Harry reveals long struggle to face up to grief over mother's death

Prince Harry has revealed he sought counselling after two years of "total chaos" having spent nearly 20 years of "not thinking" about the death of his mother.

Harry was 12 years old when Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car crash but he said it was not until his late 20s that he processed the grief.

The 32-year-old told the Daily Telegraph: "My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?

"(I thought) it's only going to make you sad, it's not going to bring her back. So from an emotional side, I was like 'right, don't ever let your emotions be part of anything'.

"So I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going 'life is great', or 'life is fine' and that was exactly it.

"And then (I) started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with."

He said he shut down his emotions after her death which had "a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well".

The prince sought help after his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, told him: "Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you."