Princess Diana taught Harry how to be a natural born daddy, say RICHARD KAY and ...

Gently does it: Harry cradles newborn Jean-Luc Jordan at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 2010

Gently does it: Harry cradles newborn Jean-Luc Jordan at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 2010

So here at last is the moment that Prince Harry admits he has been longing for since he was ‘very young’.

Not a common yearning in the younger generation, most of whom are having their first child later and later these days.

Imagine his excitement now, and the easing of his envy of William.

Like his elder brother, Harry, too, is a family man at last. How poignantly that word ‘family’ sits on him.

For while the early death of Princess Diana bestowed a steely independence on the then 15-year-old Prince William, it had the opposite effect on Prince Harry, then 12, plunging him into a cycle of gloom. 

He never really broke free until he met Meghan. Now that rehabilitation is, surely, complete, with the arrival of a baby boy.

No one observing the 34-year-old prince’s interaction with children all over the world in recent times can have many doubts about the kind of father he is likely to be — attentive, concerned, patient, and full of fun — a big kid himself.

Blowing bubbles: Prince Harry makes faces with Lintle at a children¿s home on his return to Lesotho in 2006 to launch his charity Sentebale

Blowing bubbles: Prince Harry makes faces with Lintle at a children’s home on his return to Lesotho in 2006 to launch his charity Sentebale

One clergyman close to the Royal Family for three generations has watched Harry since he was a child, and says: ‘One thing Harry will never be is an absentee father. He will want to be involved with everything — even changing the little one’s nappies.’

Like William, Harry has emerged from the wreckage of his parents’ acrimoniously shattered marriage determined that his own children would never suffer similarly.

He sees the bringing up of his and Meghan’s baby, and any that follow, as a modern partnership, probably spending as much time in the nursery as his wife.

He has already told friends that he intends to do his share of getting up in the night to help.

This is everything that Harry has always wanted but there are dangers.

Even the priest acknowledges —albeit with a smile — that Harry’s broken family background is likely to make him an over-indulgent father.

Prince of fun: The child in Harry was never more apparent than when he made time to entertain the babies in the crowds during his and Meghan¿s royal tour of New Zealand last year

Prince of fun: The child in Harry was never more apparent than when he made time to entertain the babies in the crowds during his and Meghan’s royal tour of New Zealand last year

‘This happens all the time,’ he says. ‘And here we have two parents from broken homes.’

And yet the general feeling among their friends is that Meghan will be the ‘firmer’ parent, laying down the law when Harry takes a softer line.

It must be said that although Charles and Diana were besotted parents, they could scarcely have been called hands-on. Even so, Harry has many wonderful memories of his own childhood.

From the moment of his birth, there was a nursery nurse, nannies and other domestic staff ever ready to take charge.

When they first became parents, Diana had to insist on Charles making time to visit the Kensington Palace nursery, morning and evening. It had to be written into his schedule.

‘With Harry, the problem will be keeping him out,’ quips one of their close friends. ‘He loves kids.’

So will fatherhood change Prince Harry? Intriguingly, William has admitted that it certainly changed him.

No one observing the 34-year-old prince¿s interaction with children all over the world in recent times can have many doubts about the kind of father he is likely to be ¿ attentive, concerned, patient, and full of fun ¿ a big kid himself. He is pictured above in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2015

No one observing the 34-year-old prince’s interaction with children all over the world in recent times can have many doubts about the kind of father he is likely to be — attentive, concerned, patient, and full of fun — a big kid himself. He is pictured above in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2015

‘I’m a lot more emotional that I used to be, weirdly,’ he said when his second child, Charlotte, was born in 2015.

‘Now the smallest little things, you well up a little more, you get affected by the sort of things that happen around the world or whatever, a lot more, I think, as a father.’

One could certainly attach those thoughts, too, to Harry, who in March made an impassioned speech to 12,000 youngsters at Wembley Arena about the dangers to the world of climate change.

When Hope met Harry: This Is the moment five-year-old Hope Hillis from Lisburn, who endured more than 50 major operations, gave the Prince a lick on his right cheek when they met in 2012

When Hope met Harry: This Is the moment five-year-old Hope Hillis from Lisburn, who endured more than 50 major operations, gave the Prince a lick on his right cheek when they met in 2012

The impending birth of his own child was clearly on his mind when he told them: ‘Every blade of grass, every ray of sun and

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