After years beneath the Californian sun, Prince Harry is reportedly bringing his family home.
As somebody who spent 14 wonderful years living in California myself, I suspect he is about to discover something rather special: sometimes you have to leave England to understand quite how much you love it.
Welcome home, Harry. And I mean that sincerely.
The Telegraph reports that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are planning to move back to Britain with Archie and Lilibet later this month, with their children enrolled at a British school for September. Their new home is expected to be outside London, and Britain is set to become their primary base for an extended period, although they will retain their home in Montecito.
There will inevitably be endless analysis of what this means for the Royal family. Will Harry reconcile with William? Will relations with the King continue to thaw? Could Harry ever undertake royal duties again? What does Meghan make of returning to the country she once so desperately wanted to leave?
All perfectly legitimate questions. But my first reaction was rather more personal.
I think Harry is going to fall in love with England all over again.
I say that because, in a very different way, I did.
I lived in California for 14 years and loved every single second of it. And I mean loved it. California became a huge part of my life. The sunshine, the optimism, the enormous skies, the Pacific, the sense that almost anything was possible. There is an energy to America, and particularly California, that gets under your skin. They sprinkle positivity in the air. I still adore it.
Yet something strange happens when you live abroad for a long time. You don’t necessarily spend your days desperately homesick. I certainly didn’t. You build a life, you make friends and you establish routines. The foreign becomes familiar. And yet, almost imperceptibly, part of you remains elsewhere.
The French have a wonderful word, dépaysement. It is difficult to translate perfectly. It can mean disorientation or a change of scenery, but its roots convey something deeper, the sensation of being removed from your familiar country or surroundings. It isn’t quite homesickness. It is more subtle than that. It is the strange sensation of being away from your place.
You can be perfectly happy and still have it. I think I did. I just didn’t realise it until I came home.
Coming home after years abroad does something extraordinary. You see your own country through foreign eyes. For a while, at least.
Things you barely noticed before suddenly become wonderful. The patchwork of fields viewed from a train window, a village pub with a ridiculous name and a fire crackling in the corner, church spires appearing above hedgerows, old stone walls, narrow lanes and market towns. A proper cup of tea. The sound of people taking the mickey out of one another as a form of affection. Even the supermarket can feel exciting.
And yes, the food.
Americans have mocked British food for generations, but give me a proper Sunday roast with Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and gravy and I will happily defend this country against all comers. After years in California, there is also something almost magnificent about a full English breakfast. Bacon, sausages, eggs, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast. Possibly black pudding if you’re feeling brave. No kale, no açai, no discussion about whether the eggs are pasture raised by emotionally fulfilled chickens. Just breakfast.
Harry will hate the weather eventually, of course. We all do really. He will come back during one of those glorious English weeks when the countryside looks like a Constable painting and wonder why he ever left. Then November will arrive. It will become dark at approximately lunchtime, rain will come horizontally across the car park and somebody will cheerfully inform him that “at least it’s good for the garden”. At that point, Montecito may begin looking rather attractive again.
But even our weather is part of us.
Perhaps that is what living abroad taught me more than anything else. Britain, and England in particular for me, is not lovable because it is perfect. It is lovable because it is ours.
It is eccentric, ancient and modern simultaneously. We have castles older than many countries sitting a few miles from cutting edge technology companies. We queue instinctively. We apologise when somebody else walks into us. We discuss the weather as though we have personally been appointed to negotiate with it. Our humour can be completely incomprehensible to outsiders. We tease the people we love and are suspicious of people who take themselves too seriously. We can turn almost any national catastrophe into a joke within about sixty seconds.
And underneath all that cynicism there is enormous warmth.
That, more than anything, is what I think Harry may rediscover. The people.
Not the commentators, not social media, not “Britain” as filtered through newspapers, television studios or royal briefings. Actual British people.
The woman behind the counter who calls you “love”, the bloke in the pub who starts talking to you despite never having met you, the neighbour who puts your bin back, the school gate friendships, the village fête, the football banter, the dry humour and the extraordinary ability of British people to puncture pomposity with four perfectly chosen words.
And then there is the countryside. My goodness, the countryside.
Harry has spent years surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth. California has mountains, deserts, redwoods and the Pacific Ocean. It can be breathtaking. But England possesses a different sort of beauty. It doesn’t shout. It creeps up on you.
Rolling fields divided by hedgerows, bluebell woods, the Malvern Hills, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Devon and the Peak District. Villages that look as though somebody scattered them across the landscape several hundred years ago. Actually they did.
England feels lived in. Layer upon layer of history is beneath your feet.
Harry has another reason to see all of this differently now. He is bringing his children home. That changes everything.
Suddenly Britain will not simply be the country he left. It will be the country he gets to introduce to Archie and Lilibet. Their first British school friends, Bonfire Night, conkers, Christmas when it is actually cold outside, fish and chips by the sea, castles, school sports days, pantomimes, Sunday roasts and rain stopping play. Perhaps watching England lose something important on penalties and receiving their first proper lesson in national character.
They will also have something far more important, the chance to know their grandfather and their extended family in Britain.
According to The Telegraph, the King was informed of the Sussexes’ plans on Sunday and is naturally pleased at the prospect of seeing more of his family. Harry’s relationship with his father has reportedly improved in recent months, while his relationship with his brother remains much more difficult.
I hope coming home helps with that too.
Families fall out. Things are said that cannot be unsaid, hurt becomes entrenched and pride gets in the way. The Royal family happens to do all of this with several million people watching. But time has a remarkable ability to alter perspective. So does distance. And so does coming home.
Harry may discover that England looks rather different at 41 than it did when he left in his thirties. Perhaps he has changed. Perhaps Britain has changed. Almost certainly both have.
He doesn’t need to become a working royal again for his return to matter. He doesn’t need a grand constitutional role or a carefully choreographed palace announcement. Maybe being a son, a brother, a father and an Englishman is enough for now.
Because there is something profoundly grounding about returning to the place that made you.
I loved California beyond belief. Part of my heart will probably always remain there. But after 14 years away, coming back taught me something I couldn’t have learned without leaving.
England is the best country in the world.
Not because we have the best weather, we demonstrably don’t. Not because we always get everything right, we demonstrably don’t do that either. But because there is nowhere else quite like it.
Sometimes you need thousands of miles of distance to see what was sitting in front of you all along. You notice the humour again, the history, the green, the people, the ridiculousness and the familiarity. Most of all, you notice the feeling that somewhere, somehow, everything fits.
For the first few months, Harry may find himself looking at England almost through American eyes. I did. He’ll notice things he once walked straight past, hear expressions he’d forgotten and rediscover tastes, smells and sounds he hadn’t realised he’d missed.
And one day, perhaps driving through the countryside with his children in the back, he may experience that strange little moment I came to understand myself. The moment when you realise that however wonderful the rest of the world might be, this eccentric, beautiful island has a hold on you that you simply cannot explain.
California is magnificent. America is magnificent. Travelling the world is one of life’s great privileges.
But home is different. Home doesn’t have to compete. It is more special than anything.
It is home.
So whatever has happened over the past six years, whatever arguments remain to be settled and whatever the future relationship between Harry and the Royal family ultimately looks like, on this one point I am delighted.
Welcome home, Harry.
Bring an umbrella (you’ll need it soon), order yourself a fry up, take those children into the English countryside and prepare to fall in love with your country all over again.
Because there really is nowhere quite like home.
By Claire Bullivant
