The Duke of Edinburgh was not pleased, nor did he believe that Harry and Meghan were doing the right thing, either for the country or for themselves.
Contrary to the popular caricature of him, the Duke of Edinburgh was neither judgmental nor unfeeling.
He had some sympathy with the couple's mistrust of the media (he had had his own run-ins with an intrusive Press over the years) and even more so with Harry's desire to 'do his own thing in his own way'. He said to me: 'People have got to lead their lives as they think best.'
That said, I know from someone close to him that he thought Meghan and Harry's interview with Oprah Winfrey was 'madness' and 'no good would come of it'.
I was not surprised because that is exactly how he described to me the earlier personal TV interviews given by Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, back in the 1990s.
The fact that the Meghan and Harry interview was aired while Philip was in hospital did not trouble him. What did worry him was the couple's preoccupation with their own problems and their willingness to talk about them in public. 'Give TV interviews, by all means,' he said, 'but don't talk about yourself.'
That was one of his rules. I know he shared it with his children. I imagine he shared it with his grandchildren, too.
He told me more than once: 'It's a big mistake to think about yourself. No one is interested in you in the long run. Don't court popularity. It doesn't last. Remember that the attention comes because of the position you are privileged to hold, not because of who you are. If you think it's all about you, you'll never be happy.'
Prince Philip loved Prince Harry. He admired him for his service career and his creation of the Invictus Games. 'He's a good man,' he said emphatically.
That Philip was an outstanding grandfather has never been in dispute. From youth to old age, he was always good with very small children, and with William and Harry, who lost their mother when they were only 15 and 12 years of age, he was — in William's phrase — 'a tower of strength and understanding'.
At the time of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Harry managed to capture both Prince Philips's elusive quality and his indispensability to the Queen in the same revealing sentence: 'Regardless of whether my grandfather seems to be doing his own thing, sort of wandering off like a fish down the river, the fact that he's there — personally, I don't think that she could do it without him, especially when they're both at this age.'
Inevitably, Prince Philip regretted Harry's decision to move to America, but he accepted it — 'It's his life' — and deliberately did not get involved in its aftermath.
On the day the Queen held her Sandringham 'summit' with Charles, William and Harry, he made himself scarce, deliberately leaving the main house and retreating to Wood Farm. 'I'll soon be out of it,' he said, 'and not before time.'
The Queen did not retire when her husband did, but she did reduce her workload. She maintained her own interests, continuing to ride into her 90s and walking her corgis after lunch; she continued to phone her racing manager in the evening. (Her racehorses have won her some £7 million in prize money in the past 35 years, including £557,650 in a record-breaking 2016.)
The only complaint I ever heard Prince Philip make about the Queen was about the time she spent on the phone. 'She never stops,' he said, shaking his head in mock disbelief.
The couple went out for dinner with friends and enjoyed weekends away together. She was often alone in the evenings (she was accustomed to that), watching television and having supper in her rooms, but frequently she saw friends and family — grandchildren and great-grandchildren — for afternoon tea.
Prince Philip had long been responsible for the management of the royal estates but in 2014 he ceded management of Sandringham's 20,000 acres to Prince Charles — knowing that his son's approach to land management and farming were very different from his own.
'He has his ideas and I have mine,' said Prince Philip, 'but I won't be here for ever so he'd better get on with it.'
Happily, relations between Philip and his son mellowed with the passing years. In his 80s and 90s I noticed the Duke of Edinburgh make many fewer waspish remarks about the Prince of Wales than he had done in his 50s and 60s.
And Prince Charles, so much happier in his second marriage than in his first, stopped bleating about the travails of his childhood. Charles appeared more comfortable talking about his parents, and did so with respect (as ever) but with increasing affection. As he said in a touching tribute on Saturday: 'My dear Papa was a very special person.'
If we regard the Queen's uniquely long reign as a success — and I reckon most of us do — the joint author of that success has been the Duke of Edinburgh.
Theirs was an extraordinary partnership and the worldwide coverage of the Duke's death acknowledged the fact.
For more than 70 years, he did everything he could to safeguard her person and her dignity. He hated to see her taken advantage of in any way. One year, at the Royal Variety Performance, one of the stars performed a routine aimed directly at the Queen.
Prince Philip was incandescent and descended on the producer in the interval: 'I've been coming to this for 50 years. It never ends on time. The jokes are lavatorial. And now you insult the Queen!'
More than once, on walkabout with the Queen, I saw him barking at the Press photographers, telling them to 'get out of the way'. 'People want to see the Queen,' he shouted, 'GET OUT OF THE WAY!' He could be quite frightening. He was at his best with children, guiding toddlers towards the Queen so they could present their posies. As his friend, the eccentric baronet Sir Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield, put it once: 'The Queen would have such a miserable time if she didn't have him to play with. And if people try to take advantage of her, he's on them like a whippet.' That about sums it up.
Prince Philip protected the Queen and made her laugh. Once, during one of the jubilee tours, I was in the car immediately behind theirs and I watched Prince Philip telling the Queen a story. He kept her laughing for 20 minutes. It was a joy to behold.
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