EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Harry and Meghan take one of William and Kate’s most treasured aides one month after they quit the Cambridges Royal Foundation to make their own
- Harry and Meghan are quitting Royal Foundation shared with William and Kate
- The Sussexes are taking distinguished director Natalie Campbell with them
- She is said to have grown close to Meghan when working on Grenfell cookbook
Any divorce is painful, but the split between Prince William and Prince Harry’s households is proving particularly complicated.
It was announced last month that Harry and Meghan would be quitting the Royal Foundation they share with William and Kate.
And I can reveal the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be taking one of the Royal Foundation’s most distinguished directors with them to run their new power base.
Natalie Campbell, right with the Duchess of Cambridge, was a director at the Royal Foundation
Last month it was announced Harry and Meghan would be quitting the Royal Foundation they share with William and Kate. It has now been revealed they are taking Ms Campbell with them
She is Natalie Campbell, an award-winning ‘social entrepreneur’ who is the Royal Foundation’s ‘director of insight and innovation’.
‘Natalie will be a real loss to William and Catherine,’ a courtier tells me. ‘She has done brilliantly for the Royal Foundation and formed a bond with Meghan when she worked with her on the cookbook for survivors of the Grenfell fire.
‘Her loss will be keenly felt by the Cambridges.’ Harry and Meghan lost no time in establishing their own charitable organisation.
I can disclose that its name, The Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, was trademarked the very next day after the announcement of the split.
Ms Campbell, right, was said to have ‘formed a bond with Meghan when she worked with her on the cookbook for survivors of the Grenfell fire’
Their spokesman confirmed Natalie’s appointment and added: ‘A full board and trustees will be appointed in due course.’
A sign of the tensions ahead came this week when Harry and Meghan used their new Instagram account to publicise 15 environmental causes to their 8.8 million followers, with no mention of William’s charity, United For Wildlife.
‘It was unbelievable,’ one of Wills and Kate’s friends tells me. ‘Harry knows how passionate William is about the charity, it was a real snub.’
Kensington Palace sources insist William was not left ‘disappointed’ by the omission. Such magnanimity will be needed in months to come.
‘Driving ban’ Prince gets by with a little help from his friends
Prince Philip, who surrendered his driving licence after his car crash in January, has an elegant new ‘chauffeur’.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s old friend, the Countess Mountbatten of Burma, was spotted driving him around the Queen’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk in a Land Rover Freelander.
Penny, 66, is more often seen sitting alongside the 98-year-old Duke in horse-drawn carriages.
The Queen arrived yesterday at Sandringham, where her husband is now based at the estate’s Wood Farm, so no doubt she took a firm grip of the steering wheel.
The Duke of Edinburgh is pictured with Penny, the Countess Mountbatten of Burma, driving around the Queen’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk