Harry and Meghan’s new publicist is long-term ally with military past: PR guru helped set up Invictus, was at secret royal peace summit and wants to ‘focus on couple’s global status’

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s newly-promoted chief communications officer is a long-term ally of the couple who is said to want to focus on their global status.

Liam Maguire has been working with the King’s son for more than a decade and was previously the Sussexes’ communications director for the UK and Europe.

The father-of-two was deputy to their global PR chief Meredith Maines and had been focused on Harry’s work, having first joined forces on the Invictus Games in 2014.

But following Ms Maines’s exit which was revealed on Saturday, Mr Maguire has been asked to step up as chief of communications for both the Duke and Duchess.

His approach will focus on the couple’s global status and ‘stop them being exposed in the way Harry was after his court case loss’, according to ITV royal editor Chris Ship.

He splits his time between London and his family home in Cornwall and works with a team in California where the Sussexes live, which is eight hours behind GMT.

Mr Maguire’s most high-profile involvement with the couple was in July when Ms Maines joined him at a London private members’ club to meet the King’s press secretary Tobyn Andreae for secret talks revealed by The Mail on Sunday.

The publication of the photographs is claimed to have angered the Sussexes, but the talks appeared to help bring Harry and Charles back together as they briefly met in September during the Duke’s visit to the UK following a period of estrangement.

Liam Maguire (centre) with the Sussexes’ former global PR chief Meredith Maines (right) at a London private members’ club in July to meet the King’s press secretary Tobyn Andreae (left)

Mr Maguire earned a degree in international politics and strategic studies from Aberystwyth University in Wales before spending two years as a parliamentary aide.

He then left to join the British Army and trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst – as did Harry, but not at the same time.

Mr Maguire later received a medical discharge after suffering a severe back injury during an accident on training exercise.

He decided to stay within the military world by joining the Royal British Legion’s PR team, where he was responsible for the charity’s Poppy Appeal.

He left the organisation in 2010 and spent the next two years working for an agency in the Middle East in corporate, crisis and government relations before returning to the UK where he began a career in journalism and worked for newspapers including the London Standard.

Mr Maguire’s father was also a Fleet Street journalist who worked for the Press Association, Sun, Telegraph and the Standard across a 30-year period. 

In an article written for PR Week in September 2015 headlined ‘the flack who became a hack’, Mr Maguire said he became a freelance journalist because he got tired of being asked to ‘eat the client’s c**p with a smile’.

He also wrote that he had decided to ‘hang up my flak jacket and become the grubby ink-stained wretch my first boss always warned me about: a journalist’.

Mr Maguire added that he had been ‘suckling from the bulls**t boob for nearly a decade’, describing himself as a ‘peddler of puff’ having ‘hawked c**p written by committees destined to be read by nobody’.

Liam Maguire (right) and Meredith Maines (right) get into a taxi after the meeting in July

He also revealed that he had previously worked for Bell Pottinger, a now-defunct PR company which collapsed two years later in 2017 after having been found to have run a ‘racially divisive’ campaign in South Africa.

Mr Maguire’s first known involvement with Harry was in 2014 when he helped the Duke set up his Invictus Games competition for wounded, injured and sick servicemen.

The first tournament was held in London that year, while Mr Maguire was also involved in supporting the same team at the 2018 event in Sydney.

He has also worked on communications for Harry’s charity Sentebale, which the Duke co-founded in 2006 to help young people and children in southern Africa, particularly those living with HIV and Aids.

Mr Maguire’s work included promoting two concerts for Sentebale as well as the charity’s ‘FeelNoShame’ campaign in 2014 to raise awareness about stigmas linked to the condition.

Harry cut ties with Sentebale in March after a bitter boardroom battle with chair Dr Sophie Chandauka.

Additionally, Mr Maguire also supported Harry during the time of his wedding to Meghan at Windsor Castle in May 2018. 

He worked with the Good Relations/VCCP group for a decade and helped set up the PR agency’s first American office in New York.

Liam Maguire (top left) with Prince Harry and Meghan at the 2018 Invictus Games in Sydney

He has also supported organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust and landmine charities Halo Trust and MAG International.

Mr Maguire was involved in the ‘There But Not There’ commemorative campaign in 2018 which marked 100 years since the end of the First World War.

He has also worked with companies such as the Royal Caribbean Group and PepsiCo, before leaving the VCCP Group earlier this year.

Mr Maguire has sat on the board of trustees for Blesma, a charity for limbless veterans, since 2021.

He is now the sole remaining publicist for the Sussexes, after the departure of James Holt, who has been running their Archewell charity since 2021.

Mr Holt was PR chief from 2019 to 2021 at a time when left the UK and stepped back as working royals, and followed the couple to live in California.

On Saturday, it was revealed that Ms Maines was stepping down after just a year as chief communications officer for Meghan and Harry.

Her departure came as US-based Method Communications PR announced it too would be ending its tenure with the Sussexes after seven months.