When William and Harry were growing up, they learned the hard way that the Press was not always their friend.
While out and about with Princess Diana, the two young Princes had many a trip ruined by the loud clicking sound of a dozen paparazzi cameras.
And as they became men, both were burned by various stories: William when the Sun broke the Press’s agreement to not follow him on holiday (which landed them the scoop that he was dating Kate Middleton) and Harry by the News of the World over his alleged drug use.
The stories caused them massive anxiety and frustration at the time.
While the princes had been protected from the Press by an agreement to let them get on with studying, as they became fully working royals, they became fair game.
Royal aides knew it was vital for them to establish links with the media so they could get their message out on their own terms.
And on the other side of the fence, journalists knew that if they managed to build a bond with one of the princes, or ideally both, it would yield dividends.
In 2019 Tom Bradby got his biggest scoop when he carried out blockbuster interviews with Harry and Meghan in South Africa, in which they described their struggles within the Firm
Prince William trusted Bradby so much that he knew he hadn’t leaked information about him. It later turned out the information had got to the News of the World via phone hacking
Bradby grew close with the princes in the early 2000s. He is pictured with Harry in South Africa in 2019
It was the early 2000s and to those on the royal beat, it was clear that after the death of Diana, forming a relationship with her two sons was essential.
It just so happened to be at this moment that Tom Bradby stepped into the world of royal reporting.
He was invited to lunch by Mark Dyer, then Harry’s private secretary, and he quickly became the favoured journalist amongst the Press pack by both brothers.
Over time, they came to trust Bradby and, in 2004, he was invited to film Harry in southern Africa on his gap year.
Bradby also had Prince William’s private mobile number.
Indeed, it was a voicemail he left for the prince offering to lend him editing equipment in 2005 – the details of which turned up in a tabloid story – which would set off the phone-hacking scandal.
William trusted Bradby, now 58, so much that when they discussed a project over the phone and the contents of their conversation later appeared in a paper, he knew Bradby hadn’t leaked them.
Instead Bradby suggested the royal phone might have been hacked and encouraged the Palace to go to police.
And even though Bradby was eventually promoted to ITV News’s political editor, the friendship and trust continued.
Announcing his engagement to Kate in 2010, William chose Bradby to interview them. An invitation to their wedding duly followed for Bradby and his wife.
Tom Bradby and his wife Claudia attend Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor
Claudia and Tom Bradby arrive at St Mark’s Church in Englefield, Berkshire, for the wedding of the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister Pippa Middleton in 2017
The couple leaving Prince William and Catherine’s wedding at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011
The same courtesy was extended to Bradby in 2018 by Harry and Meghan. In an article penned soon after the wedding, he praised the couple as ‘the Royal Family’s natural rock stars’, while dropping the gentlest of hints that behind the scenes not everything had been going as smoothly as it seemed.
But despite the relationship between the trio looking rock solid from the outside, it all came crashing down in 2019.
The catalyst for the royal falling out was when he hosted a documentary covering the Sussexes’ trip to southern Africa. It effectively launched Harry and Meghan’s exit.
The interview, in which Meghan thanked Bradby for asking if she was OK and Harry admitted that he and his brother were ‘on different paths at the moment’, blindsided William.
As the Mail revealed, it also terminally damaged William’s relationship with Bradby, whom he and royal advisers felt had taken advantage of Harry’s ‘clear vulnerability’.
In the fall-out, Bradby confessed to feeling ‘caught in the middle’ of the brothers, calling it ‘a deeply uncomfortable place to be’.
That he should have gained the trust of both Harry and William, albeit temporarily, is perhaps unsurprising given his background and upbringing.
‘They speak the same language,’ is how one old acquaintance put it.
Bradby’s role in the infamous interview left him out in the cold when it came to Prince William’s camp
Meghan revealed that, actually, she was not ‘OK’ and Harry’s frank observations about his fractured relationship with his brother came as bombshells to the rest of the family
Bradby climbed the ranks at ITV after joining their trainee scheme in 1990
Bradby moved on from his role as a royal reporter and became ITV’s political editor, taking on the role in 2005, but he still stayed close to the princes
Charming and affable, Bradby was born in Malta, the son of a British naval officer. He was an only child and at the age of eight was sent to board at Westbourne House School, West Sussex, and then Sherborne School in Dorset.
