The much-discussed book by Prince Harry was also a subject at the 65th Grammy Awards.
Trevor Noah cracked a joke about a revealing passage in the Duke of Sussex’s memoir, Spare, while hosting the Grammys on Sunday night at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. As Noah introduced James Corden, he pointed to the excerpt from the book where Prince Harry revealed that he got frostbite during a philanthropic trip to the North Pole in 2011.
“James Corden is a 12-time Emmy winner and the host of The Late Late Show,” Noah began. “He’s also living proof that a man can move from London to L.A. and not tell everyone about his frostbitten penis.”
As seen in a clip shared on Twitter by The Telegraph reporter Jamie Johnson, the quip elicited a laugh from Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who were seated nearby. Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images; Karwai Tang/WireImage
Noah was a guest on the final episode of Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast, Archetypes, which aired in November.
Prince Harry shared more than ever before in Spare, released worldwide on Jan. 10. In one personal story, the Duke of Sussex, 38, wrote that he returned home to London with frostbite in the sensitive spot after joining a group of veterans fundraising for Walking With the Wounded. The ex-servicemen set out to become the first amputees to reach the North Pole unsupported, and Harry, who completed two tours of Afghanistan during his decade in the British Army, joined the expedition. Kevin Mazur/Getty
The trek was unpredictably delayed a few days due to bad weather, forcing Prince Harry to leave early in order to attend Prince William’s April 2011 wedding to Kate Middleton. When Harry got back to the U.K., he learned the extent of his frostbite.
“Upon arriving home I’d been horrified to discover that my nether regions were frostnipped as well, and while the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn’t,” he wrote in Spare. “It was becoming more of an issue day by day.” David Cheskin/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Only time would heal the injury, though Harry first attempted a home remedy. Confiding in a friend about the painful problem, Harry said she suggested he try applying Elizabeth Arden cream — which Princess Diana used.
“I found a tube, and the minute I opened it the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right in the room,” Prince Harry wrote. ” ‘Weird’ doesn’t really do the feeling justice.”
Prince Harry and Meghan recently were among the star-studded guests to witness Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s surprise vow renewal. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex attended a gathering last week thought to be a 50th birthday party for de Rossi — however, the celebration turned into a vow renewal ceremony for DeGeneres and de Rossi officiated by Kris Jenner. In a video shared to The Ellen Degeneres Show‘s YouTube channel, Prince Harry and Meghan are seen among the group watching the romantic moment unfold.
Other famous faces at the event included Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Carol Burnett, Courteney Cox, Melissa Etheridge, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom.
Prince Harry has called on his family to apologize to Meghan.
This week’s release of Spare has made history for the UK’s fastest-selling non-fiction book.
Among the claims made in the book, Prince Harry said his brother described Meghan as “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”. Prince Harry also accused his brother of physically attacking him.
“But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying I’m delusional and paranoid, actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability, and an apology to my wife.”
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have both said they will not comment on its contents.
In an interview with the Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon – who travelled to California to speak to him – the Duke of Sussex said he was not “trying to collapse the monarchy”, but “trying to save them from themselves”.
Prince Harry said he left out some details because he knew his father and brother would never forgive him. He claims he had enough material for “two books.” “I just don’t want the world to know” about some things, he told the Daily Telegraph.
He added that said there was information he revealed to his ghostwriter JP Moehringer “for context” but there was “absolutely no way” it could be included in the book.
“It could have been two books, put it that way,” he said, adding that the first draft was 800 pages, double the final 400-page manuscript.
“And there were other bits that I shared with JR, that I said: ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’”
He said it was impossible to tell his story without his family members in it, “because they play such a crucial part in it, and also because you need to understand the characters and personalities of everyone within the book”.
“But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me,” he said.
“Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway.
He told the Telegraph that “no institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny”, claiming that if only 10% of the scrutiny put on him and his wife had been applied to the Royal Family “we wouldn’t be in this mess right now”.
He also spoke about therapy, describing it being “like clearing the windscreen, clearing away all the Instagram filters, all of life’s filters”.
