The common prince

The footage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan last week gave us an insight in to the Royal dilemma. On the one hand, he said, he appreciated the opportunities that came the way of he and his brother William because of their Royal birth. At the same time other doors - those to a normal existence - were closed.

Extraordinarily this means that fighting in Afghanistan's Helmand province has probably been one of the most authentic experiences of his life. He didn't miss anything back home, he said, and we nodded because we knew he meant it. Here he was doing the job of his choice with people who had made the same choices.

This was not champagne Harry tripping between nightclubs with wealthy friends, but a young man who had found a sense of purpose, who was respected for his skills rather than for his background.

Last night I read Alan Bennett's short book, The Uncommon Reader, a fanciful story that imagines the Queen gripped by a reading fetish so strong that it begins to impinge on her Royal duties.

At one stage a young kitchen worker, who has become her reading adviser, is levered out of his job by those around her. So protected is the Queen that he is unable to contact her and she him, not knowing his whereabouts or, indeed anything about the circumstance in which he was removed.

Bennett's fictional scenario and the reality of Prince Harry's situation reminds us just how stifling and restricting it is to be Royal. You can't stop being Royal just like that. Edward VIII achieved it, but at what a price? Neither can you step off the plate and get back on when it seems convenient. You are, for better or worse, an instrument of the state.

The problem is, as Bennett illustrates, that the state has no great imagination in the way it utilises this instrument. Why should our Queen spend interminable hours opening shopping centres and science parks? That sort of thing has become an anachronism.

Funnily enough Prince Charles has avoided much of this meaningless stuff by immersing himself in issues that have real significance in all our lives.

The price of Harry's service will be security fears that the so-called "bullet-magnet" will become more of a bomb-magnet once back in London. Was it sensible to allow footage of the prince firing a machine gun at the Taliban when their sympathisers include some in our own country who might be described as the enemy within?

The Army and that amorphous body of flunkies we call "the palace," however, will be delighted at the impact of "the story" on Royal approval ratings and armed forces recruitment. An unpopular war has just become sexy.