Just like the Duke of Windsor in 1970, I fear Prince Harry will find the royal door is slammed shut despite rehabilitation attempts, writes CHRISTOPHER WILSON

The story was quite a scoop. In October 1970, I was in Paris as a 23-year-old reporter for the Daily Mail when the young Prince of Wales made an unheralded visit to his great-­uncle, the former Edward VIII, who was living there in exile.

The ex-king – then the Duke of Windsor – and his wife, the former Mrs Wallis Simpson, were desperate to win back their regal status and Prince Charles, as he then was, arrived at the duke’s home in the Route du Champ d’Entrainement with the British ambassador, Sir Christopher Soames, in tow.

‘This was a surprise visit,’ a member of the Windsor staff told me. ‘I don’t think the duke was expecting it but he was very, very pleased.’

The memory of that visit came surging back to me following the revelation in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday that another duke in self-inflicted exile, Prince Harry, was eager for rehabilitation.
The Duke of Sussex is said to be consulting former aides on how he can find a route back into royal life. Due to turn 40 in two weeks, and with his father the King undergoing treatment for an unspecified form of cancer, Harry appears to have realised that life in California is not enough for him, however much he loves his wife
and his two children.
But the parallels with the past are not encouraging.

The Duke of Windsor never did win forgiveness from ‘the Firm’ and, 18 months after that meeting with Charles, he died in France from throat cancer at the age of 77.
Earlier this year, palace sources suggested that King Charles was willing to consider a rapprochement with his younger son. Always a spiritual man, he has consulted religious leaders and is keen to leave past arguments and insults behind.

It was his initiative, back in 1970, to offer an olive branch to the Windsors in Paris too. His first idea was to invite them for a weekend visit to England. When that suggestion met with a flat refusal from senior courtiers, he proposed making a visit himself, saying: ‘It would seem pointless to continue the feud.’

But he had reckoned without the deep animosity his grandmother, the Queen Mother, nursed towards the duke and duchess. She blamed them for the early death of her husband, who ascended reluctantly to the throne as George VI after the Abdication.

Her daughter the Queen was equally implacable. Devoted to her father’s memory, she knew that George had always resisted schemes to bring the Windsors back into the fold.