The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that Prince William will spend time with Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff, and General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, when he returns to his Army service in September.

Intriguingly, he will also serve with the Special Forces, the SAS, and possibly the SBS, but will not be involved in forward operations. This placement is at his own request, the BBC reports.

In the four or five months remaining of his military service, William will be shown what goes on at the very apex of the Services’ hierarchy with the highest of the top brass, deep in the MoD building in Whitehall. It will be the culmination of an action-packed and wide-ranging three-year training period to prepare him for his future role as Head of the Armed Forces.

From tomorrow, the Prince will be on holiday in Mustique with girlfriend Kate Middleton, who has already flown out to the Caribbean to be with him. It has been reported that she refused a free upgrade to First Class on the BA flight, preferring to be treated like everyone else. “Please call me Kate,” she told cabin crew, putting an end to recent confusion over her preferred name.

On the couple’s return, they are expected to spend a week with the Queen and the Prince of Wales at Balmoral in Scotland. Some news sources are claiming that plans for a summer wedding next year are well underway and will be put to bed in August. At the very least a hint of an announcement may just leak out of the grand Scottish castle to set Royalist hearts aflutter all over again.

In the BBC footage this morning I was struck by William’s growing maturity and poise. In full Navy kit he no longer resembles his mother, but bears a striking likeness to the young Prince Philip, his grandfather.

It’s a very good omen.

Sparing Prince William the long flight back to Britain from the Caribbean only to fly back again for their August break, Kate Middleton has already flown the 6000 miles to their holiday spot, thought to be the island of Mustique.

Prince William and Kate Middleton at his Wings ceremony

A friend is said to have revealed, “Kate has missed him massively. She will be hoping her sailor has a little energy left in the tank for her. … She is desperate to see William and has been counting the days.”

A source close to William said, “As soon as he steps off the ship, he’ll be determined to change gear and put his feet up with Kate. They both agreed it was a perfect plan to enjoy two weeks together at their favourite spot.”

William’s deployment aboard the drugbuster HMS Iron Duke was action-packed from the start. Within days he was involved in an operation with U.S. Coastguards to apprehend cocaine smugglers off Barbados. Some £40m ($80m) of the drug was said to have been recovered from the armed bootleggers.

Following a major simulation exercise to practise the evacuation of an entire island threatened by a hurricane, he was again plunged into another successful drugs bust at sea. It was reported that Prince William is to receive a medal from the American Coastguard for his role in the first operation.

It is surely significant that after such an exhausting tour of duty, all he wants to do is spend two weeks alone with Kate in a remote holiday hideaway.

He will have a further week’s leave in London on their return and speculation is already beginning on the possibility of an engagement announcement. It would certainly clear the decks for action — something the Prince should be used to now.

The News of the World has an article in today’s edition about Prince William’s “future training” to be King. If we bear in mind that the past three years of military service were a crucial part of that preparation, there’s nothing really new in this piece.

Normally the NOTW doesn’t have the best reputation for Royal stories, but this assessment has authority as it’s written by Robert Jobson, author of the excellent book William’s Princess.

There’s a broad hint in the piece that the Prince may not have time for a wedding next year because of his busy schedule learning to be a Monarch. Every year will be a hectic one for William from now on, so this is a bit disingenuous. He will have to find time somewhere along the line. Next year will probably be less arduous than most simply because he will be learning rather than doing the job full-time. It’s much easier to find a gap in a period of study than when carrying out engagements planned two years in advance.

Jobson lists William’s new schedule:

* Working at different Whitehall departments and being shown the inner workings of government by Privy Councillors, including former Prime Minister John Major.

* Lessons in the job of being King by constitutional experts such as Oxford don Dr Vernon Bogdanor.

* Learning to manage the Duchy of Cornwall, the landed trust he will inherit from Charles when his father becomes King.

* Running the Sandringham Estate — a job his grandfather Prince Philip has been doing for years.

* Solo tours of the Commonwealth, taking some of that burden from the Queen.

An aide is quoted as saying, “For the first time we have an established Monarch, an active and experienced Heir to the Throne and in Prince William and Prince Harry real youth appeal. The Prince Of Wales has had a long time to prepare for what will probably be a relatively short reign. Prince William has effectively got to get to grips with the job very quickly. It is a very different world to when the Queen ascended the Throne and she wants him to be prepared for what is to come. William too wants to make sure he is ready for any challenge that’s thrown at him.”

All this we have known for some time. Most of these activities can be accomplished fairly quickly, given the knowledge already gained over 26 years of being a Prince while watching his father and his grandmother performing their duties. Much of what William will need will be on-the-job experience — actually doing it for himself.

There has also been talk of him working in a newspaper office. It will be an asset for him to experience the difficulties involved in gathering, fact-checking, writing and publishing news stories to exceptionally short deadlines. It will allow him to be less censorious of the hard-working hacks who bring us the latest on … himself, for example. He will also understand the need to provide the press and broadcast media with unambiguous lines of information. Putting a heavy spin on every story quickly dissipates the credibility of the messenger.

Jobson quotes a senior courtier, “A key skill for him to learn, the Queen believes, is to disguise his feelings, like politicians. His father has never really managed to achieve this.”

William and Kate are expected to take a three-week break when his Royal Navy secondment finishes next week. I don’t imagine he will want to fly back to the Caribbean so soon after his deployment, so we may hear of a fresh destination for their holiday. I’m told Montana is very refreshing at this time of the year.

The article serves as a useful reminder of William’s schedule for the next two years. One thing’s for sure, there’s no obvious reason to postone that much anticipated Royal wedding.

The military should have taught Prince William how to make crisp decisions. Now is the time for crispness. Limpness is not an option.

English Heritage has just run a competition to find England’s most useless Monarch. The result was never going to be a surprise because the “winner” could only come from a handful of stinkers and duffers.

In the end they alighted on that bulbous, wasteful drunk George IV, who was so corpulent he was known as the Prince of Whales before he became King.

George was totally self-obsessed, unlike his sweet-natured father George III, who had the misfortune to suffer from the genetic disease porphyria, which made him increasingly insane.

The younger George was also nasty and brutish to his rather ugly and unhygienic wife Caroline, and scandalized the nation by gross over-spending in very hard times. The baroque dazzle of the Brighton Pavilion in no way compensates for his extravagance, indeed it neatly sums it up. The Monarchy has rarely been as unpopular than it was under King George IV.

However, my own choice is the same as historian Andrew Roberts’s — King Stephen. Here’s his assessment of this odious man:

“King Stephen usurped his uncle Henry I’s throne in 1135, outmanouevring both his own elder brother Theobald and the rightful heir, Henry’s daughter the Empress Matilda. He seized the Treasury, crowned himself, gave Cumbria to the Scots to buy them off, paid Danegeld to appease the Danes and then plunged Britain into a series of four civil wars between 1138 and 1154. These left the country ravaged, impoverished and weaker than at any other time before or since.”

Anyone who has watched the British TV series, Cadfael, or read the books by Ellis Peters which are set in these civil wars, will have some idea of the privations of the period.

Andrew Roberts is right too when he says Britain is passing through a golden age during the reign of Elizabeth II. Let us hope she will soon be served by better politicians than now and for the rest of her time among us.