If the Duke of Cambridge were to walk into Cathy Dault’s Manhattan flat during his trip to New York next week, the first face he would see would be his own. The hallway of the modest First Avenue apartment is decorated with signed Christmas cards from Diana, Princess of Wales, which Dault has collected over the years from an American dealer in royal memorabilia. One card shows Charles and Diana in happy times with their two sons. Another is from 1992, the year their marriage officially broke down, and features just the two young princes.
If the Duke ventured a little farther into the living room, he would find a caricature of Prince Harry (signed by the subject), hanging next to a poster of one of Mario Testino’s sultry photographs of his mother. Next to those is a copy of the National Portrait Gallery painting of the two princes, looking relaxed in their black cavalry uniforms. There is also a framed magazine cover of Harry and photographs from one of his trips to Africa.
“People walk in here and they say: 'Oh, my God, it’s like a shrine to the Royals,’ ” laughs Dault. The 63-year-old schoolteacher is just one of the thousands of excited Americans hoping to catch a glimpse of the Cambridges when they arrive on a commercial flight into New York tomorrow for a three-day visit to the US East Coast.
Richard Palmer @RoyalReporter 