Next stop for Bradders, as friends know him, was Edinburgh and a history degree.
While there he became editor of the student newspaper. Contemporaries recall his ‘Hugh Grant-esque, floppy fringe that he always ran his hands through’ and his ‘OK, yah’ uniform of navy V-neck jumper, shirt, cords and brogues or loafers.
‘Although he was editor he always turned up late, bumbling and with a coterie of mates,’ one told Tom Rawstorne in 2023. ‘His deputy did all the graft.’
While at university, Bradby did work experience at several local newspapers but ultimately accepted a place on the ITN training scheme and has remained with the company ever since.
In 1994 he married Claudia Hill-Norton, a lacrosse-playing Durham University graduate. Her father was Vice Admiral Sir Nicholas Hill-Norton and her grandfather Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Hill-Norton.
The pair were introduced by Claudia’s older brother Simon, who, with his wife, would go on to found the sportswear company Sweaty Betty, which they sold to a U.S. company in 2020 for £300million.
Among those to have been photographed wearing the brand is Pippa Middleton, sister of Kate, whom Claudia would get to know.
Tom and Claudia reportedly helped Pippa with her book Celebrate, which was published in 2012 after her star turn as Kate’s chief bridesmaid drew wide media attention.
Tom Bradby told Good Morning America that he found Harry and Meghan ‘bruised and vulnerable’ while filming the documentary in Africa
Bradby also met with their son Archie during the trip to Africa in 2019
The ITV presenter and royal correspondent reportedly helped Pippa Middleton with her book Celebrate, which was published in 2012
For a reported advance of £400,000, the party planning guide was widely derided for its ‘glaringly obvious’ advice.
Bradby moved to Hong Kong as ITV’s Asia correspondent in 1998 and it was there that Claudia found her calling as a jewellery designer.
After deals with Liberty and John Lewis, her work caught the eye of Kate Middleton, then a buyer for Jigsaw, who snapped up her collection for the High Street store.
Against that background, Bradby’s appointment as royal correspondent might seem a match made in heaven. But the reality, he claims, was very different.
Covering a riot in Indonesia in 1999, he was struck in the right leg by a flare that left him badly injured.
By then a father of three, he decided the life of a foreign reporter was not for him and reluctantly accepted the position of royal correspondent, ‘the last thing on the planet I wanted to be’.
But he rose quickly up the ranks, partly driven by his relationship with the two princes.
It was no easy feat to get the two princes to warm up to him, despite his wealthy background, as he was a journalist after all.
As boys, both William and Harry had seen how badly their mother had been burned when she put her trust in a friendly BBC reporter Martin Bashir to tell her side of the story about her tortured relationship with Prince Charles.
Covering a riot in Indonesia in 1999, Bradby was struck in the right leg by a flare that left him badly injured
Her decision to trust Bashir and do the infamous interview with him taught the princes the dangers of speaking to the wrong journalist.
Despite their reservations, at the peak of his relationship with the princes, Bradby was the journalist specifically chosen to do the engagement interview with Harry and Meghan in 2018.
At much the same time it emerged that Bradby, who divides his time between his home in Hampshire and a London flat, had some problems of his own.
By then installed as News at Ten’s £500,000-a-year anchor, in the spring of 2018 he had started to suffer from insomnia.
Signed off work for three months, his wife warned he was near a ‘very dangerous cliff-edge’ and urged him to see a psychiatrist.
Yet in fact, his mental breakdown helped him secure his biggest scoop. In 2019 he accompanied Harry and Meghan on their tour to southern Africa.
The subsequent documentary, Harry And Meghan: An African Journey, revealed for the first time the extent of the couple’s dissatisfaction with royal life.
Meghan revealing that, actually, she was not ‘OK’ and Harry’s frank observations about his fractured relationship with his brother came as bombshells not just to the public but to the Royal Family.
‘William didn’t know what his brother would say until he watched it on the TV at the same time as everyone else,’ said a source. ‘He didn’t realise it was that bad… he felt genuinely worried by how vulnerable his brother was.’
But there was equal concern about the tone of the interview.
