Woman Prince Harry lost his virginity to Sasha Walpole says search was ‘never going to stop’ 

The ‘older woman’ described by Prince Harry in his explosive memoir Spare as the person he lost his virginity to, Sasha Walpole, has told Piers Morgan the Duke of Sussex ‘could have given [her] the heads up’ that he was going to include their tryst in his book.

The 40-year-old mother of two revealed her identity in this week’s Mail on Sunday after keeping their moment of passion a secret for 21 years – and has now explained why she felt the need to come forward.

In an interview with Piers Morgan to be aired tomorrow, Ms Walpole said she realised after the memoir was released that speculation over the incident was ‘never going to stop’.

At just over two years the Prince’s senior, she is much younger than most of the women whose names had been suggested in the frenzy of curiosity about her identity. 

Sasha had invited Harry, then a 16-year-old Eton schoolboy, to the pub to celebrate her 19th birthday when a quick cigarette turned into a romp in the field, that ended their two-and-a-half year friendship and the pair did not speak to one another again. 

Ms Walpole told Piers Morgan: ‘He could have given me the heads up that you know, “I’m going to put it in the book”‘

In a clip of an interview with the former Good Morning Britain host, Ms Walpole described fearing constant ‘flare ups’ unless she spoke out publicly about her identity.

She said: ‘People are asking, family and friends. We know who it is, and then suddenly it’s just a reality of “This isn’t going to go away”.

‘Forever this is going to flare up. Until they know who it is, they’re going to be questioning people. 

‘And yes I could not have said anything but then it’s never going to stop.’

She added: ‘He could have given me the heads up that you know, “I’m going to put it in the book”.’

It echoes her comments to the Mail on Sunday, when she said: ‘It is his story, and he’s entitled to write what he wants. 

‘He didn’t name me but people who were there that night, or simply part of that social circle, would be able to work out it was me.

‘Possibly, Harry could have thought about that before publishing. He could have found me if he had tried.’

Ms Walpole met Prince Harry when she began working at Highgrove as an assistant groomer, aged just 17.

They quickly became friends out of a common understanding, Ms Walpole said: ‘Everyone was equal in the world of horses.

‘Our group was a very mixed bunch of polo players, grooms, hunt staff and racing people, a cosmopolitan crowd. 

‘It didn’t matter if you were a groom, a Royal or a rider. There was no judgment.

‘Harry didn’t act like a Prince, there wasn’t any snobbery. Honestly, we were just two mates who talked horses.’ 

Sasha Walpole and Harry and friends lark about at the Beaufort Polo Club near Tetbury in Gloucestershire back in 2001

Ms Walpole told The Mail on Sunday: ‘He [Harry] didn’t name me but people who were there that night, or simply part of that social circle, would be able to work out it was me’

Mother-of-two Sasha Walpole (pictured with her digger) claims Harry kissed her after asking her if she wanted to go outside for a cigarette during her 19th birthday party back in 2001 

Ms Walpole told Piers Morgan that the search for her was ‘never going to stop’ and her family and friends were already asking questions

Ms Walpole claimed that Harry made the first move, leading to their ‘spontaneous and sparky’ sex in a field behind The Vine Tree pub in the Wiltshire village of Norton

When they were young: Prince Harry and Sasha Walpole inside The Vine Tree Pub where they shared a kiss before getting more intimate in a nearby field 

Ms Walpole claimed that Harry made the first move, leading to their ‘spontaneous and sparky’ sex in a field behind The Vine Tree pub in the Wiltshire village of Norton. 

The pair were such close friends that Harry had brought her a stuffed Miss Piggy and a comedy birthday card with a joke about a flatulent whale on the front. 

He added to that with a tray of ten shots – five each – which saw the pair very drunk by closing time.

As last orders were called, she says the young prince asked her: ‘Should we go for a smoke?’ and they crept into an adjacent field to have a cigarette out of sight of his security detail.

‘He started to kiss me,’ she remembers. ‘It was passionate, intense. We both knew. It went from a kiss on to the floor pretty quickly.

‘It was instant, fiery, wham bam, between two friends. It was sparky because we shouldn’t have been doing it. He wasn’t Prince Harry to me, this was Harry, my friend, and the situation had got a little bit out of control. It felt naughty, I suppose, in the sense that it shouldn’t be happening.

‘We didn’t set out to do it – it wasn’t premeditated and I didn’t know he was a virgin. There were no virgin vibes – he seemed to know what he was doing. It was quick, wild, exciting. We were both drunk. It wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t.’

Digger driver Sasha Walpole (pictured), 40, reveals she is the mystery horse-lover who had ‘passionate’ five-minute sex session with the duke in pub field

Sasha (left) is pictured horsing around with Prince Harry and Emma Lippiatt at the Beaufort Polo Club in Gloucestershire in 2001 – the same year they became intimate following a night out at a pub 

The Vine Tree Pub, Norton, Wiltshire where Prince Harry had sex with Sasha Walpole in a field, which the Duke sensationally revealed in his bombshell memoir Spare 

Aerial pictures of the Vine tree pub showing the surrounding fields where Sasha says the pair had sex

Sasha Walpole (pictured with her horse) revealed to the Mail on Sunday how Harry made the first move 

Sasha Walpole (pictured with the digger she operates) said her night with Harry back in 2001 was ‘intense, passionate and sparky’ because ‘we shouldn’t have been doing it’ 

The lovers were cushioned by the ankle-length grass in the field and shielded from the view of drinkers in the pub’s beer garden by a dense summer hedgerow. It was pitch dark, around 11pm and warm.

