The wedding went off better than Lowther-Pinkerton’s most recent meeting with the Princess of Wales, during her September 2025 visit to Suffolk, where he now serves as Deputy Lieutenant.

While Princess Kate, 44, went in for a kiss, Lowther-Pinkerton bowed his head in reverence. “I was so embarrassed, I nearly headbutted her,” he admitted. “I didn’t know if I should be bowing. It was so sweet of her.”

Brushing off what could have been a mortifying moment is just another characteristic that makes the princess a “really cool woman,” according to Lowther-Pinkerton.

“[She’s] amazing. He chose well,” he said. “I think they’re great.”

The former equerry started working with the princes when they were 22 and 20, and his military training helped him guide them both through their own respective periods of service.

“It was important that they did it right and properly,” he said of William and Harry’s military careers. “That’s how I saw that 10 years I had [with them], primarily to get it right so they could say, as my Anglo-Irish father used to say, ‘I’ve known the days. I’ve done it.'”

Lowther-Pinkerton is credited with helping Prince Harry remain under the radar during his tours in Afghanistan, and he even revealed that he “battled” for Prince William to be allowed to serve in the war as well but was “blocked” by royal security.

The brothers required Lowther-Pinkerton to be “different things for them at different times,” he explained.

“A rottweiler if you needed to be cross with people, either on their behalf, not that I was very rottweilerish, or at them. A gentle ticking-off without getting all hot and bothered, because whether you’re an officer in charge of soldiers or you’re working with [the princes], there are similarities.”

His loyalty and service earned him the respect of the family — even Harry, who, despite spending a large portion of his 2023 memoir, Spare, rebuking the rigid structure of royal life, had words of admiration for the man he and his brother called “JLP.”

“Despite his spit and polish, however, his enamelled exterior, JLP was a force, the product of Britain’s finest military training, which meant, among other things, that he didn’t deal in bullshit. He didn’t give it, didn’t take it and everyone, far and wide, seemed to know,” Harry wrote.

When asked about the ongoing rift between the royal brothers, Lowther-Pinkerton remained tight-lipped; however, according to the interviewer, he seemed troubled by the feud.

“I think I’d better steer clear of that Harry issue,” he said. “What I would say is that I was and am very fond of him. He has huge redeeming features, and I’m a perennial optimist.”

Currently, “JLP” remains a peripheral but significant part of the royal family through William and Kate, who made him one of Prince George’s godfathers when the royal heir was born in 2013.

“It sounds awful,” Lowther-Pinkerton said, “but I’m a better godfather when it comes time to have a bit of fun. I’ve got other godchildren, and I have huge fun with them when they reach a certain point, so hopefully that’ll be the time when JLP comes out of the chrysalis.”