The making of a princess

Royal wedding

Kate Middleton, in the glare of publicity that is now her burden for life, will at least have in her husband a friend and soulmate to support her, says Christopher Wilson. 

Nicholas Sampson, the Master of Marlborough College, will have felt an extra surge of pleasure when he heard last Tuesday’s engagement announcement. His establishment has now completed the double – alumni in both Downing Street and the Royal family (a triumph shared only with Tony Little, Headmaster of Eton, which produced the boys); Kate Middleton and Samantha Cameron were both educated at the 167-year old redbrick pile, which sprawls across the ancient Wiltshire market town.

While SamCam stayed only a couple of years before taking her A-levels and moving on to a degree in fine art at Bristol Poly, Kate joined aged 13 and went the distance. Her place at St Andrews University marked her out as an achiever; a subsequent 2:1 degree in history of art an indicator that she was not only bright but a hard worker – not quite an alpha student, but not far off.

All that seems to have been forgotten in the welter of tabloid headlines that dogged Kate’s footsteps thereafter. The focus on her clothes, her love life, the apparent lack of ambition and application, all ignored the fundamental personality that lies beneath: hard-working, sophisticated, steel-backboned, fly. There’s much more to Catherine Middleton than we have yet been allowed to see.