Prince Harry reveals sweet memory with late Queen during balcony appearance

The Royal Family's appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony is an iconic moment that fans always look forward to during Trooping the Colour, but Prince Harry has revealed the memories made during those appearances mean a lot within the family too

Harry shared a sweet memory with his grandmother in Spare

Each year the Royal Family comes together to celebrate the monarch's official birthday in a day of pageantry that culminates in an RAF flypast, which the royals watch from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

In recent years, Harry has not appeared on the balcony alongside his relatives, but for most of his life, it was something he always took part in. Whilst royal fans always enjoy the balcony appearance, with the royal children often stealing the show with their big personalities, Harry has admitted in his memoir Spare that those moments also became important memories within the family itself.

In a moving passage of Prince Harry's bestselling memoir Spare - which opened the lid on what life is really like in the Royal Family - the Duke of Sussex described memories that came flooding back to him after the death of his beloved grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth. Of all the core moments they shared together that came back to him in that moment of grief, Harry described one particularly sweet moment that they shared together during a balcony appearance when he made his grandmother laugh despite the formality of the moment.

"I couldn't stop...remembering. Day and night, images flitted through my mind," Harry wrote about the loss of the Queen. "Standing before her during my passing-out parade, shoulders thrown back, catching her half smile. Stationed beside her on the balcony, saying something that caught her off guard and made her, despite the solemnity of the occasion, laugh out loud."

Other memories that Harry described coming back to him in the aftermath of the Queen's death included the last time his children had been with the former monarch, and when she had agreed to take part in a comic video to launch his passion project the Invictus Games, when the world had been treated to the Queen's funny side, despite people not realising "she possessed such a wicked sense of humour - but she did, she always did! That was one of our little secrets."

In another passage of Spare, Harry described the "distance" usually required when appearing in public as a royal, even when they were all together on the balcony - the contrast of which made his memory of making the late monarch laugh on one of these occasions even more moving.

Queen Elizabeth II laughs with her grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the Trooping The Colour parade

"As a royal, you were always taught to maintain a buffer zone between you and the rest of creation. Even working a crowd you always kept a discreet distance between Yourself and Them. Distance was right, distance was safe, distance was survival. Distance was an essential part of being royal, no less than standing on the balcony waving to the crowds outside Buckingham Palace, your family all around you."