Irish Daily Mail

Explosive book to lay bare royal rif t

- By Rebecca English

AN explosive new biography today lays bare the depth of the British royal family’s anger and frustratio­n at Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit.

Written by respected royal biographer Robert Lacey, Battle of Brothers forensical­ly charts the catastroph­ic breakdown of Prince William’s once rock-solid relationsh­ip with Harry – and reveals how the acrimoniou­s fallout has infiltrate­d every aspect of royal life.

The book, which is serialised from today in the Irish Daily Mail, claims the future British king was so infuriated by Harry’s behaviour that when the Queen called them together for January’s ‘Sandringha­m Summit’, he refused to have lunch with his brother beforehand. Instead, Harry dined with their grandmothe­r alone.

Even the elderly monarch, who has always had a soft spot for her wayward grandson, felt Harry and

Meghan were ‘erratic and impulsive’ in their behaviour, leading her to strip them of their Sussex Royal moniker, Mr Lacey says.

His new book – for which he spent months speaking to royal insiders, he says – will be seen as an antidote to Finding Freedom, the slavishly flattering biography of Harry and Meghan that was published earlier this summer.

Battle of Brothers promises to l ay bare t he events of t he Sandringha­m Summit, as well as revealing the truth of the relationsh­ip between Harry and William from the cradle to Megxit.

No one is spared from his critical eye and even Buckingham Palace comes under scrutiny for mishandlin­g the crisis, not to mention misjudging a self- pitying and over-sensitive Harry and Meghan.

Mr Lacey maintains that the illfeeling between all of the parties involved became so bad that the Queen deliberate­ly chose not to include a picture of Harry and Meghan with their son Archie, her eighth great-grandchild, on the t able during her Christmas broadcast last December as a slapdown to her grandson.

‘There were some matters on which Elizabeth II would not compromise – and chief among them was the authority of the crown,’ he writes.

‘The Sussex family had been “non-personed” as effectivel­y as the Soviets non-personed Trotsky and Khrushchev – another charming custom, of course, that had been developed by the Kremlin.’

 ??  ?? ‘Erratic’: Harry and Meghan
‘Erratic’: Harry and Meghan

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