Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton was the private secretary to both Prince William and Prince Harry for eight years, helping guide the young royals through the early stages of their military and royal lives. Now, he has opened up about his time inside their inner circle…
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Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton was not the sort of chief of staff to spend his days behind a desk, poring over official documents or writing speeches. “This must have been the only private secretary job spec which included having to ride a cross country motorcycle so that I could keep up with my charges,” he says of his years serving Prince William, Prince Harry and, later, Kate Middleton.
A former soldier who rose through the Irish Guards to become a squadron commander in the secretive Special Air Service, he also served as equerry to the princes’ great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, from 1984 to 1986. “It was fascinating seeing how they developed and how they had an almost instinctive feel for duty and service,” he told PEOPLE. “I was vicariously reliving parts of my military youth, seeing them going through the same process.”
From 2005 to 2013, JLP, as he is known in royal circles, worked as private secretary to William and Harry, helping prepare them for their future responsibilities and navigating the complex army, press and palace arrangements that saw Harry undertake his first tour of Afghanistan.
“We did a bit of [constitutional prep], but the whole point, particularly for Prince William who’s got to be commander in chief one day, was to be able to look his soldiers in the eye, and say he flew search and rescue helicopters over Snowdonia, Wales and the North Atlantic, and people depended him,” he said.
By the time he started the role, Kate was already part of William’s life after the pair fell in love at university. “She’s brilliant,” he said of the Princess of Wales. “You could go up and down, crisscross the kingdom, and you wouldn’t have found anybody better.”
In 2011, Lowther-Pinkerton was given the huge responsibility of overseeing preparations for William and Kate’s wedding at Westminster Abbey. Recalling the moment William gave him the task, he told The Times: “I was petrified because he said to me early on, ‘You’re running it.’ And it’s the closest I’ll ever get to a divisional command because you had all these brilliant experts and you didn’t need to do anything
“You just needed to set the parameters and let people do what they were so bloody good at.”
Despite the pressure, he says: “The wedding itself was the closest I’ll ever come to a divisional command. Everyone was consummately brilliant at what they did.”
The friendship has endured. Lowther-Pinkerton’s son Billy was a page at the wedding, while William and Kate later asked him to be godfather to their eldest son, Prince George. “It’s a great honor,” he says of the role. “He’s a delightful chap.”
Lowther-Pinkerton has also spoken warmly of both brothers, describing them as “brave guys”. He said he “loved them both”, with William a natural born leader while Harry was “more of a mischievous cub, scampering around”. Asked about their rift in recent years, he said he would rather stay clear of it, but added that he was “very fond” of Harry and believed he had “huge redeeming features”.
Today, the 65-year-old has added novelist to his list of achievements with his debut book, Beyond the Edge of the Light. Inspired partly by his own family history, the sweeping love story follows a young woman who falls for a German aristocrat just before the Second World War.
His mother, Sue, inspired the heroine. “The only thing she would never reveal is anything about her time in the security service,” he says of her work for MI5 during the Cold War.
“She was a pretty flawless character and wicked fun. The way she looked, her sense of humor and her steel — although she didn’t show it too often — is reincarnated in Missie,” he adds of his mother, who died in 2024 at age 99.
