three children to boarding school; his hockey-
loving sisters, Kate and Pippa, were sporty, beautiful,
articulate. And then there was James, cheeky and
fun, who as a child ‘was the one persuading every-
one I ought to be doing anything other than the
thing I was meant to.’ It wasn’t all fun. He’s said
that he struggled with reading aloud in class: ‘It
was a joy for everyone else because I would mis-
pronounce things so badly.’ A joy? That might
have driven a child in on himself. And yet, he says,
‘I wasn’t afraid of being myself and doing what I
wanted to do. I think the anxiety and depression
made me shrink a bit, away from the person I am.’
That’s why he went ahead with the article.
‘I did it for ownership. I wanted to take control
of the thing that had controlled me for so long.’
He also says he felt his sister and the Princes’
Heads Together campaign resonated with him.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. ‘It
made the news. Okay, it was in the news in the
first place, but [by the end of the day] it was on
the news,’ James smiles. Thousands of people
wrote to him. Interview offers came piling in,PHOTOGRAPHS: INSTAGRAM/@REALCANDACEOWENS; JOHN FROST NEWSPAPERS; OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY ANDREA HANKSJames turned up,freshly dropped out,clutching a puppy.His parents answeredthe door with an‘Oh my God, whathave you done?’Tatler August 2019 tatler.comsociety’s expectations of what you do are a round
hole. And so you’re bashing yourself against the
edges to fit. All society wants to do is shave off
your corners.’
When James went into therapy years later,
he thought he knew exactly what was wrong
with him and was impatient for a cure. So he
was surprised when the doctor gave him a
book to read on ADD. ‘He said, “Highlight all
the bits that are relevant to you.” In the end, I
highlighted the whole bloody thing. It was
probably the first book I read cover to cover
because it was like reading my own life story.
You jump to conclusions. Your level of empa-
thy is slightly higher. You can see someone’s
point of view but your method of arguing is so
unstructured – it might be right, but you can’t
ever explain yourself.’
James says he always wants to know how
things work. It’s why he buys and repairs old
tractors and cars for fun. It’s why he’s bought a
wooden sailing boat on eBay, built in 1938,
which ‘only just about floats’, and has it in a
warehouse in Berkshire, where he’s slowly
restoring it. It’s also why he likes starting busi-
nesses and is soon to launch a new company
centred around his dogs. ‘It’s early days, but it’s
about dog food and dog wellbeing.’
Critics will no doubt be ready to point out
that James has a string of ‘failed’ businesses un-
der his belt – and ‘“Oh, here he goes again with
a fourth,”’ he says with a deep sigh.
James was 19 and in his first year of an
environmental resource management degree at
Edinburgh University when he dropped out to
set up a cake business. He figured that while his
friends partied and variously attended or skipped
lectures, he would start making money. He also
got a dog, a black spaniel called Ella, because he
thought that the responsibility would centre him.
That was how James turned up at the family
home: freshly dropped out, clutching a puppy.
When his parents answered the door, ‘There was
an “Oh my God, what have you done?” reaction.’
But he persevered and Ella was there with
James on the first day on the factory floor and
has since been his constant companion through
highs and lows – recently, in therapy with him,
nestling her head on his lap.
He says ‘no one thing’ caused his depression,
though mentions the notion of failure at four
different points during the interview. ‘The UK
is a great place to be an entrepreneur but failure
here is bigger. When you say, “I’m starting
a business,” people say, “That’s so great.”
When you say I tried but it didn’t work, it’s
“You’re a failure.”’
That experience is heightened when you’re in
the public eye: ‘Suddenly, and very publicly, I
was being judged about whether I was a success
or a failure. That does put pressure on you. ]there were entreaties to sit on breakfast television
sofas, to do cover profiles: ‘Actually, I just wanted
to do nothing,’ he says simply. The one small
thing he did was turn his Instagram profile from
private to public, in anticipation of the article –
‘I wanted not to hide away, to stand up and be
ready to take criticism.’
What arrived instead was an influx of followers
and a surge of crazed fandom – from 4,000-odd
to more than 130,000 practically overnight –
‘Marry me!’ people were commenting. He smiles:
‘It was terrifying.’
Speaking to James you get the sense that he is
a thoughtful person who has weathered an un-
reasonable amount of flak. What can make his
conversation seem circuitous and unfocused is in
part his dyslexia, in part the ADD, which leads
to him forming sentences in a peculiar way, his
mind leaping three steps ahead and then circling
back, often relying on analogies to get across how
he feels, processing thoughts through images.
For example, he says that when he was a child
at Marlborough he felt like ‘a square peg, but[for the mess. He is still unpacking, he says,
working out what to keep and what to
discard. Plus, he adds distractedly, as he searches
for teabags, his girlfriend’s parents are coming
around later.
As countless clickbait articles ask: ‘Who is
Alizee Thevenet?’ Reportedly, she’s a 30-year-
old French financial analyst, with an impish,
ingénue beauty, whom he met last year in a
bar, after breaking up with his former long-
term partner, Donna Air. While James won’t
talk about Alizee, his happiness is palpable,
and she is his plus one to the royal wedding of
Lady Gabriella Windsor and Tom Kingston
two days after we meet. (The H&M dress she
wears sells out immediately.)
Little wonder the public is curious: every
aspect of James’ life garners attention. It is how
it has been, for better or worse, since he was 23
and his eldest sister married the future King of
England, propelling the Middletons into the
maelstrom of national conversation. That
means ruminating on his beard (‘a major style
evolution’ – The Independent), castigating his
proximity to the royals (‘James Middleton tries
to cash in on Harry and Meghan’s new son
Archie’ – Mail on Sunday), remarking on his
love life, scrutinising his businesses, delighting
in those pictures of the Matthews-Middleton
clan on the beach at Eden Rock, St Barths. Or,
recently, a collective guffawing at his being a
supposed tour guide on his brother-in-law’s
family estate, Glen Affric (‘cringe-making’ –
Mail Online). James takes the good and the
bad, and has to swallow it in silence.
Or he did, until January this year when, in
a starburst of unexpected candour, James revealed
a side that few appraising his charmed life
might have expected: he had, he wrote in
the Daily Mail, been struggling with clinical
depression, had had a near-breakdown, isolated
himself from the people he loved, been signed
off work and undergone a period of intense
therapy, during which time he had also been
diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.
His family didn’t want him to write the article.
‘They were very nervous. They worried I
would be exposing myself over what was a
very private thing.’
That’s no surprise; the family is tight-knit
and protective of each other. James too: he’s
polite, of course, but utterly guarded when it
comes to anything relating to the Middletons
or to the royals: ‘I lead a separate life to them.
If there’s interest in me, great. If there’s interest
in me because of them, that’s different.’
The Middletons were – indeed are – the
quintessential expression of Home Counties
upper-middle-class success: James’ parents, Carole
and Michael Middleton, run Party Pieces, now
an estimated £30 million business, and sent all08-19WELL-JamesMiddleton.indd 78 05/06/2019 09:37
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