Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were photographed holding hands on a Cotswolds pub lunch, their first joint sighting since a surprise UK return already tangled in school security trouble.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex ambled into The Falkland Arms on Thursday, a 16th-century pub in the Cotswolds, for a low-key meal that marked the first time they have been seen together since coming back to Britain.
Page Six captured the pair walking hand-in-hand to the historic spot. Harry, 42, wore a Santa Barbara fire department baseball cap, a clear nod to the couple’s U.S. home in Montecito, California. Meghan, 45, joined him for the outing.
Harry ordered chicken, ham and leek pie with seasonal greens, creamy mashed potatoes and gravy. Meghan chose gluten-free beer-battered haddock and chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce.
A pub insider told The Sun the pair drew no different treatment from staff or other customers.
The insider said:
"Everyone here gets the royal treatment, it doesn’t matter who you are."
The same source added:
"We’re lucky to get lots of different people visiting us, and everyone is treated like a local. When they visited, Harry and Meghan just acted like locals."
That quiet lunch lands against a rockier stretch of their UK stay. Their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, lasted only two days at a ritzy $35,000-a-year prep school before security concerns about travel forced them to leave.
Meghan’s personal phone number reportedly leaked after she joined a WhatsApp group for parents at the school. Paparazzi activity around the grounds prompted a sharp response from the couple’s camp.
A spokesman for the Sussexes told Page Six earlier this week:
"There is a world of difference between legitimate media activity and photographers walking the perimeter of a school, stopping to look into the grounds and monitoring children as they go about their day."
The spokesperson called it “concerning” that members of the European paparazzi “appear unwilling to respect the privacy of children at school.”
Last week Harry struck a different note in a CTV interview. He said the kids “are happy in school” and added, “It’s been great to be back on British soil.”
Harry, author of the memoir Spare, and Meghan, the former Suits star, have made Montecito their base. The hand-in-hand pub walk is the first public joint appearance since that surprise return, even as the children’s brief school stint and the phone leak underscored how quickly security problems followed them.
A couple that left Britain years ago still finds the old spotlight waiting when they come back, lunch included.