And he said he feels a responsibility towards William’s children, “knowing that out of those three children,at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me”.
Prince Harry claims he had enough material for “two books”, and did not include some things in his memoir because his father and brother would never forgive him.
He told the Daily Telegraph there were some things “I just don’t want the world to know”.
He also said he wanted an apology to Meghan from his family members.
Spare, published this week, has become the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever in the UK.
The book outlines a long list of grievances against the Royal Family, as well as unresolved trauma over the death of his mother, his struggles with mental health, the isolated life he led before meeting Meghan, and the breakdown of relations with family members.
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have both said they will not comment on its contents.
In an interview with the Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon – who travelled to California to speak to him – the Duke of Sussex said he was not “trying to collapse the monarchy”, but “trying to save them from themselves”.
Prince Harry said there was information he revealed to his ghostwriter JP Moehringer “for context” but there was “absolutely no way” it could be included in the book.
“It could have been two books, put it that way,” he said, adding that the first draft was 800 pages, double the final 400-page manuscript.
“And there were other bits that I shared with JR, that I said: ‘Look, I’m telling you this for context but there’s absolutely no way I’m putting it in there.’”
He said it was impossible to tell his story without his family members in it, “because they play such a crucial part in it, and also because you need to understand the characters and personalities of everyone within the book”.
“But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me,” he said.
“Now you could argue that some of the stuff I’ve put in there, well, they will never forgive me anyway.
“But the way I see it is, I’m willing to forgive you for everything you’ve done, and I wish you’d actually sat down with me, properly, and instead of saying I’m delusional and paranoid, actually sit down and have a proper conversation about this, because what I’d really like is some accountability. And an apology to my wife.”
Among the claims made in the book, Prince Harry said his brother described Meghan as “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”. Prince Harry also accused his brother of physically attacking him.
He told the Telegraph that “no institution is immune to criticism and scrutiny”, claiming that if only 10% of the scrutiny put on him and his wife had been applied to the Royal Family “we wouldn’t be in this mess right now”.
He also spoke about therapy, describing it being “like clearing the windscreen, clearing away all the Instagram filters, all of life’s filters”.
And he said he feels a responsibility towards William’s children, “knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me”.
Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo weighs in on Prince Harry’s media appearances, Hakeem Jeffries’ acceptance speech and Louisiana requiring user identification on adult sites on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’
Kate Middleton was spotted for the first time since Prince Harry’s explosive memoir “Spare” hit bookshelves.
On Wednesday, the Princess of Wales attempted to keep a poker face as she was snapped by photographers while driving to Windsor Castle. The wife of Prince William was among the several members of the British royal family who found themselves at the center of controversy after the book went on sale around the world on Tuesday.
In the ghostwritten memoir, the Duke of Sussex detailed his grief following the death of his mother, Princess Diana, as well as his strained relationship with the Prince of Wales. He also expressed his frustration at the role of royal “spare” in the shadow of his older brother William, who is heir to the British throne.
Catherine, Princess Of Wales, seen here for the first time since the release of “Spare” as she returns to Windsor Castle. (TheImageDirect.com)
Harry slammed the U.K.’s tabloid press for coverage he considered prurient, intrusive and sometimes plain wrong. The 38-year-old claimed his relatives were unwelcoming to his wife Meghan Markle and even accused members of the royal family, including his stepmother Camilla, of leaking stories to the media to burnish their own reputations.
PRINCE HARRY SLAMS BRITISH PRESS, ‘SALACIOUS HEADLINES’ ON ‘THE LATE SHOW,’ CLAIMS HIS WORDS HAVE BEEN SPUN
So far, it has been business as usual for the royals. Harry’s aunt, Princess Anne, carried on with her duties on Wednesday by visiting British soldiers serving with a United Nations peacekeeping force in ethnically divided Cyprus.
Queen Elizabeth II’s only daughter met with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. They discussed climate change-related issues, the energy crisis spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and efforts to restart stalled talks to reunify Cyprus, a government statement said.
