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Duke and Duchess of Sussex ‘have no plans to meet Cambridges’ on UK trip

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Joe Giddens/PA Wire
Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Joe Giddens/PA Wire

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have no plans to see the Cambridges when they return to the UK next month, The Telegraph understands.

The couple will visit both the UK and Germany to attend multiple charity events “close to their hearts”, their spokesman announced on Monday.

It raised the prospect that the Duke of Sussex might take the opportunity to reconcile with his brother, with whom tensions remain.

The pair are not thought to have spoken face to face since last summer, when they unveiled a statue of their late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, at Kensington Palace.

However, although by then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be ensconced in their new property on the Windsor estate, just a stone’s throw from the Sussexes’ Frogmore Cottage, there is no current expectation that they will meet.

The visit will be focused on their charity work, sources insisted.

The trip will come just weeks ahead of the Duke of Sussex’s expected book launch, which promises to reveal a firsthand account of his life “that’s accurate and wholly truthful”.

The forthcoming memoir is understood to be causing some anxiety among members of the Royal family amid fears it will be used to settle scores and make further sensational claims following previous allegations of racism and neglect.

The book, written by JR Moehringer, a Pulitzer prize-winning ghostwriter, is expected in October although there has been no update from the Duke’s team or his publishers since it was first announced in July 2021.

Next month’s visit is not expected to involve any promotional activity.

The couple will travel to Manchester for the One Young World Summit, an event which brings together young leaders from more than 190 countries, on Sep 5.

The Duchess, 41, will deliver the keynote address at the opening ceremony and the couple will meet a group of delegates “doing outstanding work on gender equality,” the organisation revealed.

She has been a counsellor for the organisation since 2014 and has described it as “the best think tank imaginable”. She will be joined at the event by fellow counsellors including Sir Bob Geldof and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland.

The couple will then head to Germany for the Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023: One Year to Go event on Sep 7, before returning to the UK for the WellChild Awards the following day.

The Duke of Sussex, 37, has since 2007 been patron of WellChild, a charity helping to get seriously ill children and young people out of hospital and home to their families.

Although they want to keep the spotlight on their charities, the couple is thought likely to want to see the Queen during their visit, which falls during her annual summer break at Balmoral.

Most senior members of the Royal family visit at various times throughout the summer and it was recently reported that the Sussexes were expected this year with their children.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment. However, one source noted that the visit would come during a busy week with “lots of moving parts”.

The monarch is expected to travel to London for the changeover of prime minister after the Tory leadership contest on Sep 5. Boris Johnson is due to resign the following day.

A venue for the audiences with the outgoing and incoming prime minister will be confirmed nearer the time but they normally take place at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen would likely return briefly to stay at Windsor Castle for the meetings.

If the Sussexes base themselves, as they usually do, at Frogmore Cottage during their visit, they will be in close proximity to both the Queen and the Cambridges on the Windsor estate.

The Duchess and Duke of Cambridge - Samir Hussein/WireImage
The Duchess and Duke of Cambridge - Samir Hussein/WireImage

The Cambridges are due to relocate from Kensington Palace to Adelaide Cottage, a four-bedroomed home just a 10-minute walk from Windsor Castle, later this month before the new school term starts.

The Sussexes last travelled to the UK for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. They spent four days in London, although made only one public appearance at St Paul’s Cathedral for the service of thanksgiving, and introduced their daughter, Lilibet, who turned one that weekend, to the Queen for the first time.

The couple have not revealed whether they will bring their son Archie, two, and Lilibet, with them next month.

It is also unknown whether they will be accompanied by a Netflix crew, following reports that they are making a fly-on-the-wall documentary series.

When the couple visited New York last September and November for various engagements, they appeared to have been trailed by a camera crew on both occasions.

Meanwhile, the visit comes despite an unresolved legal dispute between Duke and the Home Office over his security arrangements.

He is challenging a decision made by the Royal & VIP Executive Committee (known as Ravec) in Feb 2020, shortly after he announced he was stepping back as a working member of the Royal family and moving abroad.

The decision recognised that the Duke occupied a “particular and unusual position” and that he may need protective security in certain circumstances, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Duke argued that he had inherited the risk at birth and that as such, he, his wife and their children should be afforded permanent protective security in the UK, regardless of their status as non-working royals.

He has won the right to a judicial review based on an alleged lack of transparency about Ravec’s composition and processes. He has also filed a second lawsuit based on the decision not to allow him to pay for his Metropolitan Police protection privately.