BUCKINGHAM Palace will announce this week that the Duke of York is to leave the Royal Navy to begin a new career as an ambassador for British business abroad.
The helicopter pilot and veteran of the Falklands conflict has secured the support of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for the career change. A statement will be released by Buckingham Palace on Wed-nesday that Prince Andrew is to leave the Royal Navy in 2001, probably in the early summer. The Duke, 40, will take over many of the duties of the Duke of Kent, 65, a champion of British exports, who wants to reduce his overseas engagements.
Last year Prince Andrew was promoted to commander and given a new job with the diplomacy section of the Naval Staff Directorate.
A Palace official said: “Prince Andrew is keen to bang the drum for British exports. The Duke of Kent has been the main focus, but his trips will be scaled down.”
The plan for the Duke of York’s career change was discussed at the last meeting of the Way Ahead Group, a committee of members of the Royal Family and others that advises the Queen. Downing Street has been informed.
Prince Andrew’s recent trade trip to New York ended in embarrassment when a series of unflattering photographs of him in a nightclub appeared in a Sunday newspaper.
Prince Andrew joined the Navy in 1979 as a teenager. After officer training at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, he became a helicopter pilot on the aircraft carrier Invincible. Unlike his younger brother, Prince Edward, he completed the commando course and won a green beret.
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'I wanted to get out and see a bit of the world and help people'(Electronic Telegraph)
REFLECTING on his experiences as his 10-week Chilean expedition draws to a close, Prince William made it clear that he had not embarked on a voyage of self-discovery.
His motives, he said, had been to see the world and to help people along the way. And he had not necessarily expected to enjoy it. He said: "I did Raleigh not because I wanted to find myself or anything like that, but because it was different."
"I didn't really do it because I wanted to change myself. I never thought I was going to like Raleigh and it's grown on me, doing the community work and all that. That's the one I really looked forward to. I didn't want to sit around and get a job back in London.
"I wanted to get out and see a bit of the world at the same time, as well as helping people, and I thought Raleigh was a good way of doing that, helping people who didn't have very much.It was a good way of getting in with the locals and at the same time meeting people from different backgrounds.
"I chose Chile because I had never been to South America before and I also wanted to go somewhere colder rather than hotter. Some friends of mine said how nice the Chileans were, so I thought why not come and see how it is?"
The worst part of the trip, he said, had been a kayak expedition that ran into bad weather. "The wind whipped up into a storm. The tents were flapping around so violently that we thought they were going to blow away. Everything was soaked through.
"We were stuck on the beach for five days. It was quite demoralising, even though we managed to keep ourselves going by singing, and stuff like that. We played a few games. I'd never seen rain like it. It was so heavy and it just didn't stop."