In an emotional interview, he and Prince William also reveal their reactions to being told that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
Opening up on the tumultuous seven days that followed the accident, the princes give a vivid account of how they had to conceal their devastation amid the extraordinary outpouring of public grief.
A BBC documentary, to be broadcast on Sunday, shows William and Harry speaking of their shock and bewilderment at the ‘peculiar’ scale of public mourning.
The princes also give a heart-rending account of having to walk behind Diana’s coffin at the funeral, with William recalling that he ‘just wanted to go into a room and cry’.
Paying tribute to his father for his attempts to comfort them in the aftermath of Diana’s death, Prince Harry says: ‘One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died.
‘But, you know, he was going through the same grieving process as well.’ Harry says his reaction to being told the news was one of ‘disbelief’, and there was ‘no sudden outpouring of grief’.
The documentary, Diana, 7 Days, marks the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death and tells the behind-the-scenes story of the week before her funeral. It features some of the major figures at the time including former prime minister Tony Blair, senior royal aides and Diana’s family.
‘I think it was a very hard decision for my grandmother to make. She felt very torn between being a grandmother to William and Harry and her Queen role,’ William says.
The documentary, made by respected US director Henry Singer, who made the documentary 9/11: The Falling Man, sees the princes speak with raw honesty about their emotions at the time.
Meanwhile there have been another three major documentaries covering Diana's death in the past few weeks that they were not involved in.
Harry says of their return to London from Scotland: ‘People were grabbing us and pulling us into their arms and stuff. I don’t blame anyone for that, of course I don’t. But it was those moments that were quite shocking. People were screaming, people were crying, people’s hands were wet because of the tears they had just wiped away from their faces before shaking my hand.’
He added: ‘I just remember hiding behind my fringe basically, at a time when I had a lot of hair, and my head’s down a lot.’
Aides say it is the first and last time the princes will speak about their mother’s death in such intimate detail. A Kensington Palace spokesman said they were ‘glad’ they had contributed to the documentary but wanted to concentrate on honouring her legacy rather than talk about the past.
The torrent of grief at the tragic loss of Diana, Princess of Wales, was unprecedented, shaking the nation – and the monarchy – to its core.
For her devastated sons, it was a bewildering, and at times frightening, experience, as they make clear in a BBC documentary.
Revealing how it was Prince Charles who broke the news of their mother’s death to them at Balmoral, Harry also hints at the hitherto unexplored depths of his father’s own suffering, despite his bitter divorce from Diana.
And the brothers praise their grandmother, the Queen, for doing everything within her power to protect them – even removing copies of the newspapers from the castle each day – and insisting, despite intense public pressure, that they remain in Scotland to come to terms with their loss.
This is how William and Harry reveal in their own words the aching depth of their loss and how they battled to juggle their private anguish with their duty during such an extraordinary and historic time.
In August 1997 they were on holiday at Balmoral with their grandmother and had not seen their mother for almost a month. Shortly before she died, Diana rang the castle to speak to her sons. William tells the documentary: ‘She was away abroad.
‘I remember getting a phone call at the time and you think it’s just a parent ringing up to have a chat and I think both Harry and I spoke to her and said we were missing her, and we wish you were back and lots of stuff.’
Harry adds: ‘I think it was probably about teatime for us. And I was a typical young kid running around playing games with my brother and cousins and being told “Mummy’s on the phone, mummy’s on the phone” and was like, “Right, I just really want to play”. And if I had known that was the last time I was going to speak to her the conversation would have gone in a very different direction.
‘And I had to live with that for the rest of my life, knowing that I was that 12-year-old boy wanting to get off the phone and wanting to go and run around and play games rather than speak to my mum.’
Although both princes refused to discuss in detail the moment they were told, saying it was too personal and private to discuss, Harry does reveal it was his father who came to them to break the news.
He says: ‘One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died.
‘How you deal with that, I don’t know. But he was there for us, he was the one out of two left. And he tried to do his best to make sure we were protected and looked after.
‘He was going through the same grieving process as well.’
Asked about his feelings, he adds: ‘Disbelief. Refuse to accept it. There was no sudden outpour of grief, of course there wasn’t. I don’t think anybody in that position at that age would be able to understand the concept of what it actually means going forward.’ William vividly recalls how he felt.
