Prince George is set to begin his first term at Eton College next month, with new “No Photography” signs reportedly spotted around the campus ahead of his arrival. The 13-year-old will follow in the footsteps of his father, Prince William, and his uncle, Prince Harry.
Eton's royal connection and rising fees
The elite boarding school, founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, caters to boys aged 13 to 18. Following the introduction of Labour's VAT hike on private school fees, tuition costs rose from £52,749 a year to £63,000 in January 2025.
The prestigious Windsor school has a long association with the British Royal Family, but Harry's own memories of Eton are not entirely positive. In his 2023 memoir Spare, the Duke of Sussex reflected on arriving at the school after leaving Ludgrove, describing the experience as overwhelming and struggling to fit in.
Harry's memoir reveals his struggles
In the memoir, he described starting at Eton College in 1998 as a “profound shock and an overwhelming environment where he felt, in a way, way over [his] head.”
He wrote: “In the early autumn of 1998, having completed my education at Ludgrove the previous spring, I entered Eton. A profound shock. Shock must've been part of its original charter, even perhaps a part of the instructions given to its first architects by the school's founder, my ancestor Henry VI. He deemed Eton some sort of holy shrine, a sacred temple, and to that end, he wanted it to overwhelm the senses, so visitors would feel like meek, abased pilgrims. In my case, mission accomplished.”
He added: “Once or twice I'd confess to a teacher or fellow student that I wasn't merely in the wrong class but in the wrong location. I was in way, way over my head. They'd always say the same thing: Don't worry, you'll be all right.”
He said that the school was “heaven for brilliant boys, it could thus only be purgatory for one very unbrilliant boy.”
Sport kept Harry in school
During his TIME interview for the 2026 most influential people in sports list, the Duke of Sussex said that without sports, there is no way he would have stayed in school. He said: “Sport held me together. I was one of those kids at school who did not enjoy classroom work. If it wasn’t for the sports field and the amount of sports that were on offer, there’s no way I would have stayed in school.”
Arriving just a year after his mother, Princess Diana’s, death, he had hoped his elder brother, Prince William, would help him adjust, but William instead asked him to pretend they did not know each other, Harry claimed in the book.
Harry wrote: “Willy told me to pretend I didn’t know him. You don’t know me, Harold. And I don’t know you. For the last two years, he explained, Eton had been his sanctuary. No kid brother tagging along, pestering him with questions, pushing up on his social circle. He was forging his own life, and he wasn’t willing to give that up.”
