Prince Harry’s memoir breaks UK sales record
Prince Harry’s Spare became the United Kingdom’s fastest selling non-fiction book ever, its publisher said on Tuesday, after days of TV interviews, leaks, and a mistaken early release of the memoir containing intimate revelations about the British royal family.
Harry’s book has garnered attention around the world with its disclosures about his personal struggles and its accusations about other royals, including his father King Charles, stepmother Camilla and elder brother Prince William.
“We always knew this book would fly, but it is exceeding even our most bullish expectations,” Transworld Penguin Random House managing director Larry Finlay said.
“As far as we know, the only books to have sold more in their first day are those starring the other Harry (Potter).”
Citing British sales figures, the publisher said it had sold 400,000 copies across hardback, e-book and audio formats.
Spare is the latest revelatory offering from Harry and his wife Meghan since they stepped down from royal duties in 2020 and moved to California to forge a new life, and follows their Netflix documentary last month.
The royal family has not commented on the book or the interviews and is unlikely to do so.
Extracts from the book were leaked last Thursday when its Spanish language edition also went on sale by mistake in some bookshops in Spain.
Harry speaks of his grief and growing up after the death of his mother Princess Diana when he was just 12, his use of cocaine and other drugs to cope, how he killed
25 Taliban fighters while serving as a soldier in Afghanistan, and even how he lost his virginity.
He also reveals a heated row with William, saying his brother
knocked him over, and how they had both begged his father not to marry Camilla, who he wed in 2005 and is now queen consort.