Britain’s Princess Anne leaves the presidential palace after a meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades, in Nicosia. Cyprus on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. (Photo by Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Media access during her visit was limited. The 72-year-old did not make any public remarks.
Buckingham Palace officials have declined to comment on any of the allegations made in Harry’s book. A spokesperson for King Charles III didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. A spokesperson for Kensington Palace, which represents the Prince and Princess of Wales, told Fox News Digital they don’t have a comment. Allies of the royal family have pushed back on Harry’s claims, largely anonymously.
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Harry’s exposure of bitter divides inside the House of Windsor – alongside details of his mental health struggles, experiences with sex and drugs and decade-long military career – has generated reams of media coverage. The father of two has embarked on a press tour to promote the book, making appearances on ITV, CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “Good Morning America,” and most recently, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” He is also on the cover of People magazine.
Prince Harry is seen leaving “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Jan. 9, 2023, in New York City. (Gotham/GC Images)
In the book, Harry recounted the infamous fallout between Middleton and Markle, both 41, which allegedly left the former American actress “sobbing on the floor.” The tense exchange allegedly took place days before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex tied the knot in 2018. In an excerpt, Harry claimed that his sister-in-law made the former “Suits” star cry after she demanded that “all the dresses” for the flower girls be remade.
“Charlotte’s dress is too big, too long, too baggy,” Middleton allegedly texted Markle, as quoted by Harper’s Bazaar. She was referring to her daughter’s flower girl dress. According to Harry, the dresses were made from measurements obtained at a previous fitting.
“She cried when she tried it on at home,” Middleton allegedly texted.
KATE MIDDLETON’S BIRTHDAY GETS OVERSHADOWED BY PRINCE HARRY’S ‘SPARE’ AS ROYALS MAINTAIN WALL OF SILENCE
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge leaves with her daughter Princess Charlotte after attending the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, on May 19, 2018. (Andrew Matthews/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Harry, Markle reminded Middleton that a tailor who could perform alterations was already at Kensington Palace.
“Right, and I told you the tailor has been standing by since 8am,” Markle allegedly replied. “Here. At KP. Can you take Charlotte to have it altered, as the other mums are doing?”
The book alleged that Middleton demanded that “all the dresses be remade,” noting that her own wedding dress designer agreed with her. Markle then reminded Middleton that she was stressed following the drama involving her father Thomas Markle. The former Hollywood lighting director famously didn’t attend the royal wedding.
The alleged royal row between the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Sussex has been well-documented by the British press. (Richard Pohle – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
“Kate said she was well aware, but the dresses. And the wedding is in four days!” claimed the book. It also alleged that Middleton had “problems with the way Meg was planning her wedding… it went back and forth.” Harry wrote that when he came home, his wife-to-be was “sobbing.”
PRINCE HARRY’S TOP 5 ’60 MINUTES’ BOMBSHELLS
British outlets reported that it was Markle who made Middleton cry. In “Spare,” Harry suggested that his father’s press office likely leaked the story to tabloids. The Duchess of Sussex spoke about the incident during a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
“I don’t think it’s fair to her to get into the details of [the fight], because she apologized,” said Markle at the time. “And I’ve forgiven her. What was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only I didn’t do, but that happened to me. And the people who were part of our wedding going to our comms team and saying, ‘I know this didn’t happen.’”
The alleged incident wasn’t the only moment Middleton’s name was brought up in “Spare.” In 2005, Harry notoriously wore a Nazi uniform to a costume party. He claimed in the book that it was William and Middleton who encouraged the choice of outfit and “howled” with laughter when they saw it.
Meghan Markle was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 2021. The televised sit-down was viewed by nearly 50 million people globally. (AP)
The book’s publisher said “Spare” sold 400,000 copies in the U.K. in all formats – hardback, e-book and audio – on its first day. It is the top-selling book on Amazon’s U.K. site and Amazon.com in the U.S. and is already one of the year’s biggest sellers.