‘People in the Royal Household felt Bradby was taking advantage of him at a very vulnerable time,’ the source added.
Announcing his and Kate’s engagement in 2010, William chose Bradby to interview them. An invitation to their wedding duly followed for Bradby and his wife.
Bradby scooped his rivals to the first interview with Prince William and Kate Middleton after the newly engaged couple asked ‘specifically’ for him
Will and Kate’s engagement interview was a success and introduced the soon-to-be Princess to the British for the first time
‘I don’t entirely buy that because Harry was desperate to talk about it and Bradby gave him the opportunity.’
In getting the story, Bradby must have known it would test his friendship with William.
In fact, it led to it being broken off.
As a source told this newspaper at the time: ‘The friendship between William and Tom is over. The Prince feels let down by Bradby and the way he has acted over the past few months.
‘William is a sensitive soul and believes it’s in times of crisis when you find out who your true friends are. It would be fair to say Bradby hasn’t been one of them.’
In the years since his falling out with William, Bradby seems to have doubled down and made clear his side was on team Harry.
In the lead up to Harry’s bombshell sit down with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, he confirmed the threat to the monarchy that a ‘no holds barred’ interview with the American star would cause.
He predicted ‘I don’t think it would be pretty’, but perhaps more significantly, he damned William for having bullied harry out of the Royal Family.
He accused William and Kate of snubbing Meghan before the wedding.
The couple, Bradbury wrote were ‘insufficiently welcoming… Quite early on they decided, ‘Right, we are going to tell these people their place and we are going to push them away’.’
Bradbury wrote that the result was ‘Harry and Meghan’s escape from the poisonous palace.’
For their part, Buckingham Palace used just one word in reply to Bradbury’s accusations: ‘False’.
In 2019 Tom Bradby sat down with David Cameron to talk about the highs and lows of his premiership and his thoughts on the 2016 Brexit vote
It seems Bradby had swallowed Harry’s version of events fully, perhaps because the other brother was no longer speaking to him.
By all accounts William is a man who values loyalty above all else, but it seems after two decades of friendship, he could no longer rely on Bradby.
Don’t expect to see Bradby secure another interview with William again.
Like Harry, Bradby has been publicly open about his mental health issues, revealing he had to take lengthy time off from hosting News at Ten in 2018 after suffering the ‘mental health equivalent of a heart attack’.
The two men seem to still be close, with Bradby often coming to Harry’s aid from time to time, in return for stories.
The Mail on Sunday revealed in April 2021 that he has ‘significant sway’ over how Meghan is portrayed more widely on ITV.
They reported he may have been involved in pointing the Duchess ‘in the right direction’ over how to complain about Piers Morgan’s criticism of her on Good Morning Britain, which resulted in him quitting the show.
A source told the newspaper: ‘Tom Bradby has a certain cachet at ITV as their news man. He is also the man with the golden goose in the bosses’ eyes as he has a hotline to Prince Harry.’
When the time came for Harry to finally burn his bridges with the Royal Family and go nuclear by printing his autobiography Spare, it was Bradby he called once again.
The Duke of Sussex sat down with Bradby for the programme Harry: The Interview, which was used to promote his tell-all memoir Spare
Bradby carried out the long-form TV interview where he threw softball questions at the Prince
The dutiful journalist once again appeared and carried out a long-form TV interview where he threw softball questions at the Prince.
The Duke of Sussex used the platform to explain his criticisms of his father King Charles and his decision to leave the UK with his wife Meghan.
Harry also said his family members had ‘gone to bed with the devil’ to help improve their image before the press, while also finding time to joke about his virginity story with his old friend.
For his part, outside of sit down interviews, Bradby has tried to avoid getting embroiled in the simmering war between the Princes.
When he was profiled in the Sunday Times in 2021, he said the pair were his ‘least favourite subject in the world’ as he apparently tried his best to avoid them, while at the same time mentioning them several times.
However, perhaps due to Harry’s damaged popularity, he has kept a little more distance from him recently.
Instead of getting involved with the feuding brothers, he spends his time writing, having published ten books since 1998.
They have been mostly political thrillers so far, but could he be tempted to one day pen a royal thriller?
He would certainly have enough experience to use as inspiration…
