id="u268ca0d8-0755-5672-b95e-fea9b0caa9e7">
WILLIAM A Royal Love Story & KATE Contents
Chapter 2 - A Schoolgirl Crush
Chapter 4 - From Housemates to Dates
Chapter 5 - Rivals, Rows, and the Real World
Chapter 7 - Work Hard, Play Hard
Chapter 8 - Splitting Up ... and Getting Back Together
Chapter 12 - The Future King and Queen
Copyright Introduction The outpouring of joy at the news of Prince William’s long-awaited engagement to the beautiful Kate Middleton should come as no surprise to anyone. William has always held a special place in the hearts of the British people, who have recognised qualities in Kate that make her a perfect future Queen. Patriotic supporters of the Royal Family have closely followed every twist and turn of William’s life as though he were a favourite nephew or the son of a best friend. During his teenage years, there was an enduring fascination over who he would choose to become his wife. The Sun was the first newspaper to tell the world that William had fallen in love with Kate. From that day on, the public paid close attention to the shapely brunette and were charmed by everything they saw. The national obsession over William’s love life subtly shifted from ‘Who?’ to the pressing question of ‘When?’ In finally asking Kate to marry him, William is set to wed a young woman who boasts a winning combination of glamour, grace, poise and intelligence. Many believe that she will now enchant us in the same way as her future husband’s late mother, the immensely popular and beguiling Princess Diana. Those who have closely monitored the couple’s relationship are convinced that they make a better match than Diana and Prince Charles, William’s father. A mere six months separates them in age rather than the 12-year gulf that divided Charles and Diana. They share similar interests, character traits and a healthy desire for normality in spite of their unique circumstances. Yet in almost every way, their backgrounds could not be more different – as you would expect from a union between a young man born to be King and a girl from the Home Counties. ‘William is set to wed a young woman who boasts a winning combination of glamour, grace, poise and intelligence.’ Chapter 1 - Worlds Apart With every imaginable privilege available to him and flunkies on hand to attend to his every whim, William should have enjoyed a dream upbringing. But ironically it was Kate who had the more enviable start in life, basking in the warmth of her family’s stability, security and love. Catherine Elizabeth Middleton was born on 9 January 1982, to mum Carole and dad Michael in Reading’s Royal Berkshire Hospital. Just over eighteen months later she was joined by a sister, Pippa, and, three and a half years after that, a brother James arrived. Carole Goldsmith was working as an air hostess in the 1970s when she met her man. Michael Middleton was a pilot whose powerful masculine looks made him very popular amongst female flight attendants. After a brief time dating, Michael and Carole married in Chiltern, Buckinghamshire, in 1980. Kate was born two years later and spent the first 13 years of her life growing up in the village of West View, near Bradfield Southend, Berkshire. Her parents had bought the four-bed semi-detached Victorian villa for £35,000 in 1979 – and it was from here that they made a very important life decision. It is one that has almost certainly contributed to Kate’s position today. They were determined to give everything to their children and agreed that international jet-setting was not compatible with family life. They left the airline industry to set up Party Pieces, a mail-order company supplying packs of goodies to guarantee the perfect kids’ bash. Appropriately, wedding kits and princess costumes are amongst the items now shipped by the family firm’s successful online operation. In 1987, Carole launched the business from a back-garden shed, later expanding into a small industrial unit in nearby Yattendon. Eight years on, the growing firm moved base again into converted farm buildings a mile down the road. In the same year, the family paid £250,000 for a home in the village of Bucklebury. The five-bedroom detached property set within woodland is now worth more than £1 million. Kate experienced an idyllic childhood, growing up in picture-postcard English villages with parents who packaged and sold fun for a living. A blog she wrote on the Party Pieces website years later provides a telling insight into her carefree youth. She portrayed herself as a happy and outgoing child who loved to dress up as a clown in giant dungarees at fancy dress parties. She described her best party memory as ‘an amazing white rabbit marshmallow cake that Mummy made when I was seven’. Musical statues, she revealed, was a favourite game because she had ‘always been a keen dancer’. Party bags were best, she said, when they contained ‘anything that Mummy would normally never allow me to have. They were always such a treat.’ She recommended cooking parties for girls and camping parties for boys because they were ‘a great way to get Daddies involved’. And she admitted she had suffered a ‘cake disaster’ during James’s birthday when she forgot to add self-raising flour and turned a flat sponge into a trifle cake.
