A 'lovely coincidence': How Diana's memory is brought back by this Valentine's Day baby news for Harry and Meghan

On Valentine’s Day 1984, the newspaper front pages were awash with happy news - Diana, Princess of Wales was expecting her second child.

“September baby for Princess,” the Telegraph headline revealed, alongside a photograph of the beaming princess and the news that the Queen was “delighted”.

Fast forward 37 years and that much-loved child, Prince Harry, had baby news of his own.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed last night that they were expecting their own second child, a sibling for their son Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, who turns two in May.

The timing of the announcement was nothing more than a “lovely coincidence,” the Telegraph understands, but it is likely to be one that brought a smile to the Duke.

A spokesman for the couple said: “We can confirm that Archie is going to be a big brother. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are overjoyed to be expecting their second child.”

The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and the “entire family” are “delighted and wish them well", Buckingham Palace said.

The news comes just three months after the Duchess wrote a deeply personal account of suffering a miscarriage for the New York Times titled, The Losses We Share.

In November, she revealed she had lost her unborn, second child in July, describing the experience as “an almost unbearable grief experienced by many but talked about by few”.

The Duchess revealed she had been changing Archie’s nappy at their home in Montecito, California, when she felt “a sharp cramp”.

She wrote: “I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right. I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second."

The decision to speak so openly about such a personal and devastating experience was hailed by baby loss charities who said it would help others “enormously” by sending a “powerful” message that they were not alone.

The Duchess noted that despite the “staggering commonality of this pain”, the subject remains taboo, “riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning”.

The news came at a time that the Duchess was in the midst of a bitter legal action with the Mail on Sunday, which she sued after it printed extracts of a “personal and private” letter she had sent to her father, Thomas Markle.

The previous month, last October, she successfully applied to delay the trial, which had been scheduled for January, until the autumn on “confidential grounds".

The reason has remained under wraps but prompted speculation that she may have been pregnant. In the event, the Duchess applied for a summary judgment, negating the need for a trial, which she won this week.

A new black and white photograph of the couple released last night shows them lying under a tree, with the baby bump clearly visible.

The image was “taken remotely” by Misan Harriman, a Nigerian-born British photographer who has been friends with the Sussexes for many years.

Mr Harriman tweeted: “Meg, I was there at your wedding to witness this love story begin, and my friend, I am honoured to capture it grow. Congratulations to The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on this joyous news!”

Mr Harriman revealed that the photograph, which was taken remotely, had been shot on an iPad.

The news of the pregnancy casts doubt on whether the Duke will make it back to the UK later this year.

He had been expected to return, without his wife or son, to celebrate the 100th birthday of his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Trooping the Colour, the Queen's annual birthday parade.

The Duke was also due to be reunited with his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, for the unveiling of a statue of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales, in Kensington Palace Gardens on what would have been her 60th birthday, July 1.

A source close to the Duke said last night that he had no current travel plans but insisted that was due to the uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic than anything else.

Their baby, thought to be due in late spring or early summer, will be the Queen’s tenth great-grandchild and the first to be born abroad. The child will be eighth in line to the throne.