>
Prince Harry has come under fire today from “appalled” royal experts after leaked copies of his memoirs revealed stunning new attacks by the Duke of Sussex on the royal family.
In his controversial book Spare, which was leaked ahead of publication next week and also out earlier in the UK, Harry dropped new ‘truth bombs’ at his family, from allegations that his brother assaulted him in a fight over Meghan until he claims that William and his father Carlos confronted him after Prince Philip’s funeral “picking a fight”.
The prince, who stepped down as a royal and moved to California with Meghan in search of more privacy, recalls family feuds and intimate conversations in excruciating detail.
Presenting his brother as his ‘arch-nemesis’ and Charles as an emotionally stunted and ineffective ‘old man’, he wrote that he feared Queen Consort Camilla would become an ‘evil stepmother’ and revealed his father’s medical ailments and the fact that the King still carries his favorite teddy bear with him.
The late Queen’s former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, called Harry’s autobiography “a load of nonsense” and “spiteful”, while ITV presenter Lorraine Kelly admitted that her “toes will never untwist after the duke revealed he lost his virginity to a cougar outside a pub when he was 17.
Harry walking his dog alone in pouring rain on a quiet California beach this week
The late Queen’s former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter (left), called Harry’s autobiography “a load of nonsense” and “spiteful”. BBC royal reporter Nicholas Witchell (right) also tore up the book.
Calling the memoir ‘the gospel according to St Harry’, Arbiter told BBC Newsnight: ‘Frankly. much of it is questionable. We had Netflix, six hours of that. We had the Oprah Winfrey interview, one hour. There were many falsehoods in that.
Buckingham Palace even went on to say that ‘memories may vary’. And I think this book, over 500 pages long, I think memories can vary in that as well.’
He added: ‘I think it’s a bunch of hogwash, frankly. Royal houses do not keep short diaries. Journalists openly admit that their lives would be much easier if Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace reported to them.
Reporting against individual members of the royal family is utter nonsense and Harry, really, this whole exercise of his is revenge. He is spiteful.
And he knows full well that the rest of the family won’t show up and respond to his narrative. That’s the last thing they should do. They should invite silence and not let the narrative run wild on its own.
BBC royal reporter Nicholas Witchell tore up the book, telling the broadcaster that Harry’s memoir did not address the sensational claims of racism in the royal family that were made in Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. and the.
He said: ‘After all, there aren’t, so to speak, unrecoverable lines that we’re aware of about racially inappropriate language or behaviour. Think back to the Oprah Winfrey interview, that was the big issue that came up there. I am not aware of that being addressed in this book.
Expert Richard Fitzwilliams called the claims made in Harry’s book “horrifying” and “fantastic”.
And former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, Princess Diana’s biographer, said: “Harry became a human hand grenade.” He is raining on the House of Windsor just at the beginning of his father’s reign.
Royal expert Jack Royston said: “William will be furious and I can’t imagine William wanting Harry at the coronation after all that has been said.”
‘I think it is a decision that will be taken together after the discussion. Charles is obviously the King and the Prince of Wales does not trump the King. But William is Charles’s son, Charles and Camilla are also mentioned, I think the three of them will discuss this together and probably Kate too. William’s voice counts in that conversation, it does not surpass the King, but his voice counts.
“It would have to be a long way because public opinion swings very slowly and one thing we’ve seen is that every time they attack royals, every time they get hit, they damage their reputation in Britain.”
Meanwhile, Lorraine said today: ‘If [the royals] they fail to cure this, their children will have no family on their father’s side and very few on their mother’s side.’ I think it’s very sad.
In other jaw-dropping revelations, Harry:
- Admits lying about cocaine use as a teenager and tells how he smoked joints in an Eton bathroom;
- Claims he killed 25 Taliban insurgents in military service in Afghanistan;
- He discusses the rumors that James Hewitt is his real father;
- He describes in stunning detail losing his virginity to an older woman who liked ‘buck horses’ and treated him ‘like a young stud’ in a field behind a pub;
- Describes a fight with William when Meghan said Kate had “baby brains because of her hormones.”
