Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, few would have bet that privacy-conscious Prince Harry would end up spending his 40th birthday in Montecito, this gleaming Valhalla in Santa Barbara County for the rich and famous, this jewel on the American Riviera where another perfect summer is softly drawing to a close.
Amid the choking California glamour, the kombucha cocktails and nut-butter waffles, is there a place here for a motherless boy who went to school in starched collars and a tailcoat, who grew up accustomed to royal deference and his place in the line of succession? It couldn’t have taken him long to discover that a very different hierarchy holds sway in his adopted hometown.
In July, Glee actress Jane Lynch judged the dog contest at the local Miramar hotel – where a beach room costs £4,200 per night – and gave top prize to a King Charles spaniel called Raffa.
Oprah beamed down from her 66-acre Promised Land estate, one of the biggest in Montecito, to contact mere mortals via a Melinda Gates ‘conversation series’ called Moments That Make Us. She spoke about ‘the power of living our truth’ – which might Make Us want to hurl – before going on the NBC Today show to commemorate her own 70th birthday. ‘When you have your health, there is nothing to be scared of,’ billionaire Oprah told the show’s five million-plus viewers, many of whom cannot afford health insurance.
Katy Perry, Ellen DeGeneres, Steve Martin, Jennifer Aniston, Ariana Grande, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rob Lowe are just a few of the stars who own properties in the area – alongside newer residents the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. ‘We treat all of them just like ordinary folks,’ is the mantra you hear, over and over, in the restaurants and boutiques along the Coast Village Road.
Harry playing polo in Santa Barbara… although the Duke has gained much since he fled to America to escape the oppression and tyranny of inherited wealth, it could be argued he has lost even more, writes Jan Moir
Yet for most people, waking up on your 40th birthday inside a nine-bedroom Californian mansion with a beautiful wife and two adorable children would surely be a testament to success and achieving life goals. A vindication of good fortune and even better planning.
So on the morning of September 15, Prince Harry could be forgiven for congratulating himself on the road he has travelled to reach this point. As his milestone birthday approaches, he certainly deserves credit for having the courage to change history and his own destiny by choosing a future he felt was a better fit for his family and for himself.
Yet although Harry has gained much in the four years since he fled to America to escape the oppression and tyranny of inherited wealth, it could be argued he has lost even more.
As he reaches his fifth decade, he is far removed from the life he once knew and has lost touch with many of the friends he once had, while a sinkhole of family estrangement has opened beneath the soles of the grey suede booties he still inexplicably favours.
Perhaps the truth is that the Duke of Sussex had to destroy his past to create his future – but even those sympathetic to his cause wonder if he really had to damage so many other members of the Royal Family in the process. Boom, boom went his relentless artillery, wounding nearest, dearest and even firing a few cannonballs at the monarchy itself.
The blames and claims made in his best-selling memoir Spare, along with accusations levelled in various television specials, appalled many in royal circles.
Today, Prince Harry’s reward for this treachery is living the American dream, right down to the five-car garage, the azure swimming pool and the orange and lemon trees in his own citrus grove. Yet there must be moments when even he wonders if the juice was worth the squeeze.
Harry is living the American dream, writes Jan Moir, but turning 40 brings him to a crucial crossroads in his life
Turning 40 is a milestone for anyone, but it brings the Duke to a crucial crossroads. Surely it is now or never to make some kind of amends with his family back home. Not just for himself and his wife, but to provide a rich family heritage for his children, rather than the cold void of relatives they will probably never meet and memories they will never have.
His recent attendance at the memorial service held for his Spencer uncle, Lord Fellowes, must have underlined the emotional importance of kinship and accentuated any feelings of homesickness that might lurk in his lonely expat heart.
Staying with Lord Spencer at Althorp, the ancestral home where Princess Diana is buried, shows he is welcome on one side of his family at least, albeit the side he has not trashed to the world. It is easier for the Spencers to be forgiving – they have nothing to forgive.
At the service in St Mary’s Church in Snettisham, close to Sandringham, Harry reportedly did not speak to William and neither did the two brothers publicly acknowledge each other. This sibling froideur would have broken their mother’s heart.
Harry may glory in his new life and he may indeed have much to celebrate, but the sadness is that he will never have another brother and he can’t make new old friends.
Prince Harry’s past birthdays give an indication that, despite the high-born benefits, his passage through life has not been easy.
There are a few years of innocent birthday teas featuring cakes and sorbet, before the tragedy of 1997 – the year he turned 13. Wreathed in a little boy’s deep shock, he initially refused to believe his mother had been killed in a car crash in Paris. In Spare, he reveals his thoughts at the time: ‘She’ll be back. She has to be. It’s my birthday in two weeks.’
He shot his first stag at Balmoral on his 15th birthday, had a low-key 20th as he was preparing for his Sandhurst entrance exams – although the following month he was brawling with photographers outside a London nightclub.
On his 25th birthday he was on holiday in Botswana, celebrating with cake and cocktails; on his 28th he was a soldier under Taliban fire at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.
His 30th birthday was major. Having survived the naked billiards incident in Las Vegas two years earlier, he inherited ‘a large sum left to me by Mummy’, had just left the Army, split up with Cressida Bonas, launched the first Invictus Games, decided to trek to the South Pole and was speaking of hopes that he would find someone to settle down with and have children.
