During his latest public engagement at this week’s Buckingham Palace garden party, Prince William let slip an adorable detail about youngest son Prince Louis’ bedtime routine. The 41 year old heir to the throne stepped out in style earlier this week to host the annual occasion alongside his cousins Princess Eugenie, Princess Beatrice, Peter Phillips, Zara Tindall and Mike Tindall.
Sadly, his wife Kate Middleton was unable to attend as she is currently recuperating from her cancer treatment, but he was joined by author Rowan Aderyn at the bash, a member of William’s own Homewards foundation, which aims to fight homelessness. During the event, Rowan gifted the Prince with a copy of his book, Homewards and William couldn’t have been more thrilled.
“The gift was one that William greatly appreciated,” reports Us Weekly, before telling the author that he couldn’t wait to share the book with his son Louis. “This is great, so inspirational,” William said. “I’ll read this to Louis tonight at bedtime.”
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Interestingly, this isn’t the first time William has mentioned a book by name when it comes to his children, as the royal is a bid proponent of reading to his children before bed. Back in 2020, the doting dad spotted a copy of Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson during a visit to a South Wales ice cream parlour, before admitting: “I read this to our children all the time,” the Daily Mail reports.
Meghan Markle 'to unleash her own memoirs' as Prince Harry's drops next weekIn the same conversation the Prince even joked that it had saved many bedtimes, with William also recalling how he had met the actor herself while presenting her with a CBE. "I said, 'Do you realise how many parents you have saved at bedtime?'" he recalled.
In addition to Julia’s work, William is also a huge fan of David Walliams’ books, with the senior royal even branded them “really, really good” in a glowing string of praise for the former Britain’s Got Talent judge.
It isn’t just William and his children that are avid readers however, but also their mother Kate too, who previously delighted fans by taking over CBeebies’s bedtime hour to delight children around the country as she read the book The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark, by Jill Tomlinson back in 2022.
But the 42 year old is not the first member of the Royal family to read a children's story on television, and is actually following in the footsteps of her father-in-law.
King Charles published his own children's book, The Old Man of Lochnagar – which he wrote to raise main for The Prince's Trust – back in 1980 and, four years later, he took to our screens to read it.