article: Prince William, dutiful fellow that he is, has announced that he will be taking six weeks of paternity leave. God willing, his wife the Duchess of Cambridge will give birth to their next child in a few days’ time, at which point the Prince, having been excused from training with East Anglia Air Ambulance, will roll up the sleeves of his Viyella shirt and tell his beloved as she lies, exhausted, on her maternity hospital bed: ‘O duchess of my dreams, I am at your beck and call, coiled like a watchspring to hold milk bottles and change nappies until the first week of June’. Six weeks! Some of you may find this sweet. You will look at the earnest young Duke of C, with his well-meaning smile and that receding hairline (join the club, sir), and you may think: ‘There goes a properly modern man; what a fine example he sets to the rising generation.’ Scroll down for video . 'He may be a prince of the realm, but under it all he is a new man, bowing to convention like a willow branch in the flood,' says Quentin Letts of Prince William's six weeks' paternity leave . You will toast him in whatever it is that you spongy egalitarians use for toasts — some form of low-calorie herbal infusion, perhaps — and you may even allow yourselves a small ‘ahhh’ of sentimentalism. How lovely, you will say, that the next-but-heir to the throne is in tune with metropolitan sensibilities, alive to the rip-tides of 21st-century cultural politics. He may be a prince of the realm, surrounded by hot-and-cold-running flunkeys, cocooned by the coroneted appurtenances of royal life, but under it all he is a new man, bowing to convention like a willow branch in the flood. How unlike his father, the fogeyish Prince Charles — who at the time of his engagement to Diana, when asked if he was in love, gave a sighing, unromantic answer which included the throwaway phrase ‘whatever “in love” means’. Unlike his mouldering Pop, Wills accepts — embraces! — the mundane and sometimes stinky burdens of early parenthood. And so, for the next six weeks, and possibly beyond, the Prince will be on domestic parade, quivering to attention at the nursery door somewhere deep inside their stately home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk, like a guardsman doing sentry duty outside St James’s Palace. HRH New Dad, in his nursemaid’s pinny, will be there to ‘do his bit’. And yet, at the risk of committing lese-majeste, I must confess that when I heard of the Prince’s undertaking I thought (and continue to think): ‘For God’s sake, man, are you MAD?’ I say this, furthermore, as a committed royalist and father of three. 'For the next six weeks, and possibly beyond, the Prince will be on domestic parade,' says Quentin Letts. 'Quivering to attention at the nursery door somewhere deep inside their stately home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk' For your Royal Highness, I have been there and have glimpsed your immediate future. I have tried paternity leave, albeit briefly. So far as I could see it was an almost complete waste of time. Our first-born, Claud, arrived in July 1997, in the early days of the Blairite terrors. New Labour had been in office but a few weeks and the country was in the grip of a mini social revolution that saw the old Tory ways washed aside by political correctness. Even so, I absented myself from the birthing suite at Cheltenham maternity hospital (I had nearly fainted when the anaesthetist produced his epidural needle, long as a medieval jousting stick). I retired to a nearby pub for a pint or two of goodish cider. As I made my excuses and left the hospital, the midwives looked thoroughly relieved. They knew what no nurse ever seems prepared in public to admit: men in a maternity ward are a flat-footed menace. 'They knew what no nurse ever seems prepared in public to admit: men in a maternity ward are a flat-footed menace,' says Quentin Letts, who says he made it through just a week of his own paternity leave . I can claim to have changed Claud’s first nappy — I remember the moment vividly, as my wife looked on cluelessly — and I also made myself uncharacteristically useful when, the following morning, the three of us went home. You see, I was the one who worked out how to fasten the darn babyseat into the front seat of our elderly Mini estate car. OK, it took me ten minutes to work it out but at least, like Wills with Prince George, I did it! We lived at that point in a small cottage on a wooded hillside near Stroud, Gloucestershire, reached only by a steep footpath. For William and Kate, home is the rather better-appointed Anmer, an elegant, Georgian spread on the Sandringham estate. Will William need to carry the new-born bundle and its baby clobber (nappy bags, push chair, cot, toys, etc) down