Let this sink in: Harry’s stooped to revealing a private remark by his grieving father at Prince Philip’s funeral
PRINCE Harry promised that his muchanticipated memoir would be one of ‘raw, unflinching honesty’. Raw and unflinching it is certainly is turning out to be, according to translations from the Spanish version of the book which has gone on sale five days early – an embarrassing breach for its publishers, given the ring of steel erected around the project.
From opening to close, Spare leaves no private family moment unsullied by repetition through the prism of the prince’s personal vendetta.
Some of his allegations are seriously reputationally damaging, such as accusing his estranged brother of physically assaulting him during a particularly heated row after William called his wife Meghan ‘rude’ and ‘abrasive’.
It is clear Harry is relying on the Royal Family’s ‘never complain, never explain’ mantra he claims to so deeply despise.
He also recalls in minute detail how their desperate father pleaded for peace between his warring sons at Prince Philip’s funeral, begging them not to make his ‘final years a misery’.
It’s worth letting the fact that Harry would even stoop to recounting such an anguished private remark, allegedly said by grieving King Charles as his father was laid to rest, sink in a little.
There are also deeply uncomfortable revelations about how the king still carries around the childhood teddy bear he took comfort from during unbearable school bullying, and of the personal medical regime he undertakes to cope with his bad back – which Harry chooses to share publicly as a comedic tool.
And that’s before he has even started on his step-mother Camilla, the Queen Consort, and, more significantly, his brother and sister-in-law.
The spectre of William is something woven through every bile-soaked word of Harry’s tome.
FROM complaints that the future king always bagged the best room at Balmoral because he was first-born, to frankly unnecessary jibes about his hairline and the uncomfortably malicious suggestion he took a vicarious thrill in Harry being forced to give up his military career because he was so highly competitive – the heir to the throne is very much cast as the familial bogeyman. It is clear that Harry is consumed with bitterness that William was born before him.
Is this really the same man I interviewed, alongside his brother, a decade or so ago when they were training to be pilots, who told me how much they loved sharing a home together?
Spare is, in short, a book packed with revelations designed both to embarrass and humiliate the Royal Family, as well as to ensure that it will shoot up the best- seller charts and fill the Sussexes’ pockets with lucre.
It is very difficult to see how relationships between the key players in this deeply painful drama can ever be repaired after such a devastating washing of their laundry in public.
Of course, there is much to pity Harry for. As the mother of a boy of 12, I can hardly bear to read his description of losing his own at the same age. Of how Charles, himself the product of an emotionally-tortured childhood, came to his bedroom to break the awful news, offering not a comforting hug, but a pat on the knee.
Harry says he was then left alone by himself until 9am that morning and describes Balmoral as a ‘crypt’ he used to walk around, talking to himself in a desperate bid to convince himself his mother’s death wasn’t true.
It would take a heart of stone not to weep for him as he describes receiving a lock of Diana’s hair from his aunt, of the ‘barbarity’ of being made to walk behind his mother’s coffin to aid the Royal Family’s ‘PR’ and, yes, of his hatred for the media.
But in every other aspect Harry comes across as a man hell-bent on wreaking a self-righteous public vengeance on his family for every perceived slight in his life. The question that remains for me, however, is that of honesty – something Harry clearly makes great play of.
The previously mentioned physical altercation between Harry and William occurred after ‘insults were exchanged’. Were any of these from Harry? If so, what were they? And why did William take himself to Nottingham Cottage for that explosive meeting in the first place?
Could it just be that he wanted to tackle his brother about his wife’s alleged bullying of staff? The timelines certainly suggests that to be the case.
As a journalist who has witnessed recent events first hand, it is fair to say that the whole Harry and Meghan saga was, on occasions, mishandled by Buckingham Palace, who clearly underestimated the couple’s determination to press the nuclear button on their royal lives.
But it is equally right to say that there has been precious little ‘honest’ accountability from the Sussexes so far about any of the mistakes they have made.
HARRY’S attempts to drag William and Kate into Harry’s Nazi 2005 costume drama, claiming they approved his choice of outfit and found it hilarious, are certainly plausible.
But at the time Harry was a man of 20 who was training at Sandhurst to fight for his country. Surely he should be accountable for his own actions? This seems like nothing less than spite.
In recent weeks I have heard from several former friends of the prince who are aghast at his betrayal of both family and institution and marvel at how unrecognisable he is now from the man they once knew.
People grow up, they develop, and it is surely natural that the man formerly known as ‘Haz’, famed for his risque wise-cracks and far from politically- correct behaviour, will change. (For the record, I was once or twice on the receiving end of said humour but was not remotely offended and, unlike Harry, consider something that was said to me in private should remain so).
But for many of those that I have spoken to, Harry’s glaring lack of genuine self-reflection and decision to ‘ go nuclear’ on his family in pursuit of the almighty dollar smacks of the rank hypocrisy and dishonesty he professes to abhor.
As of today, his repeated claims that he wants to reconcile with his father and brother ring more hollow than ever.