Place at Eton for Prince William
By Robert Hardman
PRINCE William has passed the Common Entrance exam for Eton College, St James's Palace announced yesterday. The Prince, who is 13 on Wednesday, was given the news yesterday as he spent half-term at Kensington Palace with his mother and brother, Harry, 10. He and his parents are said to be delighted.
So, too, is Eton which can look forward to producing its first British monarch after 555 years of close association with the Royal Family.
Eton has contributed part of the guard of honour at each royal funeral at Windsor this century and has educated several royals, including the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent.
Yesterday, the head master, John Lewis, said: "It is not our practice to publish details of Common Entrance results or individual scores, but Prince William's performance gives us every ground for supposing that he will flourish at Eton."
Although Prince William will be just another "F-tit" (slang for new boys) in a school of almost 1,300 boys, certain adjustments will have to be made.
A detective will be accommodated in an adjacent room and extra precautions will be taken to protect the Prince from the media.
"It is the intention of the school and of Prince William's family that he should be allowed to be himself and to lead his own life," said Mr Lewis. "It will be very important that his privacy and the privacy of other boys is respected."Boys caught leaking gossip to the press could face expulsion.
The Prince, who will appear on lists as "Wales, Prince William of", is down for Manor House which also produced the first Duke of Wellington. It is known as ALHG or Gailey's after its housemaster, Dr Andrew Gailey, an Ulsterman in his late 30s, who runs the house with his wife, Shauna, and the matron or "Dame", Miss Heathcote. Among the housemates the Prince will find in September is Nicholas Knatchbull, the 14-year-old great-grandson of the late Earl Mountbatten and son of Lord Romsey, one of the Prince of Wales's closest friends.
For obvious reasons, neither the school nor St James's Palace will comment on security precautions but certain elementary measures will be taken.
For example, each boy's room has a nameplate on the door. There will be no plate on the Prince's door, just as the name of Alexander Hurd, son of the Foreign Secretary, was omitted when he was at Manor House 10 years ago.
Eton is also one school where the need for security is well-understood thanks to a long list of high-profile former pupils. The school "Fixtures" (the termly handbook) even contains a section headed "Warning of a bomb in Eton". Fittingly, for a school whose football pitches reputedly spawned triumph at Waterloo, the drill reads: "...3). On the playing fields, continue games."
Thursday 15 June 1995
kittywinky@yahoo.com