Prince Harry’s unusual bathroom habit as a schoolboy while ‘reclining like a Pharaoh’

Prince Harry’s educational journey was marked by privilege from the very beginning, starting at Mrs. Mynors Nursery School in Notting Hill, advancing to Wetherby Prep School, and then boarding at Ludgrove Prep School before entering Eton College at age 13. Notably, he was sent away to live at boarding school when he was just eight years old, where he received significant support from the staff, including a distinctive ritual.

In his controversial 2023 memoir, Spare, Harry recalled how the younger boys at his boarding school enjoyed personal care from matrons. “Three times a week after dinner, the matrons would assist the youngest boys with a nightly wash,” he wrote. “I can still see the long row of white baths, each with a boy reclining like a little Pharaoh, awaiting his personalised hair wash.” This memory highlights the unique experiences that shaped his early years in a privileged environment.

“For older boys who’d reached puberty, there were two tubs in a separate room, behind a yellow door. The matrons came down the row of tubs with stiff brushes, bars of floral soap. Every boy had his own towel, embossed with his school number. Mine was 116.”

Post Ludgrove, Prince Harry joined Prince William at Eton College near Windsor. His memoir offered many intriguing glimpses into his upbringing, including a reference to his time at Eton where Harry expressed his disappointment at William not wanting to spend time with him there.

In a candid chat with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Prince Harry opened up about feeling personally wounded by his brother William’s cold shoulder during their school days. Cooper probed, “Your brother told you, ‘Pretend we don’t know each other’.”

Harry responded, “Yeah, and at the time it hurt. I couldn’t make sense of it. I was like, ‘What do you mean? We’re now at the same school. Like, I haven’t seen you for ages, now we get to hang out together.’ He’s like, ‘No, no, no, when we’re at school we don’t know each other.’ And I took that personally.”

In his memoir ‘Spare’, Harry delved into his struggle to fit in at Eton, deciding that sports would be his niche. He wrote, “Sport, I decided, would be my thing at Eton.” He described the division among sporty lads into ‘dry bobs’ and ‘wet bobs’.

“Dry bobs played cricket, football, rugby, or polo. Wet bobs rowed, sailed, or swam. I was a dry who occasionally got wet. I played every dry sport, though rugby captured my heart. Beautiful game, plus a good excuse to run into stuff very hard. Rugby let me indulge my rage. I simply didn’t feel pain the way other boys did, which made me scary on a pitch.”