Prince Harry says every camera flash reminds him of Diana's death: 'It's the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best'
Prince Harry, who has had to spend a large part of his life facing the camera lens, recently opened up about how every click and flash of a camera still reminds him of his mother Princess Diana's death.
The Duke of Sussex, 35, told ITV News in a heartbreaking interview that his mother's tragic and untimely death left a "festering wound" in his life that opens up every time he thinks about her relationship with the press.
When anchor Tom Bradby asked him "Do you feel at peace in a way yet or is it still a sort of wound that festers?" Prince Harry replied, "I think probably a wound that festers. I think being part of this family, in this role, in this job, every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash it takes me straight back, so in that respect it's the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best."
The emotional comments were made by the duke during his 10-day-long tour of Africa with his wife Meghan Markle.
"Being here now, 22 years later, trying to finish what she started will be incredibly emotional," he said. "But everything I do reminds me of her. But as I said, with the role, with the job and the sort of the pressure that comes with that, I get reminded of the bad stuff, unfortunately."
While retracing his mother's steps, the duke paid an "emotional" visit to a street in Angola that was once a minefield on which Diana once walked.
Back in 1997, shortly before she was killed, the People's Princess put on body armor and a mask and strutted through the cleared minefield near the central city of Huambo in order to highlight the plight of a country that was still plagued by land mines 17 years after its civil war ended.
To further the anti-landmine campaign, which received global recognition because of his mother, Harry too donned protective gear as he walked down the same street.
"Being here on this transformed and bustling street shows the tremendous impact that clearing landmines has on communities and their futures. There are still more than 1,000 minefields in this beautiful country that remain to be cleared," he said, wondering whether "that could still be the case" if his mother were alive.
"I'm pretty sure she would have seen it through," he added.