Tellingly, there is no mention of this in Spare, but Prince William threw a black-tie party for his little brother at Clarence House, where 30 of his best friends toasted Harry with cases of Highgrove champagne sent by his father.
In their own ways, the three Windsor men had never quite recovered from the death of Princess Diana. But look at them at this point; they were somehow surviving together, almost a functioning family unit.
The love between them was obvious, right down to the fact that William arranged for Harry’s favourite foods to be served at the dinner – fish pie, beef wellington and Eton Mess. So very British, right down to the carbs and the cream.
The Duke is said to keep a low profile among the eucalyptus trees and bougainvillea-draped lanes of Montecito…
… while wife Meghan is often seen lunching with friends or visiting the local farmers’ market
In California, this birthday will no doubt be quite different: not just the dishes served but also the flavour of the life he lives. How does he fit in, what does he do all day?
Surely there are only so many Zoom meetings, chicken feeds and strategy-planning sessions you can fit into an afternoon, along with the school runs and the meditation sessions he never skips. Yet amid the sunshine and the palm trees, does Harry ever wonder if he has escaped one prison only to end up trapped in another?
Down among the eucalyptus trees and bougainvillea-draped lanes of Montecito, the Duchess of Sussex is often seen lunching with friends or visiting the farmers’ market to sample honey and buy flowers. The Duke, on the other hand, keeps a much lower profile, moving through the coveted 93108 postcode like a ghost or someone in a witness-protection programme. Which, in its own odd way, is almost true.
When I visited Montecito in July, the celebrity strangeness was peaking. Up at the San Ysidro Ranch, a luxe spot which Harry and Meghan often use as a backdrop for their assorted television interviews, Bianca Censori was walking around the pool in an alarming yellow bikini, closely shadowed by her husband Kanye West, padding behind her like an obedient bloodhound.
For guests who can afford the £2,300 per night to stay in one of the 38 cottages, the restaurant offers tableside flambés and complimentary caviar. It is where Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh got married, where Jack and Jackie Kennedy spent part of their honeymoon and where Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin consciously coupled.
The San Ysidro Ranch, a luxe spot which Harry and Meghan often use as a backdrop for their assorted television interviews
At the Tre Lune restaurant down in the village, the walls are covered with photographs of famous customers, from Charlie Chaplin to Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood walking through the front door arm in arm.
In a very meta moment, I sat at a table under a photograph of Ellen DeGeneres sitting at the same table and ordered the Ellen Salad, a composed seafood dish of salmon, shrimps and scallops named in her honour. But why?
‘Oh, Ellen always wants a bit of this and that, she can never make up her mind,’ said the waitress.
The Duchess of Sussex celebrated her own birthday at Tre Lune last year and came here for lunch the previous week with her friend, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley.
Sadly, my dear friend Gwyneth wasn’t in town when I was around. She was at her home in the Hamptons, filling a heart-shaped trug with vegetables from her garden to make breakfast for husband Brad.
The Duchess of Sussex was also on the East Coast, networking at some VIP entreprenuse pow-wow with best friend Misha Nonoo and cosmetic queen Bobbi Brown. Meanwhile, where was Harry?
Harry was home alone on dad duty, on rescue-chicken alert and contemplating the life choices that have brought him here, to the ritziest small town in America where even the Jeannine Bakery has a ‘champagne wall’ and a shop called Clic selling candles and cushions isn’t a shop at all but an ‘expertly curated concept space’.
Butterfly Beach is just three miles away from the Sussexes’ Montecito home
Perhaps he had taken the kids to swim at the recently refurbished Coral Club near Butterfly Beach, where Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are among the members who pony up the £190,000 joining fee and the monthly £2,000 subscriptions.
The Coral Club even has its own lighthouse, which bathes this town of only 10,000 in a pink light every night. How utterly perfect.
Yes, I know. It seems like an odd place to end up for a not-quite-40-year-old who did his growing up in Gloucestershire, who lost his virginity in a field behind a rural pub and who once wore a Nazi uniform to a party. Yet today the Sussexes live in a gated home inside a gated estate called Riven Rock, which itself is surrounded by tall hedges and ‘handcrafted’ stone walls. And they love it. ‘We did everything we could to get this house,’ the Duchess of Sussex told New York Magazine in 2022, ‘because you walk in and go . . . joy. And exhale. And calm. It’s healing.’
Her husband was equally enthusiastic. ‘To have outdoor space where we go for walks as a family and with the dogs. You know, we go on hikes or go down to the beach, which is so close,’ he said.
Well, it is and it isn’t. From their home, the beach is three miles away and on the other side of the six-lane 101 freeway, the main route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Yet there could be worse places to live for this former tearaway with his light academic record, this prince who rejected his royal destiny to reinvent himself as a guru, this paragon who is described on the couple’s Archewell website as a ‘humanitarian, military veteran, mental health advocate, and environmental campaigner’.
Who is this guy up on Riven Rock? You have to wonder. And on the eve of his birthday, four years after he relaunched himself upon the world, how successful has Prince Harry’s great American mission been?
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