KATE'S EDUCATION TIMELINE:

1986 After her family return from Amman, Jordan, Middleton is enrolled at St Andrew’s School, near Pangbourne. She later describes this as ‘the happiest period of my life’.

1995 Briefly attends Downe House School, whose previous alumni include Marina Hyde and Clare Balding, but leaves after unhappy experiences with contemporaries.

1996-2000 Boards at Marlborough College, where contemporaries remember her as a sweet and kind girl. Captains the women’s field hockey team.

2000 Takes a gap year, studying at the British Institute of Florence in Italy, and traveling to Chile to participate in the Raleigh International. She even works as a deck hand at the Port of Southampton in the summer before university.

2001 Enrols at St. Andrew’s University.

2001-2005 Works part-time at university as a waitress. Later jokes with Mary Berry that she was ‘terrible’ at it. Receives a gold Duke of Edinburgh award.

2008 Organises a roller disco fundraiser to support Place2Be, a charity that would later receive Royal Patronage.

2006 After graduation works as an accessory buyer with Jigsaw, but is already finding her vocation in charitable works. Curates a photography exhibition for Alistair Morrison to raise funds for UNICEF.

2020 Becomes a growing voice on the mental health problems facing new mothers, culminating in the £1.8 million pledge in the summer of 2020.

2016 Is instrumental in the creation of the Heads Together campaign.

Nicky Morgan is among those who understands the difficulty ranged against the couple when it comes to the media: “You have to learn to ignore much of the commentary directed at you, decide whose opinions really matter to you, and realise that social media is both a great way of communicating a message about your work but can also be a source of great abuse and distraction.”

Tattling Tales

None of this will be remotely news to William and Kate, who deal – and will deal forever – under a greater scrutiny than any Cabinet minister. But the dynamics are the same – and again they always work against narratives of simplicity and happiness, since it has been decided that such stories lack the ghoulish jeopardy that we apparently expect from our newspapers.

Once again, there is a simpler interpretation of their story. Philipps adds: “I think it’s been a fantastic revelation to see how a middle class family can be so cohesive. Although the Royal Family is a very solid block in a way, I think to be taken under their wing would be a lovely thing to experience.”

This brings us to the unpleasant story in Tatler which published earlier in the year under the headline ‘Catherine the Great’. This story, run under the editorship of the Duchess’ contemporary at St Andrew’s Richard Dennen is an example of the kind of journalism – full of insinuation and straightforward unkindness – which this publication opposes. Dennen appears to have befriended the Duchess of Cambridge while at St Andrew’s, and is remembered by Old Carthusians as a shy boy, whose subsequent transformation into a society gadfly has always caused considerable perplexity.

The story posits a Duchess who is tired of the stress, when her work ethic according to those we spoke with is impressive. Meanwhile Carole Middleton appears as a snob, when the reality is different. A source said: “Nobody reading that Tatler article who knows the family would recognise the description of Carole which it contains. In reality she is a straightforward decent person. In my experience successful business people do not have time to be snobbish – they’re too busy. And Carole is very successful and has been a great role model for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. There was never any need to spin any of this negatively.”

The Throne of Reason What should the Royal family do in relation to the media? Michael Cole, who formerly worked for the BBC as royal correspondent, tells us unequivocally: “The British media are not the enemy of the Royal Family. As I have said to more than one royal personage, the time for the Royal Family to worry about the media is when the media is no longer interested in the Royal Family, because that will mean the game is up. Then the great British public is is no longer interested either.”

It will indeed be a sad day when a belief in good journalism departs Kensington Palace, although Miguel Head is among those who attests to Prince William’s belief in the enduring importance of the Fourth Estate when it is doing its job properly.

But Cole’s remarks also overlook the possibility that the onus may lie with us to look differently, as I suggested at the beginning of this article.

Covering William and Kate, one begins to sense that too often we overcomplicate life. Their story is simple just as their mental health campaigns are admirably straightforward. They were born into wellto-do families, and fell in love, and one of them was set to be the King of England – and in our system someone always will be monarch. In time, the pair found that if they were to do good it must come out of the gift each had, and which each had seen in the other: empathy.

And so it went. “Too often, people feel afraid to admit that they are struggling with their mental health,” the Duchess of Cambridge has said. “This fear of judgment stops people from getting the help they need, which can destroy families and end lives. Heads Together wants to help everyone feel much more comfortable with their everyday mental wellbeing, and to have the practical tools to support their friends and family.” It is a perfectly simple message, and we might call it bland – but equally we might call it true.

Perhaps in the last analysis, the couple’s mental health campaigns ask us to correct our attitudes to class and to celebrity. If we were to do away with our obsession with the trivial, we might find we suddenly have room for what really matters: the creation of meaningful lives where we don’t seek to tear one another down, but to look out for one another.

