to take some of his mates shooting. He would go down to Norfolk at weekends and they would bring back game, which Kate would cook for dinner parties.’
As university flatmates, no one saw anything special about William being one of the guests at Kate’s 21st birthday party, a 1920s-themed extravaganza with flapper girls and the Charleston. William arrived a bit late.
That was the moment he was first introduced to Carole and Michael Middleton. And Kate would attend William’s Out Of Africa 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle.
Significantly, however, he had already had her as a guest at Wood Farm, the royals’ favourite bolthole on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
When the prince gave an interview marking his coming of age, he was evasive about his love life. ‘There’s been a lot of speculation about every single girl I’m with,’ he said. ‘It’s a pain for the girls.’
But he couldn’t keep Kate a secret forever, try as he might. Skiing in the Swiss resort of Klosters with his father, he agreed to a photocall on the understanding the photographers would leave him alone afterwards.
None of the media there knew Kate was present too. Photocall over, she joined him at the ski lift and – flash, flash, flash – suddenly the world knew Diana’s boy was in love. Kate’s life would never be the same again.
Scenes from the split
In April 2007, William called Kate at work and broke off their five-year romance. But rather than sitting around sulking, Kate hit the town – and showed William what he was missing
Looking strained, Kate and William make their last public appearance together at the Cheltenham Festival in March 2007
Dancing with William’s friend Guy Pelly at a party at The Roof Gardens in Kensington
Pictured left: Kate returning home after a night out at Mahiki nightclub and (right) looking stylish in jeans
In their third year at St Andrews, Kate and William shared accommodation with discreet chums, Alasdair Coutts-Wood and Oli Baker. Pictured: Kate at Boujis nightclub
Kate and William decided to spend summer apart, as he began to show the first signs of unease at being tied down so young. Pictured: Kate Middleton with her sister on 14 May, 2007
While Prince William slipped away to America, Kate went to the Dordogne as a guest of the family of one of their old flatmates, Fergus Boyd. Pictured left: Kate Middleton The Badminton Horse Trials in May 2007, pictured right: Kate attending a private house party in Chelsea in June 2007
Twists and turns on the path to true love
By now they were in their third year at St Andrews, and installed in a comfortable farmhouse on the nearby 400-acre Strathtyrum estate. Not alone, of course. Two other discreet chums joined them, Alasdair Coutts-Wood and Oli Baker.
Here Kate’s natural home-making skills were allowed to flourish – she ran up some new gingham curtains. There in the kitchen was her dream – an Aga cooker – and not only that, in the baronial dining room was a table that could seat 18. More dinner parties followed.
Even so, William was beginning to show the first signs of unease at being tied down so young. It was a constant in his mind in the early years of the relationship. They agreed to spend the summer break apart.
Prince William decided to teach Kate to shoot and took her up to Tam-na-Ghar, a cottage on the Balmoral estate. Pictured: Taxi for two, leaving Raffles nightclub in August 2008
Prince William was asked about getting married just one week before Prince Charles was to marry Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles. Pictured: Mesmerised by the action at the Boodles Boxing Ball
Pictured left: The pair embrace after dinner at The Potting Shed Pub in Wiltshire on 18 July 2009, pictured right: Kate’s ready to party at a charity roller disco on 17 September 2008
He slipped away to America, flying to Tennessee to join the family of an old (and platonic) friend, Anna Sloan, a department store heiress who was at Edinburgh University. Kate went to the Dordogne as a guest of the family of one of their old flatmates, Fergus Boyd. One evening she disclosed that their being apart was something of a trial separation, adding, ‘I miss him.’
She didn’t have to wait too long before seeing him. At summer’s end they were back together again sharing the same house in their final year. Judged on what happened next, William had been missing her too.
He decided to teach her to shoot, taking her up to Tam-na-Ghar, a cottage on the Balmoral estate which the Queen had given him as a refuge. And by now Kate’s family were in on the secret, her rather more outgoing sister Pippa (who was a student at Edinburgh) and brother James sometimes joining them there.
He was trying to protect her from the unrelenting spotlight
Some months later the couple were once again in Klosters – she skied rather better and with more daring than her boyfriend. And again there was a photocall with brother Harry and Prince Charles, but no Kate – even though everyone knew she was there.
It was just one week before Prince Charles was to marry Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, and there was William, in relaxed après ski mood in the Casa Antica nightclub, when he was asked a relatively simple question: ‘So is there going to be a second royal wedding?’