Spare was supposed to be published on Tuesday amid a huge secrecy sting by its publisher, Penguin Random House. But yesterday, in a very embarrassing error, copies were put up for sale in bookstores all over Spain despite the signs on the boxes that said “will not open until January 10”.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace declined to comment and were frantically digesting the contents of Harry’s 570+ page rant last night.
While some expressed sympathy for the prince’s clear ongoing emotional anguish over the tragic loss of his beloved mother, many will see it as a monstrous, and possibly unforgivable, betrayal of his family just four months after the Queen’s death.
A source who knew Elizabeth well said last night they were “almost comforted” that she was not alive to see what her grandson had done.
‘Her Majesty would have been devastated,’ they said. Harry’s long-awaited memories are even more explosive than Buckingham Palace insiders feared.
He admits to taking cocaine regularly at 17, but boasts about getting the palace to lie to a journalist about it.
The prince also claims he was innocent of the racism allegations when he was caught on video using the ‘P*** word’ to describe a fellow Asian Sandhurst cadet, saying he didn’t know it was an insult and thought it was like calling to an American a ‘Yankee’.
But it is your discussion of relationships with family members that is most damaging. The book covers all aspects of his life, tracing the disconnect with his older brother, whom he calls ‘Willy’, which began from the moment he was born, when Charles allegedly stated that he had complied with the duty of him
He accuses William, 40, of being caught up in his position as future heir to the throne, says he ignored him when they were students at Eton College and repeatedly put him in his place.
In one paragraph, Harry, affectionately referred to as “Harold” by his family, describes himself as being born to be his older brother’s “spare kidney”.
Harry also accuses his older brother of being the aggressor during the ‘Megxit’, claiming that their relationship had become so strained and damaged that William only scowled at him. He describes several particularly awkward meetings between himself, Meghan, William and Kate, saying his brother and his sister-in-law seemed uncomfortable being embraced by his bride-to-be.
It also appears to accuse the Princess of Wales of overreacting by demanding an apology from Meghan after she fell out with Kate over wedding plans.
Apparently, Kate was offended that Meghan blamed forgetfulness on “baby brain” after the birth of Prince Louis.
Harry also reveals that the two couples even argued over seating plans and whether William and Kate should be together.
He says that when William stood up to Meghan and defended his wife, Meghan told the prince, ‘Get your finger out of my face.’ Although Charles is spared more pain than many expected, Harry paints him as an ineffective father who couldn’t even hug him when he told him about his mother’s death in a car accident.
She says that when she confided in Charles that she had suffered from panic attacks as an adult, the prince looked sadly at his plate and said that it had failed him.
Yet, in what are sure to be harrowing passages for the King, Harry describes how when he returned to the UK to attend Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021, a clearly distraught Charles cried to his warring sons not to make their “last years a pittance”. .
Harry claims that he and William got into an explosive fight over Meghan, which resulted in his brother grabbing him by the neck, breaking his collar and throwing him to the ground, breaking and hurting himself in a dog bowl. Then he didn’t call his wife first, but her therapist, he says.
And William, he claims, is his ‘arch-nemesis’ and ‘polar opposite’.
As for the queen consort, who comes off relatively lightly in the book, Harry says that he and William begged their father not to marry the ‘other woman’, fearing she was their ‘evil stepmother’, but he adds that they eventually came to tolerate her. .
However, the fifth in line to the throne accuses Camilla of leaking stories about him through a palace press adviser.
The loss of his mother, Princess Diana, is also a central theme of the memoir, to which Harry returns repeatedly.
He dedicates the book to her along with Meghan and their two children.
He dreams repeatedly that his mother might return, and once turned to a woman with “powers” who passed him a message from Diana saying that she was “living the life that she couldn’t.”
The prince also writes in the book about drinking his first cocktail with the Queen Mother and teaching her to imitate TV character Ali G.
In interviews arranged to promote the memoir, of which more trailers have also been released, an emotional Harry declines to say whether he will attend his father’s coronation this spring, but denies invading William and Charles’ privacy by revealing intimate details. in his book.
Goading the royals, Harry says “the ball is in his court” to work out the consequences if he attends the event on May 6.