The Prince of Wales has publicly referenced his brother Prince Harry for the first time in six years during a tribute to their mother.
In the new documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, the older brother recalls visiting a homeless shelter in London at just 10-years-old back in 1993.
Accompanied by Prince Harry and Princess Diana, William visited the Passage in Westminster, with unseen photos showing him playing chess with a homeless man.
He says in the documentary, which airs in two parts on ITV on October 30 and 31: “My mother took me to the Passage, she took Harry and I both there...
“I'd never been to anything like that before and I was a bit anxious as to what to expect.
“My mother went about her usual part of making everyone feel relaxed and having a joke with everyone...I remember having some good conversation, playing chess and chatting.
“You meet people, like I did then, who put a different perspective in your head.”
This is said to have been the first time that Prince William has mentioned estranged royal Harry since 2018.
The pair have been locked in a feud since the Duke of Sussex moved to the US with his wife Meghan in 2020 and relinquished royal duties.
On the visit, William adds: “When you’re quite small, you don’t really, you just think life is what you see in front of you and you don’t really have the concept to look elsewhere and it’s when you meet people, I did then, who put a different perspective in your head and say like, well, ‘I was a living on the street last night’, and you’re like ‘woah’, you know.”
The prince was followed for the programme during the first year of his Homewards initiative.
The campaign is a major long-term focus for William, who has told how visiting shelters with his late mother when he was a child left a deep and lasting impression and inspired his work.
Homewards aims to develop a blueprint for eradicating homelessness in all its forms, “making it rare, brief and unrepeated”.
Previously unseen pictures, used in the documentary, which show the prince on his first visits to The Passage with his mother in 1993, have also been released.
In one image, William wears a red polo shirt and is playing chess during a visit on June 14 1993 and in the others he is in a suit and tie with Diana on December 14 of the same year seen holding presents in one image, in the kitchen in another and sitting down in the last.
During the past year, the Homewards teams in six UK locations – Newport, Lambeth, Belfast, Aberdeen, Sheffield and three neighbouring Dorset towns, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch – have been building collaborations between the public, private and third sectors.
The documentary will be broadcast on October 30 and 31 at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX, STV and STV Player.
