Blazing row after Philip’s funeral
From Eton to Africa, from Diana to Chelsy, Harry’s jaw-dropping claims and revelations
PRINCE Harry’s long-awaited book includes a series of extraordinarily personal anecdotes about himself and his closest family members.
From how he lost his virginity to his nickname for his brother Prince William, the tell-all memoir is packed with jaw-dropping claims and insider revelations.
THE ‘FIGHT’ WITH WILLIAM AND CHARLES AFTER PHILIP’S FUNERAL
HARRY describes how William and ‘old man’ Charles advanced on him ‘looking for a fight’ following Prince Philip’s funeral.
As a nervous Harry waited for them in the gardens of Frogmore Cottage, they looked ‘very serious, almost threatening... conspiring’, he wrote.
According to a translation from the Spanish edition of the book, the duke says he summoned Princess Diana to his mind and thought: ‘Okay, Mum, here we go – wish me luck.’
When the three princes met on the path, Harry said he greeted them by saying ‘Willy, Daddy, hello’, but their reply of ‘Harold...’ was ‘painfully lukewarm’.
After trivial chat about the weather, travel, sport and the funeral, the trio’s conversation descended into a blazing row.
Harry wrote: ‘My father and Willy had come looking for a fight. Every time I tried to offer a new explanation one of them would interrupt me. Willy, in particular, wouldn’t see sense.’
The duke said they began to insult each other, repeating all the same accusations they had been making for months, until eventually Charles raised his hands and said: ‘Enough – please boys, don’t turn my last years into a torment.’ Harry said his father’s voice sounded hoarse and fragile – ‘like the voice of an old man’.
The duke says he told his brother ‘ this was supposed to be our house’ and that he had intended to spend the rest of his life living at Frogmore.
‘You went, Harold,’ William allegedly replied.
Harry said: ‘Yeah, and you know why’, and his brother shot back, ‘Honestly no, Harold... not really.’
Harry then turned to Charles, who was looking at him with an expression that said he didn’t understand either.
He wrote: ‘ Perhaps they had never really known me.’
CHARLES TO HARRY AND WILLIAM Enough please, boys! Don’t turn my last years into a torment
‘WILLY AND HAROLD’
The names the royal brothers call each other in private – ‘Willy’ and ‘Harold’ – have been revealed for the first time.
Astonishingly, the princes’ pet names for each other have never before been disclosed.
Throughout Harry’s memoir, he uses the terms, although it is not clear if they are meant affectionately. He also refers to King Charles as Daddy, the late Queen as Grandmother, and his beloved Prince Philip as Grandfather.
DODI FAYED
While he refers to Camilla as a potential ‘ wicked stepmother’, Harry describes his mother Princess Diana’s fledgling relationship with Dodi Fayed with affection.
Dodi turned Diana’s eyes into ‘fluffy red hearts’, said the prince, who described the playboy son of Mohamed Al Fayed as ‘nice’ but also ‘cheeky’.
She had liked a diamond bracelet he gave her and wore it a lot. Harry, a schoolboy at the time, said everyone referred to Dodi as his mother’s ‘friend’, adding: ‘ As long as Mum is happy.’
NAZI UNIFORM
The Nazi uniform Harry wore to a party was notorious – but now he is blaming William and Kate.
The duke says the future king and queen both thought the outfit he wore in 2005 was ‘funny’.
Harry claimed that when he was deciding what to wear to the fancy dress party, he consulted them about his proposed Nazi costume and they ‘both howled’.
Apparently, his regalia was ‘way more ridiculous’ than his brother’s lion outfit.
The Nazi outfit led to immense criticism, and Harry issued a grovelling apology shortly after an image was published in The Sun, saying: ‘I am very sorry if I have caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.’
He later said the gaffe was one of the ‘biggest mistakes’ of his life. He told Netflix he had met with the then Chief Rabbi and spoken to a Holocaust survivor as part of efforts to repair the damage done.
THE P-WORD SCANDAL
Harry claimed he ‘ didn’t know’ that the derogatory word P*** was an insult when he used the racial slur to describe a fellow soldier from Pakistan.