‘I remember just feeling completely numb. Disorientated, dizzy, and you feel very, very confused. And you keep asking yourself “Why me?” all the time. What have I done? Why has this happened to us?’
Both are generous in their praise for the Queen, who was criticised at the time for staying at Balmoral with them and failing to make any public pronouncement on Diana’s death.
It also took several days for her to agree to lower the Union flag at Buckingham Palace to half-mast as an acknowledgement of the nation’s loss because, in the words, of one courtier, ‘she hadn’t even done it for her father [George VI]’. For William and Harry, however, the Queen’s presence in Scotland was invaluable.
‘At the time my grandmother wanted to protect her two grandsons, and my father as well,’ William says.
‘Our grandmother deliberately removed the newspapers so there was nothing in the house at all so we didn’t know what was going on.
‘I think it was a very hard decision for my grandmother to make. She felt very torn between being a grandmother to William and Harry and her Queen role.
'Everyone was surprised and taken aback by the scale of what happened and the nature of how quickly it happened, plus the fact that she had been challenging the Royal Family for many years beforehand.’
Harry adds: ‘It was a case of how do we let the boys grieve in privacy, but at the same time when is the right time for them to put on their prince hats and carry out duties to mourn not just their mother, but the Princess of Wales... and a very public audience.’
A few hours after being told Diana had died, William and Harry appeared in public for the first time when they went to Crathie Kirk, a local church, with the Royal Family.
Although there was huge public interest in seeing them, many reacted with horror that the princes had been put through such a public ordeal as they struggled to come to terms with their loss.
Both make no bones about the fact that this was an incredibly difficult experience for them – it was ‘the last thing’ he wanted to do, Harry says –although now, as adults, they acknowledge it was part of their public role.
William describes how he put his ‘game face on’, when all he wanted to do was cry in private, as they examined some of the floral tributes left outside the gates at Balmoral.
‘I remember looking at the flowers and the notes that were left and was very touched by it but none of it sunk in.
‘All I cared about was that I had lost my mother and I didn’t want to be where I was.
‘I was wearing a tiny little strange blazer with a horrible tie, and to read other people’s outpouring of grief was quite odd when you are in a position almost as if people are expecting you to grieve in public. To whose benefit would that be?
‘Looking back on it I’m glad that I never cried in public because there was a fine line between work and grieving while working and grieving in private. Even if someone tried to get me to cry in public I couldn’t, and probably still can’t. What happened then has changed me in that sense.’
THE RETURN TO LONDON
Indeed, William goes so far as to describe the screaming, wailing and desire to touch them as ‘peculiar’ and ‘unusual’.
He says: ‘Everyone was crying and wailing and wanting to touch us. It was very peculiar but obviously very touching. Again, I was 15 and Harry was 12, nothing can really describe it. It was very unusual.
For Harry the moment was clearly traumatic and one that he struggles with, even now.
‘People were grabbing us and pulling us into their arms and stuff. I don’t blame anyone for that, of course I don’t.
'But it was those moments that were quite a shocking. People were screaming, people were crying, people’s hands were wet because of the tears they had just wiped away from their faces before shaking my hand.
‘It was so unusual for people to see young boys like that not crying when everybody else was crying. What we were doing was being asked of us was verging on normal then, but now…. Looking at us then, we must have been in just this state of shock.’
For William, it was a case of grin and bear it – anything to get through the next few days. ‘We didn’t really talk about it that much. It was “Right, here we go again”.
'But walking back in behind closed doors, there was a lot of hunkering down going on, just trying to survive and get through it,’ he recalls.
‘I couldn’t understand why everyone wanted to cry as loud as they did and show such emotion as they did when they didn’t really know our mother.
‘I did feel a bit protective about that at times. You didn’t even know her – why and how are you so upset? Now looking back, I have learnt to understand what it was she gave the world and what she gave a lot of people. Back in the Nineties there weren’t many other public figures doing what she did. She was this ray of light in a fairly grey world.’
For both William and Harry, this was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most agonising part of the day they said goodbye to their mother.
According to former prime minister Tony Blair and his then aide, Alastair Campbell, discussions about whether the children should do it went right to the wire.
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