the garden path, as I did? One suspects there may be staff to do that. Once the newborn has been brought home, what is there for the father to do? Feeding the bairn? My wife opted for breast-feeding. My man boobs may be corkers in their own right but they were never up to that task, so I had little to do. Some women go in for breast pumps and decanting their milk into bottles, which the dads can then administer, but that all sounded a bit complicated to us — to be honest, it made me feel a bit faint. At Anmer Hall, there will surely be cohorts of nurses and Norland-trained nannies on hand to take over from Kate when she tires of feeding the little one. My mother-in-law, who had been my wife’s birthing partner, was busy and helpful in the first days after the babies arrived. Ah, the mother-in-law. We touch here, perhaps, on terrain that will be familiar to William, whose own ma-in-law, the indomitable Carole Middleton, is said to be in the Jimmy Anderson league of fast bowlers. 'Once the newborn has been brought home, what is there for the father to do?' asks Quentin Letts . Mrs Middleton, one is told, will be on hand at Anmer, once the young royals return to the family pile. When one hears of the proximity of mothers-in-law and gormless, bumbling sons-in-law, one fears a conflagration may break out as easily as if Russian and RAF jets are in close proximity in the skies over north-eastern Scotland. A man may love his wife’s mother, and that affection may even sometimes be reciprocated, but that is not to say it is a good idea for him to try to disagree with her when it comes to theories about how to hold a baby, lay it in its cot or bring up wind. Burping procedures: is this what search-and-rescue helicopter pilot William was put on earth to do? Mrs Middleton may not be a member of the blood royal but I suspect that if it came to a shoot-out between her and William over babysitting niceties, she would take the bout with ease. For this is what a man learns while on paternity leave: he is there on sufferance. The early weeks of motherhood lean heavily to the distaff side. In July 1997, your correspondent stood there, like any man, feeling a spare part as the aunts and grandmothers and godmothers and female neighbours fell to their cooing and gurgling at the purple-faced infant. Worse, these women were keen to discuss the complete biological aspects of the delivery. The expression ‘give us all the gory details’ rings still in my ear as my wife’s girlfriends descended on her with presents of Babygros and ‘moisturiser for your stretch marks’. 'Those first weeks after a birth, a mother and babe spend much of their time resting and sleeping. If a man can go and earn a few bob to help pay the flurry of bills, is he not better thus employed?' Descriptions of shrieking agony in the delivery room unfolded, complete with Dante-esque accounts of pushing and dilation and heads appearing. Worst of all, they wanted to know about ‘tearing’. A paternity-leave dad such as Prince William has two options: he can stand in the margins of such covens, and possibly disgrace himself by fainting, floored by the nausea of envisaging post-natal undercarriage surgery; or he can step into the garden (better still a beer garden) for some fresh air. I lasted less than a week first time round. For the second and third children, I made admiring noises, told my wife how wonderful she was, took a vague squint at the infant, then returned to my work. Those first weeks after a birth, a mother and babe spend much of their time resting and sleeping. If a man can go and earn a few bob to help pay the flurry of bills, is he not better thus employed? You can do a lot in six weeks. If you are a sailor you can cross the Atlantic and have time for a few days on some West Indies beach. If you are a cyclist you can go from Land’s End to John O’Groats and quite a long way back, depending on the gravity of your jock rot. By mid-June, early spuds will be ready for digging in our kitchen gardens. The new Parliament will be up and running. Buckingham Palace will be in summer garden-party season. England’s cricketers may already be two down in the series against New Zealand. Prince William, sir, ignore your press officers and image advisers. Don’t fall for this notion that a new dad’s place is at the (stately) home. You will have a whole life ahead for bonding with your lovely new child. Stay just long enough to show affectionate interest. Then make your escape!
highlights: Prince William has announced he'll be taking six weeks of paternity leave .
  He'll be staying with Kate and the new baby at Anmer Hall in Norfolk .
  But Quentin Letts, father of three, says the Prince must be mad!
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