His face is recognized the world over and his story is well known. But what is Prince William really like?

As Diana's eldest son he was her playmate and her confidant. While the tabloids eagerly lapped up the lurid details of his parents' divorce, William lived painfully through it. He suffered the embarrassment, the humiliation and the divided loyalties. He watched his father denounced on prime time television; he met the lovers. And when he was just fifteen his beautiful, loving mother was suddenly, shockingly snatched from his life forever.

The nation lost its Princess that day and its grief threatened the very future of the monarchy. What was almost forgotten in the clamour was that two small boys had lost their mother.

His childhood was a recipe for disaster, yet as he approaches his thirtieth birthday, William is as well-balanced and sane a man as you could hope to meet. He has an utter determination to do the right thing and to serve his country as his grandmother has so successfully done for the last sixty years. The question is how? Who stopped him going off the rails, turning his back on his duty and wanting nothing to do with the press - the people he blamed for his mother's death? Where did the qualities that have so entranced the world come from?

In the last thirty years, Penny Junor has written extensively about both his parents and the extended family into which he was born. With the trust built up over that time, she has been able to get closer to the answers than anyone before.

This is the first definitive, in-depth portrait of the man who was born to be King and of his relationship with the woman who will be his Queen.