His answer was very much to the point. ‘I am too young. I don’t want to get married until I’m at least 28 or maybe 30.’
We can never know for certain what effect these remarks had on Kate. She had only recently had her 23rd birthday. William was still 22.
Prince William gave Kate a list of telephone numbers she could call for help including his media lawyer and Palace press secretary. Pictured: a kiss for William at his 26th birthday picnic, with Harry in front
William was, undoubtedly, trying to protect his girlfriend from the unrelenting spotlight that he knew was bound to follow the girl whom the world believed he would marry. As for Kate, she already knew from endless conversations they’d had about Diana that William considered his mother’s fatal error was marrying too young.
On the other hand, William had long recognised that his father’s biggest mistake was letting the girl he really loved, Camilla, slip through his fingers. Unscrambling this complicated romantic riddle was all very well. But would Kate really have to wait so many years before she had a ring on her finger?
She would, and she did, with considerable grace it must be said, despite a global preoccupation over whether this girl whose forebears were Durham coal miners was destined to be a queen.
To help her handle the relentless attention William, who was often away on military training, gave her a list of telephone numbers she could call for help. They included his media lawyer and his Palace press secretary.
Two difficult years passed. But 9 January 2007, her 25th birthday, was a turning point. The paparazzi outside her Chelsea apartment, convinced that there was to be an announcement about an engagement, swarmed around her. Normally she had managed to cope, beaming prettily for the cameras and giving a flick of her long, glossy hair.
Today it was different. She found herself almost overwhelmed and close to tears. William watched TV footage of the melee going on around her with a sinking heart. The trouble was, although he knew he loved Kate, he was still only 24 and uncertain whether his feelings for her might change.
He’d really meant it when he talked in that Swiss nightclub of not marrying until much later. One family figure who knew of his dilemma was his grandmother, the Queen, who by now had met Kate several times and liked her very much, while being somewhat uneasy about her not having a career. Hence William’s phone call to Kate and the apparent end of what had been a beautiful relationship.
Kate was almost always chaperoned by William’s friends. Pictured: All smiles, Kate and William applaud the fighters at the Boodles Boxing Ball in June 2008
The secret promise that sealed their reunion
Kate’s response will, surely, be studied by psychologists the world over when the story is retold. Far from following the miserable path of Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham, withdrawing from the world after being jilted, Kate sallied forth to engage with it in a spirit of joyful liberation.
She went out nightclubbing in a revealing mini-dress, exposing both cleavage and thigh. She was photographed in the back of taxis displaying those well-toned legs that had brought William’s eyes out on stalks at that fashion show five years earlier.
She briefly joined an all-girl rowing crew. But just how liberated was she really? For nearly all the time she was chaperoned by William’s friends. As for William, it didn’t take long for him to realise that leaping onto a table at the Mahiki nightclub in Mayfair after that phone call to Kate and crying ‘I’m free!!!’ was utter nonsense.
He missed her as much as she missed him. There was no great public reunion. All it took was the concert marking the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. Kate was there, not with William, but her presence said it all – they were together again.
With her he’d finally found a family life he dreamed of as a boy
Now William gave her a secret undertaking: they would marry, but just not yet.
With all the public scrutiny and gossip about her family, and the ghastly ‘Waity Katie’ nickname, the months and years that followed were not easy. But she loved William, and trusted him.
Significantly, so did her family, to whom he had become almost like another son. Indeed, friends knew that when he pondered how awful it would be if he ever lost Kate, he was also thinking of those cosy evenings with her family in Bucklebury. With her he’d finally found a family life he had dreamed of as a boy.
What he adored about the Middletons was that all of them – mother, father, daughters and son – were clearly happy in one another’s company. It was so different from his own childhood experience.
Just how much he treasured this domestic happiness became clear in 2010 on one of his many holidays with her family to the French ski resort of Courchevel, where with the smallest of smiles he was overheard at an outdoor restaurant referring to Michael Middleton as ‘Dad’.
That October he and Kate went to Kenya, a part of the world William has always been drawn to. Unknown to her, he had in his backpack Princess Diana’s engagement ring.
When they returned she knew she would be his wife. And the ring? She had slipped it on her finger, but then had to take it off again. It wouldn’t remain on until William had formally asked her father and, of course, the Queen.
Thus, joyfully, concluded the first part of a romantic saga lasting – astonishingly – almost a decade. They were both 28. One of his first jubilant calls was to his brother.
Harry’s response: ‘What took you so long?’