In Spare, Harry writes that it was ‘a quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze’. Today his description of it being ‘inglorious’ makes Sasha laugh. ‘I don’t mind him saying that because it isn’t really very glorious, is it? We were drunk and having sex in a field.’

And she clearly remembers giving Harry a one-handed smack on the bottom as their five-minute sex session came to a hurried close.

‘It’s his sense of humour. [We were part of] a massive horse scene and the slap happened in a horsey context, the book is a funny interpretation of that. 

‘His description is accurate – the real shock when I saw what he’d written was how true it was. That’s what took me back the most. I’m not offended.

‘Afterwards I did grab his bum and give him a slap. I gave him a little squeeze as well. He had a peachy bum. I don’t know about the stallion thing; I think that was more to do with the fact that I worked with horses.

‘To tell the truth, he didn’t make sure I was happy. He was young. It’s not until you are older you understand that stuff. It really was just a moment of passion.’

The sound of their friends spilling out into the pub car park brought the pair swiftly back to reality and they panicked at the idea of being spotted together. They also realised that when Harry had failed to appear at closing time, his security detail would have gone in search of him. They separated to return to The Vine Tree in the hope of keeping their encounter secret.

Sasha says: ‘Afterwards there was the realisation, ‘S***! What are we doing? Where do we go from here?’ I don’t remember us kissing, it was just ‘Okaaaaayy!’

‘We got up, put our clothes back on and agreed we had to go in separate directions back to the pub which, in hindsight, probably made it more obvious. If we’d only gone for a cheeky cigarette, we would have returned together. We had only been gone about 15 minutes in total – but it was long enough for his security to start worrying.

‘I went back over the fence into the beer garden. My friends saw me and started laughing. I didn’t have my belt on and it’s kind of obvious when you come back a bit dishevelled from a field.

A younger Sasha Walpole dressed up for a Polo ball

Aerial photo shows The Vine Tree pub and adjacent field where Harry and Sasha had sex back in 2001

Sasha Walpole holds up a copy of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, which sensationally revealed their romp in a field some 21 years ago 

The Miss Piggy Toy Harry bought for Sasha for her birthday. The Duke bought it at Thorpe park and gave it to her at her party with a card

The birthday card Prince Harry wrote to his close friend Sasha Walpole back in 2001. It reads: ‘To Sasha, have a very happy birthday, and don’t get too pi***d! Luckily I’ll be there to keep an eye on you, loads of love, Baz … PS. Thanks for everything’ 

‘My friend Bryony had ended up in her 1.1-litre blue Fiesta with one of the back-up security guards on a Harry hunt. They found him down the road. He was hiding in a red telephone box. He might have phoned his security from there, I don’t know, the mobile signal wasn’t always dependable – it still isn’t.’

Bryony drove Sasha home to the Gloucestershire village of Acton Turville. She woke with a hangover and a sense of awkwardness.

‘I wasn’t thinking, ‘I have had sex with Prince Harry,’ it was, ‘Oh God, I’ve just slept with Harry.’

‘It is a bit cringey if you have slept with a friend. You’ve overstepped a line. Broken the Friend Code.

‘The next morning Bryony took me back to get my belt and my car. We had a giggle about it. Bryony said, “What the hell happened?” and I said, “Um, I don’t really know!”

‘It was pretty easy to find the spot – because my belt was there!’

Sadly the encounter marked the end of her friendship with Harry. From being regular drinking partners, the pair never texted, spoke or saw each other again.

Ms Walpole told the Mail she was not hurt.

Sasha Walpole, who is now a digger driver, has revealed that she was the one that had sex first with Prince Harry in a field

Sasha and Prince Harry pictured as youngsters. Left to right: Emma Lippiatt, Sasha Walpole (nee Alvis), Prince Harry and Lizzie Ward at The Beaufort Polo Club, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire

‘Your friendship circles change, your circumstances change. That’s what happens when you are young: you grow up,’ she says. 

At the time of their encounter, the Prince was still devastated by the death of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, four years earlier – a trauma which would send his life spiralling into chaos in his 20s. He was also struggling to emerge from William’s shadow at Eton.

His revelation of their teenage sex came after he accepted a reported £17 million advance for his book from publisher Penguin Random House.

Spare became the fastest-selling non-fiction book in the UK since records began in 1998, and sold 3.2 million copies worldwide in the first week of publication.

Harry’s account sparked a flurry of speculation about who the mystery ‘older woman’ could be, with even actress Liz Hurley, now 57, feeling compelled to deny she’d been the one who took his virginity. But Sasha, of course, instantly knew it was her – as did her friends who sent her messages the day the book was published.

‘I realised, thinking about it the next day, that he had been a virgin,’ she says wryly. ‘I hadn’t known him to have slept with anyone and, obviously, I’d been hanging around with him for a few years. At the time, I just didn’t think it was a ‘thing’.’