How other members of the Royal Family lost their virginity

Prince Harry sent shockwaves around the world when revealing the story of how he lost his virginity in his explosive memoir Spare.

The Duke of Sussex, 38, wrote how a horse-loving ‘older woman’ treated him ‘not unlike a young stallion’ and ‘smacked my rump and sent me off to graze’ after a ‘quick ride’.

His graphic description of the ‘inglorious episode’ in a pub field in July 2001 provoked international intrigue over the mystery lover’s identity which saw a number of women rule themselves.

That is until Sasha Walpole, 40, claimed last week that Harry was describing her in his memoir after keeping their moment of passion a secret for 21 years.

Harry was 16 at the time and Mrs Walpole was celebrating her 19th birthday. She had known the Harry since her days as a groom at the future King Charles’ Gloucestershire estate, Highgrove.

Mrs Walpole knew that it was only a matter of time until her name leaked and so decided to tell her story to The Mail on Sunday.

However, until Prince Harry’s confession, the rest of the British Royal Family have always remained tight-lipped about their sex lives and loss of virginity.

But that doesn’t mean rumours haven’t been rife throughout the years – from suggestions Princess Anne lost her virginity to Camilla’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles OBE to Charles being ‘taught about sex by Carry On Cleo star Amanda Barrie’. Here, FEMAIL investigates… 

KING CHARLES AND AMANDA BARRIE 

Carry On Cleo’s Amanda Barrie, 87, has previously said she was selected as an ‘older woman’ to teach a teenage Charles all about sex, reported the Daily Mail in 2018.

Twenty years ago, she claimed that the actor James Robertson Justice, a friend of Prince Philip, asked her to his house in Scotland to meet the young Charles, then attending Gordonstoun school, and begin a romance with him.

Barrie, who’d met Prince Philip in the Fifties at the Saddle Room, a club run by singer Helene Cordet, said her task would be to ‘help in the initiation of the future King’.

Barrie claimed Robertson Justice, an actor who played Sir Lancelot Spratt in Doctor In Love and who died in 1975, said it was the ‘ultimate compliment, but don’t be offended by it’.

She said: ‘He was obviously very embarrassed and went round and round in circles before it came out. Finally, he admitted he was one of eight people who had been selected to help ‘launch the royal males into their future life’, as he put it.

‘Between them, they had to choose anyone they thought would be suitable to teach Prince Charles about sex, and James had decided that I was suitable.

‘He actually said: “We don’t really want people who are experienced but on the other hand, well, obviously they have to know the ropes. Frankly, the main thing one needs is a sense of humour and I know you have got that.”‘

Barrie said: ‘James indicated that if things went well, I would be a kind of fixture — not a girlfriend, but someone in the background. He said: “They [the royals] can’t possibly go off into the world without their own person.”‘

However, Barrie also recalled: ‘I thought that because Charles was so young, it might be a dreadful experience and I might be blamed. I had to say “no”.’ 

Speaking to GB News in 2021, she claimed: ‘It was true, it was put to me. They said they wanted someone with not too much experience but a sense of humour.’

Questioned if Charles had asked for her, the actress said: ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t have been asking. He was 14 darling,’ reported The Express.

However, according to Charles’s official biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, he was introduced to the ways of love as a student at Cambridge. 

He lost his virginity to Lucia Santa Cruz, the beautiful and brainy daughter of the Chilean ambassador, who worked for the master of his Cambridge college, the former Tory politician Lord ‘Rab’ Butler, we are told.

QUEEN CONSORT CAMILLA AND KEVIN BURKE 

Some claim the person who took Camilla’s virginity was Kevin Burke, an independently wealthy 19-year-old who was then a handsome fixture on the debutante scene in the late ’60s, reported the Daily Mail in 2016.

‘She was terrific fun, immensely popular, and although she wasn’t a beauty like Mary Gaye, she was attractive and sexy,’ recalled Burke later. ‘She was never tongue-tied or shy, she always had something amusing to say.’

He added: ‘I remained with Camilla all that year. I suppose we were in love. Then she ditched me.’

In a Channel 4 documentary in 2007, the Queen Consort was portrayed as ‘woman of easy virtue’ whose lost virginity prevented her marrying Charles in her youth.

During the same year, however, the Daily Mail reported that she had not had many boyfriends during her youth and described her as ‘positively chaste by today’s standards’.

The documentary goes on to suggest she lost her virginity at 17 – and with it the chance of becoming a royal bride.

