'Grow up': Prince Harry must put mending fences ahead of his pride
It speaks volumes for the priorities and personality of Prince Harry that the reason that brought him back on a surprise visit to his despised native land this week was not to mend the broken relationship with his family that he has wantonly trashed. No, the sole grounds for his unheralded appearance at the London Law Courts was to pursue his ongoing war with the media. The same media, it needs hardly be added, that in other circumstances he uses so shamelessly to advance his own agenda and interests.
Flying in from his exile in California, Harry popped up in court as one of several celebrities - including Sir Elton John and former model Liz Hurley - who are taking legal action against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, Britain's biggest selling tabloid.
The affronted celebs claim the Mail used private detectives to bug their phone calls, hack their internet accounts, and illegally invade their privacy: all allegations that Associated deny. Harry says the paper's intrusions into his life go back for years and were responsible for breaking up two of his previous relationships before he met his wife Meghan Markle. It might be thought that Harry would use such a rare visit to try and mend fences with his father King Charles and stepmother Queen Camilla, not to mention his brother Prince William, all of whom he deliberately insulted at Christmas with the publication of his whiny self-pitying ghosted autobiography Spare.
Instead, Harry intentionally timed his trip to coincide with his father's trip to Germany - the first state visit of his reign. In stark contrast to Harry's own fractured and fractious relations with the media, the King played this delicate occasion like a true professional: addressing the German Bundestag Parliament in their own language, praising their generous welcoming of refugees from the war in Ukraine, and paying his respects in Hamburg, a city devastated by RAF firestorm raids in World War Two.
Charles was rewarded for his discreet diplomacy by a deluge of praise in the British press - including the voice of the establishment- the Times - which said that the King's personal initiative would do much to repair Britain's friendship with a close ally after the rupture caused by Brexit. Oblivious to all this, Harry did his best to steal his father's thunder and overshadow the King's visit by way of an appearance that - as ever - was all about him.
His day in court should make us apprehensive as to whether he intends to try and pull a similarly self-absorbed stunt at his father's coronation next month.
Approaching the age of 40, Harry really does need to grow up and appreciate that the world has other priorities than the wounded pride of a privileged princeling.