A damp squib that’s not so much tell-all as tell-again
Arguably the best royal book ever written is Andrew Morton’s biography of Diana, the late Princess of Wales. Straight from the horse’s mouth and full of previously unreported gems,
Diana: Her True Story will go down in history as one of the most revealing royal exposés in recent memory.
Finding Freedom had been billed as a similarly seminal tell-all tome. Said to have been written with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s co-operation – a claim the couple denied on Friday – the book chronicling Megxit was likened to Morton’s bestseller when it was serialised by The Times and The Sunday Times this weekend. However, as Morton himself eloquently put it when he contacted The Sunday Telegraph last night: “Diana, Her True Story this ain’t.”
Less tell-all, and more “tell-again”, royal watchers have been left feeling considerably short-changed to read so-called insights long since reported by the media the Sussexes despise.
How ironic that a book purporting to document the couple’s side of the story – apparently in the face of a press “vendetta” – confirms what we pesky royal correspondents have been accurately reporting all along.
Some of the quotes attributed to Meghan, including: “I gave up my entire life for this family”, appear to have been uttered during a hitherto off-the-record moment with chosen journalists, including one of the book’s authors, Omid Scobie.
By their very nature, off-the-record briefings with members of the royal press pack are meant to remain private. Meghan has seemingly agreed to let this intrusion into her innermost thoughts slide.
Only on Thursday, the couple fired yet another salvo at the media by launching legal action in the US after drones were allegedly used to take pictures of their one-year-old son Archie in Los Angeles, California.
The couple’s lawyer, Michael Kump, said: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are filing this lawsuit to protect their young son’s right to privacy, and to uncover and stop those who seek to profit from these illegal actions.”
Yet if the couple did not collaborate with the authors of Finding Freedom, when can we expect to hear word of their legal action against a book which similarly invades their privacy for financial gain?
The couple have long griped about the use of anonymous sources – yet their lack of protest appears to suggest that they don’t mind unnamed friends having a quiet word with select hacks. They appear equally untroubled by
‘The book confirms what we royal correspondents have been accurately reporting all along’
their associates knowingly cooperating with a book published by Rupert Murdoch-owned Harper Collins – and his News Corp stable of newspapers, which also includes The Sun, a tabloid they have previously described as “invasive”.
Nor do they seem to mind that Mr Scobie – the Sussexes’ self-styled cheerleader – once worked for US Weekly, where he regularly churned out precisely the sort of paparazzi-illustrated celebrity scuttlebutt they rail against.
As we have learnt over the course of the past seven months, however, this is a couple who not only expect to have their cake and eat it, but with cream and a cherry on top.
Even the title Finding Freedom appears a contradiction. Being holed up in someone else’s Beverly Hills mansion, hiding from drones and helicopters, while laying bare your deepest and darkest emotions in an unprecedented court case against The Mail on Sunday is precisely no one’s idea of a liberating experience.
To think they were largely left alone by the paps in Windsor!
While the Sussexes continue to moan about their perceived mistreatment, grumbling that no one understood their true “worth”, coronavirus has reminded the world of the value of Royals who are prepared to put duty above personal ambition.
Royals like the Queen, so devoid of ego that she took time out of self isolation at the age of 94 to soothe a nation facing an unprecedented crisis with the words: “We’ll meet again”.
Or Royals like the Duke of Edinburgh, who at 99 has not once complained about having to “take a back seat” and instead devoted himself to public service despite a lifetime of playing second fiddle to his wife.
Or Royals like Princess Alexandra and the Countess of Wessex, who are content to keep on carrying out official engagements even when there are no reporters or photographers present to splash the news across the front pages.
We knew there would be fireworks when Finding Freedom was serialised, but what we ended up with was a damp squib of a book that only serves to remind the public that Royals who fly too close to the sun quickly lose their sparkle.