Spanish shops brought to book after shady leak

‘Everything points to some [book shops] breaching their commitment to the publisher’

THE release of Prince Harry’s memoir was supposedly being conducted amid the tightest security.

No advance copies of Spare have been officially released ahead of its publication on Tuesday, and the publicity campaign has been restricted to a handful of interviews with journalists selected for their sympathy towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Yet the couple’s best-laid plans were ruined when Spanish bookshops decided to put the memoir on sale five days early.

As news outlets rushed to snap up Spanish-language versions of Spare, called En la Sombra, or In the Shade, the publishers’ PR strategy went out the window.

It is not clear whether Spanish booksellers misunderstood or ignored the directive to keep the book under wraps until Jan 10.

A spokesman for Plaza y Janes Editores, a Spanish subsidiary of Penguin Random House, said: “Everything points to the fact that some customers have breached their commitment to the publisher and have put the book on sale before the agreed date.”

There was intrigue earlier in the day when what is believed to be an Englishlanguage copy of the book found its way to The Guardian.

The newspaper published an extract in which Prince Harry claimed that his brother physically attacked him in a blazing confrontation over the Duchess.

Oddly, although Harry has condemned leaked stories about his private life, he and Meghan have made no complaint about The Guardian story.

By happy coincidence, the newspaper is one of the few publications that does not appear on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s banned list (in 2020, the couple announced that they would have “zero engagement” with the Sun, Daily Mail, Mirror or Express).

The leaked extract paints Prince Harry in a positive light, with Prince William allegedly grabbing his brother by the collar and knocking him to the floor before saying: “You don’t need to tell Meg about this.”

Prince Harry said that he did not immediately tell his wife, but did call his therapist.

The Guardian story was written by Martin Pengelly, a Us-based reporter with a track record of getting his hands on contraband copies of yet-to-be-published books.

Rivals have wondered whether he was tipped off by contacts in the publishing world, or simply has a helpful bookseller happy to sneak him a copy.

But Pengelly’s story is not the only leak. The Page Six gossip website in the US also claimed to have an extract from the book, in which the Duke writes that “Willy and Kate” urged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party.