By Robert Jobson

Copyright standard

Prince Harry visited Clarence House to meet his father the King for their first face to face meeting in over a year and a half.

He arrived at 5.22pm at Charle’s London residence on Wednesday. He was seen leaving at 6.14pm.

The meeting, which was kept very quiet before Harry was spotted arriving, signals a shift in attitudes after their family rift.

The King had earlier flown down to the capital from Balmoral from his summer break and is in London without Camilla.

The behind closed doors meeting was slotted in ahead of official meetings.

The Duke is visiting the UK for the first time in months, arriving on Monday when he paid respects to his late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II at her grave in Windsor to mark the third anniverary of her death.

The reunion comes after Harry publicly expressed hopes of a reconciliation with his family in May, telling the BBC that Charles would not speak to him because of his court battle over his security and that he did not know “how much longer my father has”.

The duke arrived at Clarence House in a black car at 5.20pm ahead of an expected engagement elsewhere in London later on Wednesday evening.

Speculation had mounted as to whether the royal pair would finally meet, despite their troubled father-son relationship.

Harry last saw his father, who is still undergoing treatment for cancer, in February last year when he made a transatlantic dash from his Californian home to the UK to see Charles following his cancer diagnosis.

The duke, who stepped down from the working monarchy in 2020, has levelled a barrage of accusations at the King, stepmother the Queen, brother Prince of Wales and sister-in-law the Princess of Wales in his Oprah interview, Netflix documentary, interviews and his autobiography Spare since moving to the US.

Harry remains estranged from his brother William, who has been busying himself with a flurry of engagements this week and was away in Cardiff on Wednesday visiting a new mental health hub on World Suicide Prevention Day.

The siblings were just seven miles apart on Monday when Harry visited the late Queen’s grave, while the Prince and Princess of Wales were a short car ride away in Sunningdale, Berkshire, as they visited the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (WI) in tribute to the late Queen’s decades-long association with the organisation.

Royal watchers will be waiting to see if Harry keeps quiet and refrains from publicly discussing his reunion with the King, and, on the other side, whether any briefings emerge from Palace.

Senior aides to the King and the duke were pictured together in London this July in what was reported to be an initial step towards opening channels of communication between the two households.

This is a breaking news story and is being updated.