The king’s all-powerful private secretary and sworn enemy of Prince Harry could soon be retiring, a royal expert has claimed.
Sir Clive Alderton, 57, has worked for Charles since 2006, eventually landing the top job of Private Secretary in 2015 to become his right-hand man.
The Duke of Sussex has repeatedly clashed with Sir Clive and it is understood the courtier played a crucial role in blocking attempts to arrange solidarity meetings between Charles and his son.
Harry was repeatedly critical of him in his memoir Spare, disparagingly dubbing him ‘The Wasp’, and branding him ‘weedy’ and ‘arrogant’.
If Sir Clive were to step down, reconciliation between King Charles and Prince Harry would be easier, according to Princess Diana’s biographer Tina Brown.
The always well-informed Brown, who was a close friend of Diana’s, cited an ‘intimate royal source’ when she wrote in her new Substack blog Fresh Hell that Sir Clive ‘is considering retirement’.
She writes that the general public doesn’t often realise the degree to which the royals are run by their private secretaries who are able to ‘gatekeep’ the access of people.
Brown points out that Sir Clive and Harry are ‘avowed’ enemies and if he was replaced by a figure who may be more receptive toward Harry, it could ‘create a new, friendlier path for negotiations’.
The king’s all-powerful private secretary and sworn enemy of Prince Harry, Sir Clive Alderton, 57, (pictured at Royal Ascot in 2022) could soon be retiring, a royal expert has claimed
The Duke of Sussex has repeatedly clashed with Sir Clive and it is understood the courtier played a crucial role in blocking attempts to arrange solidarity meetings between Charles and his son (pictured together in 2018)
Clive Alderton accompanies King Charles and Queen Camilla during a visit to the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, in Berlin on March 30, 2023
The pair have a long-running feud, with Harry writing in blockbuster tell-all memoir Spare in January 2023: ‘The Wasp [Sir Clive] was lanky, charming, arrogant, a ball of jazzy energy. He was great at pretending to be polite, even servile.
‘Because he seemed so weedy, so self-effacing, you might be tempted to push back, insist on your point, and that was when he’d put you on his list.
‘A short time later, without warning, he’d give you such a stab with his outsized stinger that you’d cry out in confusion. Where the f*** did that come from?’
His departure would be a huge shock to the royal system which Brown believes could be the first step in a rapprochement between father and son as there remains a ‘Harry-Sized Hole’ in the family.
She writes: ‘It could also represent a great face-saver for Meghan who must realize by now that the dull demands of second-division royalty are less onerous than grinding out serial rebranding flops.
‘Enough with the feuds. Families, including this one, need to stick together. William, whatever his abiding resentments toward Harry for his intemperate broadsides in Spare, should now suck it up and let his father give Harry something to do.
‘No one would have been happier about a rapprochement than Queen Elizabeth, who took a harsh position on Megxit, but in times of crisis evolved her positions, albeit at a glacial pace, as she did when she finally allowed Prince Charles to marry his mistress in 2005.
‘What was always paramount for her was the health of the crown. And right now, the crown needs Harry.’
The always well-informed Tina Brown (pictured in 2022), who was a close friend of Diana’s, cited an ‘intimate royal source’ when she wrote in her new Substack blog Fresh Hell that Sir Clive ‘is considering retirement’
Sir Clive Alderton, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, Prince William and King Charles III walk behind Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin as it is transported on a gun carriage from Buckingham Palace on September 14, 2022
Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Clive Alderton at an event for The King’s Trust to discuss youth opportunity, at St James’s Palace in central London on July 12, 2024
Sir Clive Alderton greets Sir Keir Starmer as he arrives at Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Charles III where he was invited to become Prime Minister following the landslide General Election victory for the Labour Party on July 5, 2024
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is greeted by Sir Clive on February 8, 2023
Sir Clive welcomes in the war leader as he arrives for an audience with the King at Buckingham Palace
Sir Clive Alderton and Sophie Densham (Private Secretary to Camilla, Queen Consort) attend a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Queen Elizabeth II in Edinburgh on September 12, 2022
In September there were rumours Sir Clive was being groomed to become Britain’s next ambassador to Washington.
The trusted courtier once held a Foreign Office role, living in various countries at the start of his career including Singapore, Poland and France.
If he leaves his role, it could make shockwaves through the royal world.
However, the royal biographer Robert Hardman recently told The Daily Beast consent from Prince William would still be required for meaningful discussions between Charles and Harry to occur.
‘Whatever the King does needs to be done in tandem with both brothers, not just one,’ Hardman said last week.
‘He can’t have unilateral discussions if William isn’t in agreement.’
A royal source told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden earlier this year that the Sussexes were making increasingly ‘desperate’ efforts to extend olive branches across the Atlantic.
And the same insider said earlier this month: ‘We can expect to see more of Harry back in Britain in years to come.’
It comes as since the election of President-elect Trump, more pressure has been placed on Harry and Meghan’s position in California due to their repeated run-ins with the Republican politician.
A royal source told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden earlier this year that the Sussexes were making increasingly ‘desperate’ efforts to extend olive branches across the Atlantic
The re-elected President is seen here beside the Queen during a visit to the UK in 2019. He was challenged for walking in front of Her Majesty
When she was still an actress, Meghan described Trump Snr as ‘divisive’ and a ‘misogynist’.
While living in Toronto during the filming of the legal drama Suits, she declared she might prefer to stay in Canada rather than return to her American homeland with Trump as President.
And the Trumps have hit back, with President-elect’s son Eric calling the Duke and Duchess ‘spoiled apples’ in August and echoing his father’s claims that Harry could be deported if the Republicans won.
Prince Harry’s memoir Spare he was critical of Sir Clive
‘You can happily have those two,’ Eric added. ‘We might not want them any more; it feels like they’re on an island of their own.’
Donald Trump had previously suggested that Harry – who has lived in the celebrity enclave of Montecito in California since 2020 – would not get ‘special privileges’ and indeed may be deported if he is found to have falsified information on his visa form.
In his memoir, Spare, the prince revealed that he formerly took drugs including cocaine, cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms – which under US law would typically be grounds for a visa application to be rejected.
Last month, a conservative US think-tank attempted to reopen its court case to force the Department for Homeland Security to disclose the prince’s immigration records, on the basis that it had not been allowed to see private submissions to the judge made by the Biden administration.
The previous case brought by the Washington DC-based Heritage Foundation had been dismissed in September, after an almost two-year legal battle, when the judge ruled there was not a strong public interest in releasing the records.
The brothers are together at Westminster Abbey in March 2020. It is the last official engagement for Harry and Meghan – and the mood was sombre
Rift: Harry and William during the unveiling of a statue of their mother, Princess Diana, at Kensington Palace in 2022
Someone who worked for the royals while the couple were still part of ‘The Firm’ told Richard Eden in August: ‘It seems quite clear that the Sussexes are desperate to start healing the rift [with the Royal Family].’
As evidence, the source pointed to the string of stories that had recently appeared in People magazine, a favoured outlet of Harry and Meghan.
They included an article in July about Harry’s despair that his father was not accepting his phone calls and another claiming that his rift with Prince William was not ‘irreparable’.
The comments came after an interview Harry gave in February, suggesting that the King’s cancer diagnosis could help them put their differences aside.
If Charles’s ‘Waspy’ gatekeeping right-hand man was to stop down, reconciliation could be a lot easier for the fallen Prince.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
