A Cambridge and Stanford graduate, he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office serving in Lagos and Tokyo, before returning to take over royal duties.

This prompted George VI to write to his sister-in-law, promising that, if anything should happen to his brother, he would become Prince William's guardian.

[5] In 1947, Prince William was a page boy for his cousin Princess Elizabeth at her wedding to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince William spent his early childhood at Barnwell Manor in Northamptonshire and later in Canberra, Australia, where his father served as Governor-General from 1945 to 1947.

[8] After leaving Eton in 1960, he went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to read history, graduating with a BA degree in 1963, subsequently raised to an MA (Cantab.)

After Cambridge, he spent a post-baccalaureate year at Stanford University, studying political science, American history, and business.

[1] Apart from taking over many engagements his father could no longer perform, William took particular interest in St John Ambulance, where he became increasingly active.

[1] William acknowledged his father couldn't have been very happy as a young man, as a result of the strict upbringing he had received, so he was very grateful to him for the freedom he had given him throughout his life.

[1] Former Hungarian model and stewardess Zsuzsi Starkloff (1936–2020, born Zsuzsana Maria Lehel in a Jewish-Hungarian family) had a long-running relationship with Prince William.

[1] Furthermore, once back in England, Starkloff went to stay with William's family at Barnwell Manor, where his parents were kind and accommodating to her.

In the year of his death, he gave an interview to Audrey Whiting for the Sunday Mirror, in which he declared that if he ever married, he would do so to a woman not only right for him, but right in "the eyes of other members of the Family".

"[14] William was later examined by haematologists at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, and also by a Professor Ishihara in Tokyo, both of whom also concluded he was suffering from variegate porphyria, by then in remission.

[15] A member of the British royal family being reliably diagnosed with porphyria added credence to the theory—first proposed by Professor Macalpine in the late 1960s—that porphyria was the source of the ill-health of both Mary, Queen of Scots (an ancestor of both of William's parents), and of George III, and that the disorder had been inherited by some members of the royal families of the UK, Prussia and several German duchies and principalities.

[2] A licensed pilot and President of the British Light Aviation Centre,[16] Prince William owned several aircraft and competed in amateur air show races.

[17][18] The crash happened before 30,000 spectators, the fire took two hours to control, and the bodies were identified at inquest the next day from dental records.