Prince Harry visits hospital while Charles and William keep busy

Prince Harry embraced a nurse at Birmingham Children’s Hospital today as his five-day visit to Britain continued with an event supporting work by the WellChild charity. The Duke of Sussex, who has been patron of the organisation for 18 years, was marking the 20th anniversary of the hospital’s WellChild Nurse programme. The scheme involves specialist nurses helping children with serious illnesses and complex medical needs to leave hospital and safely transition to life at home. Harry, who arrived in London on Monday, has not been joined in the UK by his wife Meghan Markle and children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet due to security fears. The duke held private meetings without media at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London yesterday after his High Court defeat against the Daily Mail the day before. Harry’s five-day solo visit to the UK, which moved to Birmingham today, is part of the ‘One Year to Go’ celebrations for the next Invictus Games in the city in July 2027. It comes after Harry’s £50million phone hacking case against the Daily Mail was dismissed by a judge on Tuesday in a ‘momentous victory’ for the free Press.

The duke learned at the start of an Invictus Games appearance at Chatham House that he had lost his case over allegations of unlawful information gathering. The Mail’s journalists were completely exonerated when allegations they hacked, bugged and blagged to get stories were thrown out in full by Mr Justice Nicklin. The judgment after a three-month trial left Harry, Doreen Lawrence and five fellow claimants, including Sir Elton John, on the hook for millions of pounds in costs. The King’s youngest son missed out on staying at Buckingham Palace after rejecting Charles’s accommodation offer for his family, then accepting too late for himself.

The appropriate hospitality and staffing provision was said to be no longer available, with the Palace suggesting the duke’s longstanding legal case had complicated the matter and could compromise the King’s constitutional position. The royals carried on with a busy series of summer engagements today. The King and Queen made a joint visit to London Zoo to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Zoological Society of London. Meanwhile Prince William travelled to Hastings to meet a fishing community as well as local youth-led and community-driven organisations. The King yesterday met with police officers who dealt with the Bedfordshire train crash at the new British Transport Police headquarters in central London.

He then hosted The King’s Award for Enterprise 2026 at St James’s Palace gardens, alongside the Princess Royal and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. Meanwhile, Harry’s stepmother the Queen watched from the royal box as British wildcard Arthur Fery stormed into the Wimbledon semi-finals. There has yet to be any suggestion that Harry will meet with the King during his UK visit. They last met in September 2025 at Clarence House in London. The Invictus Games is a Paralympics-style event launched by Harry in 2014 to aid the recovery of injured or sick military veterans and servicemen and women.