EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Harry’s Confidant Expects Reunion with William

King Charles’s warm welcome for the Duke of Sussex last week delighted some royal watchers and left others concerned. So this will set the cat among the pigeons.

One of Prince Harry’s best friends tells me that he will soon be reunited with Prince William. And the pair will embrace each other again.

Alex Rayner, who went to the North Pole with Harry on a charity trek in 2012 and is in regular contact with the King’s younger son, tells me: ‘As soon as the opportunity presents itself, we’ll see a wonderful embrace between the two brothers. Absolutely.’

Asked if the reunion would be in the next few months, Rayner says: ‘I would hope so. Certainly, if not by the end of the year, then next. They’ll hug in the not-too-distant future.’

Harry was invited to tea at Clarence House by his father last week, the first time they had met for 19 months.

He has not spoken to William since the funeral of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, three years ago yesterday. Although they both attended the funeral of their uncle Lord (Robert) Fellowes in Norfolk in August last year, fellow mourners said they did not exchange a word.

Rayner, 46, who was educated at schools including Harry’s alma mater Eton College, claims that his California-based friend is not estranged from the King. ‘A rift between father and son is never that big,’ he says at the Chancery Rosewood hotel on the site of the old US embassy in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. ‘A father’s love for his son is pretty indestructible.’

After his solo visit, during which he carried out several charity engagements, the duke hopes to return to Britain with his wife, Meghan, and their children, Prince Archie, aged six, and Princess Lilibet, four, as Harry told The Guardian newspaper last weekend. ‘This week has definitely brought that closer,’ he said.

In that interview, the duke expressed no contrition for his repeated criticism of the Royal Family, and in particular of his brother and sister-in-law, Catherine.

‘I know that [speaking out] annoys some people and it goes against the narrative,’ he declared, referring to his tawdry memoir, Spare. ‘The book? It was a series of corrections to stories already out there. One point of view had been put out and it needed to be corrected.’

He added: ‘I don’t believe that I aired my dirty laundry in public. It was a difficult message, but I did it in the best way possible. My conscience is clear.’

Edie’s beautiful relationship

I hear there’s a new power couple on the fashion scene.

Vogue cover star Edie Campbell, 34, has struck up a sizzling romance with fashion marketing guru Anna Taylor. The 30-year-old blonde, whom Edie met through mutual friends, has shaped major campaigns for the jewellers De Beers and luxury luggage label Globe-Trotter.

The pair are said to be inseparable and were recently spotted cosying up to each other on a night out – a photo of which was shared on social media by their friend, Burberry brand editor TJ Sidhu.

Edie previously went out with Bryan Ferry’s son, Otis.

The smart set’s talking about… Sarah Beeny boy’s high fashion dress sense

King Charles’s favourite eco designers, Vin + Omi, insisted ahead of their London Fashion Week show: no nepo babies allowed.

Yet they made an exception for Rafferty Swift, 17, son of TV property presenter Sarah Beeny.

He made his catwalk debut at the duo’s show held at art’otel London Hoxton, following in the footsteps of his brothers Billy, 21, and Charlie, 19, who walked for Vin + Omi in 2023.

Rafferty wore a silver recycled wedding dress from the British Heart Foundation, dyed using Vin + Omi’s sustainable plant-based dyes. ‘He is very open-minded and wasn’t averse to wearing a dress,’ Beeny, 53, tells me. ‘It was lovely to watch and he’s far more into sustainable fashion than my generation. We’re quite rubbish.

Tributes to Field Marshal Lord Guthrie, who has died aged 86, have rightly recorded his unique combination of intense charm, resilience – and a taste for theatricality which found expression as an extra in productions at the Royal Opera House. But no mention of his cousin Desmond Llewelyn who, though never a member of the SAS as Guthrie was, faced a Panzer division in 1940, was taken prisoner and was consigned to Colditz. None of it diminished Llewelyn’s zest for life nor prevented his immortalisation as ‘Q’ in Bond films. 

Quote of the week 

‘I’m 30 years past my prime’ – Richard Curtis, 68, screenwriter of Notting Hill and and Love Actually

As Mr Groff in Netflix hit Sex Education, Alistair Petrie was a strict headmaster and father. As Lord Wessex in a West End adaptation of Shakespeare in Love, the actor was more pliable. ‘We had to figure out how to get a dog to run on stage and push me over eight times a week,’ recalls Petrie, 54, adding: ‘In the end, we attached a dried piece of sausage to my costume. To be fair, it worked 99 times out of 100, but it was relatively humiliating.’ For the pooch? 

Strictly Come Dancing’s former judge Dame Arlene Phillips has cast doubt on the show’s future as the new series launches on BBC1 tonight.

The celebrated choreographer, 82, who was ousted from the judging panel in 2009, suggests the sparkle that once revived Britain’s passion for ballroom dancing may have died. ‘When Strictly began, dance-shoe shops that were going out of business suddenly came alive,’ she says. ‘The whole world of dance was brought into all ages on Strictly. I wonder whether it still has that feeling: this is our show – it was created here in the UK, we have to embrace it.’

She adds: ‘I’m not sure now, do people watch for controversy? I don’t know why, when it had such a lovely, kind, surreal viewership, what keeps it going? The dance, of course, but is it unique in the way that it was?’

Vanessa says yes to Ben’s Full Monty

Having broken up acrimoniously with his fiancee Vanessa Feltz after 16 years, singer Ben Ofoedu already appears to be arguing with his new wife, who is also called Vanessa.

The source of their disagreement is his decision to perform in The Full Monty Musical, based on the hit film about six unemployed men from Sheffield who form a male striptease act, at the Kings Theatre in Portsmouth. ‘She was a bit apprehensive at first,’ Ben admits to me at the launch party for Dr Clare Anyiam-Osigwe’s book, Clarity.

‘I don’t think she wants to share her man’s nudity with 1,500 people a night.’

Ben, 53, who married beauty entrepreneur Vanessa Brown in July, has won her round.

‘She understands the person I am,’ he insists, ‘and she’s so supportive.’

CoE bickers over parish biscuits

A squabble in the Church of England, where a grandee of the Archbishops’ Council, Alison Coulter, said central money should not be given to small parishes because they might waste it on ‘chocolate biscuits after church’.

The Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie, vicar of Charlbury, whose potential congregants including Jeremy Clarkson and David Cameron, is so enraged by Coulter’s patronising remark that he has now sent a large box of luxury chocolate biscuits to Her Snootiness at Church House. Should make a change from communion wafers.

(Very) modern manners 

Rupert Everett once expressed his regret about having been ‘deliberately nasty’ towards colleagues because he was ‘insecure’.

Now the actor, 66, wants to bring chivalry to the workplace. ‘I’m thinking of writing a modern etiquette book,’ reveals the My Best Friend’s Wedding star at a Chelsea Arts Festival talk in west London.

‘Someone needs to write one about how you can get in and out of our virtual world, because it’s very abrupt.’ He explains: ‘As soon as you’ve got what you want on an email, nobody now finesses the end of it saying, “Oh, lovely to talk to you, speak to you next time”. There’s just a dead silence. I’m as guilty as everyone else.

‘You have to be more like a Victorian lady at your desk every morning, replying to everything. Just be polite.’