Prince William and Kate Middleton didn’t meet Prince Harry after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral as they feared their private conversations would be leaked to the press, a royal historian has claimed.

The estranged brothers were spotted talking as they left Windsor Castle after laying Prince Philip to rest in April.

But Robert Lacey says anger ‘ran deep’ in the family after the Sussex couple’s tell-all Oprah interview which was broadcast weeks before.

There was no two-hour family conference afterwards as the Cambridges avoided speaking to Harry and went back to Kensington Palace to see their children, he claims.

In Battle of Brothers, serialised in Times2, Mr Lacey writes: ‘They told friends that they could see no point in talking to Harry, since any discussion of substance would go straight back to Meghan to be leaked out via Oprah or some other tentacle of the Sussex network that had not stopped spreading stories in the weeks since the interview that the couple’s friends had promised would be their final word.’

The decision reportedly came after Meghan and Harry’s friend Gayle King told CBS the duke had spoken to William and Charles but talks had been ‘unproductive’. 

Tensions were also allegedly running high between Harry and other senior royals on the day of the funeral, with Princess Anne and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, ‘not exchanging a public word with Harry in the course of the afternoon’. This was ‘not an accident’, Mr Lacey writes.

He said: ‘People felt incensed by what they saw as the calculated and focused cruelty of the TV interview — Meghan relating so brightly to Oprah how she had phoned the Queen to show her concern about Philip’s condition without even considering, apparently, the impact that their televised catalogue of grievance might have upon the invalid’s morale and health.’

The funeral came after the Sussexes made a number of explosive allegations about the Royal Family, including that one unidentified member had concerns about how dark their son Archie’s skin would be when he was born.

Meghan told Oprah she had experienced suicidal feelings, but alleged she was told she could not get help by ‘the firm’.

The Duchess of Sussex added that she couldn’t be expected to stay silent while they ‘perpetuated falsehoods’ about her and her husband.

Meanwhile, Harry claimed his brother and dad are ‘trapped’ in the Royal Family, adding that a ‘lack of support and understanding’ had led to his decision to leave.

He has since spoken of ‘genetic pain and suffering’, comparing his young life to The Truman Show.

The duke, who is now a dad-of-two, is expected to land in England today to attend the unveiling of Princess Diana’s statue in London.

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