WHAT DOES MENTAL HEALTH REALLY MEAN?

by mental health advocate Lord Stevenson

As part of our special on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, we asked leading thinker Dennis Stevenson to give his view on what is really under discussion

Mental health has come into the open over the last 10 years aided among other forces by some strong royal support. But what are we really talking about? If you get up from wherever you’re reading this and stop the first person you meet in the street and say “How’s your mental health?”, 10-1 that person will think you’re talking about an illness! If you say “how’s your physical health” they will answer the question as it should be answered. All of which is to say that we all have mental health. It can go up and down – and, as with physical health, we need to work out ways of dealing with any problems.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I didn’t realise properly that I along with every other member of the human race had mental health until I was in my fifties. It took me some time – and the injection of some mental ill health – to realise that it would be a good idea to learn how to manage my mental health for the better. And I’m still at it.

Unfortunately, by then my children had gone out in the world so they, poor things, were not brought up to believe they have mental health as well as physical health. But my grandchildren are being properly brought up. I very much hope and believe that every single one of them is aware that they have mental health and is learning tricks of the trade to deal with it. with what I can only describe as a “pain in my tummy”. That pain became something worse and without boring the reader with the detail I descended into something which would be described as clinical depression for which there was no obvious cause. the last 20 years. For every good therapist, there are several who are well-meaning but hopeless. However, it doesn’t alter the fact that they work.

I came out of it after some months having – wrongly – rejected any help from pills and indeed any other source. I have been “hit” by it happily not very often but several times over the 25 years since, and on each occasion there has been no obvious reason for it. I believe I’ve learnt one or two tricks of the trade of how to deal with it.

An eminent psychiatrist told me 20 or 30 years ago: “So, Mr Stevenson, you are somewhere on the bipolar spectrum”. The use of “spectrum” is widespread and in most cases a rather dodgy use of English!

As it happens I have discovered that I am almost certainly not on the bipolar spectrum whatever that is. I am an extrovert in-your-face sort of human being but not manic. I do, however, have what my excellent GP at the time described as “dips” in mood. Is that depression? I don’t know – but then neither does anyone else.

Even so, I am very clear that we are getting nearer to being able to define depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar and all illnesses attributed to mental ill health. A professor at Cambridge, Ed Bullmore, wrote a book a few years ago arguing that depression is a physical illness and related to internal inflammation. The book is very compelling. We’re getting closer to being able to define these illnesses. A lot of research is going on but we’re still some way off.

In this context, there’s an absurd fault line in education in the UK. Psychiatrists who are medically trained tend to be sceptical of talking therapies – although less so than they used to be. Equally, psychologists and psychotherapists are inclined to be sceptical of drugs, and are not allowed to prescribe them.

This division is ridiculous. If you go to a cardiologist he or she might have a different diagnosis than another one but they will work from the same toolkit. So a word of advice: if you have mental health problems and you can find a physician who encompasses both medical and psychological approaches, that is the ideal. Happily, there seems to be an increasing number of them.

The last time I had a major “depression”, the symptom was that I felt that my wife was only staying with me because she was a decent person but she didn’t love me. I can remember being in bed and her saying “doesn’t 40 years (our marriage) mean anything to you?” And then at another time saying: “You’re like an extra arm on my body”. These are very wonderful things to say, but she got no reaction out of me at all – and I know it was horrid for her. Yet they have stuck with me.

If you’re a carer for someone who is facing mental health challenges, please do not be put off if they appear to reject you or take no notice.

I was given a cruel awakening on this at around my 50th birthday, at a time when everything in my life was wonderful. I went away to our cottage in the country in the summer and woke up one morning

That’s my story. What else have I learnt apart from the fact that I have mental health and I need to pay attention to it?

First and foremost, the human race is at an early stage of understanding mental health. You might compare it with our understanding of cancer 50 years ago.

How does one cope with mental ill health? The first thing that I have learnt is that, as with many illnesses, there are ways of dealing with depression that work and we don’t need to understand why they work. Too many of us despair that nothing can be done and suffer needlessly. What is true of many physical illnesses is also true of mental illness: drugs and therapies have developed without a clear understanding of why they work – but if they work, they work. So never let anyone persuade you that antidepressants don’t work. It’s just not true.

It is, however, a good idea to be in the hands of a psychiatrist who has a deep knowledge of antidepressants since there are horses for courses, as in most things. In the same vein “talking therapies” have been one of the major breakthroughs over

The approach to “caring” is also important. If I walk out of my house today and break a leg, I will be in pain and be miserable. With a bit of luck my wife and children will want to make a fuss of me and soothe me! They won’t diminish the pain but I will feel good about what they say.

But the terrible reality is that if I move into what I will call “depression”, their sympathy will mean nothing to me. This is a big subject hardly ever dealt with, but it’s hugely important that carers understand this and are not demotivated by being rejected.

I’ve one other tip that works for me. Particularly if you are an over-achieving type as I am, a natural reaction to a mental health problem is to try to get on top of it, solve it and cure it. My wife said to me years ago: “You should be more accepting.” It took me about 10 years to realise what she meant: I must face up to the fact that as with many physical illnesses, it will never go away entirely but I must learn how to deal with it and expect it to return.

That is my current position. As it happens, my really bad “depression” has not reoccurred since 2007. I’m clear that it will reappear at some point before I meet my maker. I am equally clear that the fact that I’ve got a much more accepting relaxed attitude to it is a major reason why it does not reappear more often.