The couple are described as ’emotionally and physically a perfect match’ but viewers are told that Charles ‘cruelly’ could not marry the ‘love of his life’.

The events following 17-year-old Camilla Shand’s debutante ball in March 1965 were among the reasons.

Gyles Brandreth, author of Charles & Camilla, said: ‘The week of her coming out party was a significant one for Camilla Shand. At the end of it she lost her virginity.

‘It may seem prurient for us to even discuss when and how the Duchess of Cornwall lost her virginity but actually it’s a legitimate question.

‘In those days it would have been essential for the Prince of Wales to marry a virgin bride.’

Royal author and biographer Christopher Wilson added: ‘There was never any question of his marrying Camilla. 

‘She was not a virgin and the court certainly had no idea of allowing him (Charles) to marry a woman, let’s say, of easy virtue. Charles knew that and Camilla knew that.’

PRINCESS ANNE AND ANDREW PARKER BOWLES 

The Princess Royal, now 72, is thought to have lost her virginity to Camilla’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles OBE, royal expert Phil Dampier claimed.

He said: ‘At the time he was an extremely attractive and confident man who was very experienced sexually and had a lot of girlfriends.’

Mr Bowles, now 83, was a retired British army officer and a seasoned skilled polo player. 

It was claimed that Princess Anne was madly in love with him at the time, but was too young for him, with there being an 11-year age gap. 

Another roadblock was the Princess Royal always thought he had the potential to be unfaithful, the International Business Times reported. 

However, even though Anne and Camilla fell in love with Andrew, a ‘love triangle’ never emerged and there was reportedly no overlap between Andrew’s relationship with the two royals.

PRINCESS DIANA AND CHARLES 

When Princess Diana agreed to marry Charles, the royal bride’s sex life became a hot topic of conversation. 

In the Diana chronicles, written by Tina Brown, it was suggested the late Queen wanted her eldest son to marry the innocent looking Ms Spencer. 

At the age of 19, it was reported she had never had a boyfriend before she had met the future king. 

But before the wedding, in a bombshell conversation, Lord Fermoy, Diana’s uncle, was quoted in the Washington Post assuring people she had never ‘had a lover’ before Charles. 

In fact, Diana being a virgin played a major part in the two getting married, according to Ms Brown.

The writer said trying to find a candidate for Charles was like looking for the ‘Loch Ness monster’.

As Camilla was not a virgin, and did not fulfil the archaic requirement of virginity in a royal bride, she was said to be out of the question. 

PRINCE HARRY AND SASHA WALPOLE

In his memoir Spare, released in January, Harry described the event of losing his virginity as an ‘inglorious episode’.

He recounted how one of the royal family’s bodyguards, Marko, paid him a visit at the end of 2001 when he was still a pupil at Eton College in Windsor, aged 16 or 17, and told the prince he had been sent to ‘find out the truth’.

Harry wrote: ‘I suspected he was referring to my recent loss of virginity. Inglorious episode, with an older woman. She liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion.

‘Quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze. Among the many things about it that were wrong: It happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub. Obviously, someone had seen us.’

The woman who claims she is the person the Duke of Sussex lost his virginity to has said she felt ‘disbelief he went into so much detail’ about it in his book.

Sasha Walpole claims Harry was describing her in his memoir when he recounted how he first had sex in a field behind a busy pub with an older woman.

In an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored broadcast on TalkTV on Thursday, she discussed their alleged encounter and said she wanted to ‘hide’ when the book came out.

Ms Walpole, 40, now a digger driver, said: ‘It’s been a bit of a whirlwind week, and hopefully it’s a means to an end and I can get back, and back to normality, go back to work, drive my digger – hide back under my rock.’

She said: ‘I didn’t think it would hit the headlines like it did. At first I was a bit like, ‘no, just hide, it will be fine, it will go away like it has done in the past’.

‘Suddenly you realise that it’s getting closer, your world is getting smaller. A lot more people are talking about it. Friends from back home are getting questioned, accused.

‘I was just like, do you know what, the only way to stop it is just come forward and say it’s me. And then hopefully, the sooner it’s come out it will go and I can carry on with my little life.’

Ms Walpole told the broadcaster she was left in ‘disbelief he went into so much detail because then it’s obvious who it was’, adding: ‘Suddenly I was like, oh no, everyone is going to know and then the next day all the messages started.’