As the world pores over Prince Harry's bombshell book Spare for revelations about his personal life, family and marriage, CHRIS BISHOP scoured its pages for what the royal has to say about Norfolk
SECRET HOTEL MISSION
While preparing for an army tour of Afghanistan in 2007, Prince Harry opted to head to Norfolk to train as a forward air controller, eschewing the army's main training centres to keep his pending deployment secret.
He checked into the Knights Hill Hotel, near King's Lynn, incognito and headed into the nearby marshes with radio kit and a quad bike to learn how to control different kinds of aircraft operating over the battlefield.
His father, then Prince Charles, was visiting nearby Sandringham at the time and, seeing low-flying jets, realised what might be going on and came out to find his son.
As he left, Harry called in a Typhoon to fly low over his car.
Harry's training mission did not go down well with locals. People in the village of Wolferton complained to RAF Marham about low-flying jets.
SANDRINGHAM SUMMIT
As Prince Harry's relationship with his family broke down amid a slew of damning headlines, the Queen gathered senior royals for a showdown in Norfolk.
Details of the so-called Sandringham Summit emerge for the first time in Spare.
The meeting was to discuss how the family would move forwards from Harry and his wife Meghan's announcement that they intended to step back from royal life and be financially independent, while still supporting the Queen.
As they sat down with the Queen - who Harry calls Granny - Prince Charles, Prince William and royal aides, Harry writes his brother looked at him as if he planned to murder him.
He describes the meeting around a long conference table, with the Queen at the head.
Spare reports five options were on the agenda. "Option 1 was a continuance of the status quo, Meg and I don't leave, everyone tries to go back to normal," writes Harry.
"Option 5 was full severance, no royal role, no working for Granny and total loss of security."
Option 3 was "somewhere in between", a compromise along the lines of what Harry and Meghan had proposed.
Harry says he told his family what concerned him most was security and his family's physical safety.
"I wanted to prevent a repeat of history, another untimely death like the one that had rocked this family to the core 23 years earlier [the death of Harry's mother, Princess Diana], and from which we were still trying to recover," he explains.
Harry says senior courtiers had told him Option 3 was "eminently doable".
But after an hour's discussion at Sandringham, he says an aide handed around copies of a draft statement announcing the implementation of Option 5.
Harry claims he was told statements had been drafted announcing the other options, but these could not be printed out because the aide's printer was "on the blink".
There was an agreement that arrangements would be finalised over a 12-month transition period, during which the Sussexes would retain their security.
After the Queen rose and the meeting ended, Harry says he found out that both printers at Sandringham were still working.
"I flew back to Vancouver," Harry writes. "Delicious reunion with Meg, Archie and the dogs. And yet, for a few days, I didn't feel fully back.
"Part of me was still in Britain. Still at Sandringham. I spent hours glued to my phone and the internet, monitoring the fall-out."
TACKY CHRISTMASES
One memory of Sandringham Harry recalls more fondly is joining the Royal Family for their Christmas get-togethers at the big house in the pine woods.
Along with opening their presents on Christmas Eve, in a nod to their German roots, the royals also compete to see who can buy each other tackiest gift.
Before she died in 2002, Princess Margaret kept up the family tradition by buying Harry a ballpoint pen with a tiny rubber fish wrapped around it.
"I told myself that is cold-blooded," writes Harry.
CHILDHOOD FIGHTS
Spare also tells of childhood play fights between Harry and his brother Prince William and the four sons of Hugh and Emilie Van Cutsem, who were friends of their father Prince Charles and lived at Anmer Hall, near Sandringham, in the 1990s.
"As the youngest and the smallest I always took the brunt," Harry recalls. "But I also did the most escalating, the most asking for it, so I deserved everything I got. Black eye, violet welt, puffed lip, I didn't mind."
NORFOLK HIDEOUT
The book also reveals Prince William took refuge at Sandringham rather than go on a family skiing trip and face the press after the death of Princess Diana.
He said he would rather go shooting and "take it out on the partridges".
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