William shares insight on wild behaviour

London: Britain's Prince William has disclosed for the first time how he held private meetings with former gang members and learnt valuable lessons from them.

In his first major newspaper article - written exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph - he writes about how gang members are striving for "respect".

Prince William wrote: "Former gang members have told me that it is precisely to find status, respect from others and the role in a community that we all crave that led them to fall in with gangs in the first place. 'One enduring feature of all gangs -and teams - is that they survive on mutual support'."

"Essentially, they allow the individual to belong. As such, the fundamental difference... between violent street gangs and cohesive teams of contented young people is the destructive violence of the former set against the constructive comradeship of the latter. The challenge, therefore, seems to me to be to how turn gang members into team members."