He claimed he had ‘heard many people use the word’ as a child and ‘had not seen anyone wince or get upset’ and that he had not considered them to be racist.
He added: ‘I didn’t know anything about unconscious biases either. I was 21 years old, I had grown isolated from the real world and wrapped in privilege, and I believed that word was the same as “Yankee”. Harmless.’
In 2009, Harry was forced to apologise after footage emerged of him using the slur to describe his Sandhurst colleague Ahmed Raza Khan. Harry said he had used the term without malice after the recording, taken in 2006, was released.
Recalling the video in his book, Harry said he had filmed it while killing time before boarding a plane to Cyprus with his fellow cadets, recalling: ‘When I got to my partner and good friend Ahmed Raza Khan, a Pakistani, I said, “Ah, our little P*** friend”.’
AFRICA PR STUNT
Harry dismissed his father’s request to travel with him to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and the Spice Girls as a PR exercise because Charles was so unpopular.
The duke wrote the ‘truth’ was that his father’s team were hoping
I didn’t know P*** was an insult. I believed that word was the same as Yankee. Harmless
a photo of him with the world’s most revered political leader and the most popular female musical group would improve Charles’s approval ratings.
THE LEOPARD
Harry was almost ‘eaten alive’ by a leopard in Botswana on an Easter holiday with William – but he thought it was a message from his mother.
The duke recounts how he took a step towards the animal until an aide grabbed him by the shoulder.
Onlookers were apparently imagining headlines back in the UK reading: ‘Prince Harry attacked by a leopard’. But the duke said: ‘I thought of my mother. That leopard was, without a doubt, a signal sent by her.’ He added: ‘At the same time I thought: “How horrible!” What if my mother finally came out of hiding – her little son had been eaten alive?’
REBELLIOUS YOUTH
During his rebellious days at Eton, Harry said his head was shaved – and while he ‘howled in horror’, William had ‘laughed like everyone else’ and told him: ‘Harold, what have you done? You shouldn’t have done that.’
Harry said he fell in love with rugby ‘ for external pain that matched what I felt inside’, and because it was ‘a good excuse to attack whatever comes my way’.
He said: ‘Rugby allowed me to vent my anger.
‘I didn’t feel pain in the same way as the other guys, which made me a danger on the pitch.’ Later in the book, he wrote: ‘I stopped fearing death when I was 12 years old.’
Describing his fondness for smoking, Harry said he liked a cigarette and beer after a McDonalds or a spell on the Windsor Castle golf course, adding: ‘I soon started with pot.’
Eternally the outsider, Harry appears to compare himself to King Henry IV, who was ‘exiled and then returned to annihilate every obstacle and person that stood before him’, adding: ‘My distant relative. My soulmate, some would say.’
TALIBAN ATTACK
In chilling detail, Harry describes the day Taliban jihadis came to kill him.
During his military service in Afghanistan, when he was stationed at Camp Bastion as an Apache attack helicopter pilot, he said Taliban fighters dressed as Americans cut a hole in the perimeter fence on his birthday.
Harry said when the alarm was sounded, he had his 9mm pistol
but his sA80 assault rifle was locked away. He said: ‘I felt naked. I had my bodyguards, but I needed my Apache.
‘that was the only place where I would feel safe... and useful. I needed to rain down fire on our attackers, whoever they were.’ the prince said he ran towards his Apache ‘but the bodyguards stopped me – too dangerous’. Eventually others thwarted the attack.
EX-GIRLFRIENDS
Harry said he felt intense feelings of regret and jealousy when he watched his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy dancing at William’s wedding.
He said: ‘It was hard. I still felt a lot of regrets for her. My friends helped me.’
And he describes how he met his other serious girlfriend Cressida Bonas at a music festival, surrounded by hundreds of people.
He said his cousin touched him on the shoulder and said: ‘ Harry, I’d like you to meet my friend Cressida.’
Despite the ‘ zero privacy’ of the venue, the ‘connection was immediate’, recalled Harry, who added: ‘A few weeks after, after a date, I took her home.’