“I enjoy my work and I enjoy pacing myself and keeping sure that I have got time for my family too,” he said.
More than two years after becoming heir and being named Prince of Wales, he admitted that he found his unique position a double-edged sword.
Prince William examines products during a visit to seaweed businesses in Cape Town.Credit: Getty Images
“It’s a tricky one,” he said. “Do I like more responsibility? No. Do I like the freedom that I can build something like Earthshot? Then yes.
“And that’s the future for me. It’s very important, with my role and my platform, that I’m doing something for good. That I’m helping people’s lives, and I’m doing something that is genuinely meaningful.”
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The prince said he would like such projects to be “more of a team sport”, revealing that he gets frustrated when businesses, or even the government, are slow to react when he asks for support.
William admitted that he missed search and rescue work as he took to the seas with a lifeboat crew from the National Sea Rescue Institute in Cape Town and heard about their lifesaving work and what inspired them to get involved.
He acknowledged that he needed to work out why there was such reluctance to join his crusade, speculating that big businesses might be waiting for something better around the corner.
“But if we keep waiting like that, we’re going to keep eating into time that we just don’t have,” he said, adding that his message to the corporate world was: “Hurry up and be courageous. Invest faster because we just don’t have that time.”
The prince’s engagements in South Africa are centred around environmental issues and the Earthshot Prize, which he launched in 2019.
Children aged five to 15 were invited to submit an original idea aimed at achieving one of the five “Earthshots”, the aspirational environmental goals established by the Earthshot Prize.
He said that, now he was four years into his 10-year Earthshot initiative, it was time to dial up the rhetoric.
“At some point, my language is going to have to change,” he added.
“But I think, listen, we’ve built something from scratch. It’s a global environmental prize. It takes time, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of balancing to get it right.”
The prince said he was “thrilled” with how the Earthshot awards ceremony had gone in Cape Town, admitting that he felt emotional watching Circle of Life being performed on Table Mountain.
“I don’t know about everyone else, but hearing the Lion King and things like that gets me quite emotional,” he said.
Asked about his facial hair, which he has sported since August, he said: “Well, Charlotte didn’t like it the first time. I got floods of tears the first time I got the beard, so I had to shave it off. And then I grew it back. I thought, hang on a second, and convinced her it was going to be OK.”
The Telegraph, London
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