HARRY came within inches of making history in the famous Eton Wall Game when his team almost scored a goal. No-one in the annual St Andrew's Day fixture has scored since 1909. But in last November's match, with his father watching, Harry scored a "shy" in one of the most exciting matches for decades. His team, the Oppidans, came within inches of completing this score into a "goal" almost a century after the feat was last achieved. Sport plays a major part of Harry's life and at 6ft 2in, with a passion to win, he is a formidable opponent. His sporting prowess and leadership qualities as a tenacious team player were recognised at Eton where he was House Captain of Games. As well as a footballer and School `B' rugby team captain for two years at scrum-half, he is a school polo player, an accomplished skier, and, what is less well-known, a cricketer, having captained school teams and bowled in the 2001 and 2002 Senior House finals. As a "Dry Bob" at Eton he played cricket rather than rowing as a "Wet Bob". Harry also enjoyed swimming and athletics. ART students at Eton until recently used a real skeleton for anatomical drawing. But a wooden version has now arrived - and seems to have made a friend in Harry. The teenage Prince is a keen artist and has his work exhibited at Eton. He often draws his inspiration from animals and examples of his latest work use a study of lizards as a starting point. In the case of the two untitled-An Arsenal supporter, he attempted to emulate the success of his Premiership idols and was a member of the Junior Ties team that won the main house soccer competition in 1998. But his greatest love is for the more archaic - and baffling - Eton Games, representing Manor House in both the Field Game and the Wall Game. In the Field Game, a mixture of rugby and football using smaller, hockey-sized goals, he had the illicit art of cornering down to a fine art. However, it was in the Wall Game that Harry was most successful, being selected two years running for the Oppidan Wall team in their annual clash with the Scholars on St Andrew's Day. The Wall Game, said to have inspired Harry Potter's Quidditch, is played along a 118-yard brick wall which separates the playing fields of Eton from Slough Road. Described as "open warfare," the object of the game is to get a ball slightly smaller than a football to one or other end of the wall. Players wear protective gloves. paintings currently on show, the original study was influenced by an interest in Aboriginal art, with primitive forms made up of many dots. Harry's artwork involves a mixture of painting and printing techniques, and suggests a preference for modern art as well as earthy colours and tones. Although he studies art at A-level, his talent, displayed publicly for the first time, may surprise many. Harry and his older brother William have both played in the same match when William returned to play for an Old Boys' team. The Prince of Wales once remarked at the number of sporting injuries both his sons seemed to pick up and Harry certainly seems to get more than his fair share, perhaps reflecting his fearless approach to sport. Harry badly bruised his right foot during a football match in November 2001 and, as a result, was on crutches for a couple of days. He injured the same foot, bruising the bone, taking part in the Eton Wall Game in June 2002 and was back on crutches for a week. Then last November he sustained a finger injury playing football, chipping a bone in his left thumb, and had a minor operation under local anaesthetic. He wears a support bandage on his right knee because of a recurring injury. At Eton, some boys wear two different, or odd, sports socks which signify the different teams they play for. For example, Harry's blue and orange hooped socks show he plays for the Oppidans, while fawn and blue are the colours of Manor House. Harry's House MANOR HOUSE, Harry's home at Eton, is dominated by a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and Old Etonian. If the Iron Duke really did assert that the Battle of Waterloo against the French Emperor Napoleon in 1815 was "won on the playing fields of Eton," it was probably the gardens at the rear of Manor House, where in the 19th Century boys used to fight to defend the banks of a stream, to which he was referring. As if to rub salt in the wounds of the French, opposite the Wellington portrait in the main hall of Manor House is a miniature model of the belittled Napoleon. It was in the hall that Mario Testino took the photos of Harry to mark his 18th birthday last September. Manor House is run by resident house master Dr Andrew Gailey, a graduate of St Andrews and Cambridge universities, and author of books on Anglo-Irish relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. He and his wife, Shauna, have one daughter and an assortment of pets, including two springer spaniels. He heads the house which is named after his initials, ALHG's. It is one of 24 "Oppidans" or town houses where, apart from Scholars in College, Etonians live. Harry's uniform HE might look a toff in his white bow tie and tails but Harry is a gregarious, funloving teenager who likes to mess around in jeans and a baseball cap. However, when he is at Eton, the Prince keeps to the top private school's 19th Century dress code. Harry is entitled to wear a winged collar with white bow tie because he is House Captain of Games. The so-called "stick ups" are an elitist deviation from the exclusive school's distinctive uniform, known as School Dress. Right-handed Harry also wears two African bracelets but no wristwatch. The basic Eton uniform consists of black tailcoat and waistcoat, a style dating from around 1850, and pin-striped trousers, dating from around 1900. Unlike his brother before him, Harry is not a prefect. Harry's room HE WAS only 12 years old when she died and now Harry keeps the memory of his mother Diana alive with a favourite photograph of her in his room. The black-and-white portrait of the Princess, in a simple, black frame, is next to the teenage Prince as he studies for his A-levels. Harry keeps the picture by Mario Testino close to him on his desk-bureau in his small study-bedroom at Eton. He also has another photograph of his mother, with him at the VJ Day 50th anniversary commemorations in The Mall, London, in 1995, pinned to a noticeboard by his bed, alongside one of his father, the Prince of Wales. On his bedside table, next to a small lamp, is a framed picture of his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, who died last year aged 101. Harry's room at Eton is clearly a private domain but he allowed a glimpse of where he lives during term-time. Like many teenagers, the room, which measures about 10ft by 8ft, is a jumble of tastes and possessions. Although Harry "tidied up" for the photo session, there remained a lot of clutter, with items of clothing "put away" on the floor. A scene familiar to parents of teenagers everywhere. There is a poster of Whistler ski resort in Canada's Rocky Mountains with the message, "Great skiing with you", probably given to Harry by a ski guide when he visited with his father and Prince William in 1998. He has a large poster of New York steel construction workers, precariously perched on a girder, high above the skyscrapers, during a lunch break while building the Rockefeller Center in 1932. Harry's noticeboard bears a number of bikini-clad pin-ups - predominantly blondes and including model Caprice - plus a large England flag of the Cross of St George. There are lesson timetables and letters pinned up along with a skiing holiday snap of a daredevil parascending trip. He displays a poster for London's Xfm alternative rock radio station, signalling his developing taste in music away from mainstream pop. But prime position in the otherwise plainly furnished room is given to an Indianstyle fabric wall-hanging. His laptop computer is stowed away on a photography book of portraits by Mario Testino, who last year took pictures of Harry to mark his 18th birthday. A polo stick hangs on his wall. Four brightly coloured felt-tip pens stand to attention alongside Harry's Lynx fragrance for men. Probably destined to join the Army after a gap year, when he leaves school this summer, Harry risks getting black polish on the lilac duvet cover and blue-check cushions on his single bed, but concentrates on shining his boots for Eton's Combined Cadet Force. |