PRINCE HARRY FEARS ‘TABLOID MEDIA’ WILL RADICALIZE ITS READERS INTO CAUSING ‘HARM’ TO HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN
“As far as we know, the only books to have sold more in their first day are those starring the other Harry (Potter),” said Larry Finlay, managing director of Transworld Penguin Random House. The final Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” sold more than 2.5 million copies on its first day of release, in 2007.
A few stores in Britain opened at midnight to sell copies to diehard royal devotees and the merely curious. Many said they wanted to form their own opinion of the book after days of snippets and debate on news sites and television.
Prince Harry’s “Spare” hit bookstores on Tuesday. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
“Spare” is the latest in a string of public pronouncements by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex since they quit royal life in 2020. At the time, they cited what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of the duchess and a lack of support from the palace.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex reside in Montecito, California, with their two children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stephanie Nolasco covers entertainment at Foxnews.com.
The revelations from Prince Harry‘s press tour in promotion of his memoir Spare continue to come out. And the latest set of admissions stem from the duke’s Sunday night interview on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper, in which he revealed the moment he found out from his father King Charles that his mother Princess Diana had died in a car crash.
Cooper recited a passage from Harry’s book, before asking him about his reaction to learning of his mother’s death. “In the book you write, ‘He says, “They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.” These phrases remain in my mind like darts on a board,’ you say. Did you cry?” Cooper questioned. Harry replied, “No. No. Never shed a single tear at that point. I was in shock, you know?”
He continued, “Twelve years old. Sort of — 7, 7:30 in the morning, early. Your father comes in, sits on your bed, puts his hand on your knee and tells you, ‘There’s been an accident.’ I couldn’t believe.”
Anderson also read an excerpt that stated the manner in which King Charles told his son. “You write in the book, ‘Pa didn’t hug me. He wasn’t great at showing emotions under normal circumstances. But his hand did fall once more on my knee and he said, ‘It’s going to be OK.’ But after that, nothing was OK for a long time,’” Anderson read. “No, nothing, nothing was OK,” Harry confirmed.
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The Duke of Sussex also spoke about his disbelief surrounding his mother’s passing. This denial went on for years, Harry told Cooper. “For a long time, I just refused to accept that she was gone,” Harry said. “Part of, you know, she would never do this to us, but also part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.”
Cooper interjected, “You really believed, that maybe she had just decided to disappear for a time?” Harry responded that both he and his brother Prince William believed this. “For a time, and then that she would call us and that we would go and join her, yeah.” It wasn’t until he asked to see the police reports at 20 that he believed she was really gone. Cooper asked Harry why he would want to see photos from the crash. “Mainly proof,” Harry said. “Proof that she was in the car, proof that she was injured, and proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones taking photographs of her lying half-dead on the backseat of the car.”
Prince Harry has made comparisons between his sibling rivalry with Prince William and the relationship between his children, Archie and Lilibet.
Opening up to Tom Bradby in his ITV interview on Sunday, the Duke of Sussex discussed his account of the Prince of Wales in his upcoming memoir, Spare.
When Tom remarked this his account of his brother “begins with deep, deep love”, Harry responded: “Love but also separation. Which I think will really surprise people, the fact that we grew up – I mean our mother was dressing us in the same clothes to start with. William didn’t like that. I think I seem to remember I found it quite funny.
“But the older, younger sort of sibling rivalry as such, now is only really becoming real to me. For instance, I talk about the relationship between William and myself at Eton and the fact that he didn’t really want to know me, and you know, as the younger brother that sucks.”
He continued: “It’s like ‘Come on, you left me at Ludgrove and now I’m here at Eton – now we’re at the same school, let’s go’. He didn’t want anything to do with me and that hurt at the time. But now, well the gap between me and William is very similar to Archie and Lili, and to see Lili obsessed with Archie and Archie like ‘No, no Lili, I need my space, I need my space’, now I get it.
Harry compared Archie and Lilibet’s relationship to his with William
“I get how irritating the younger sibling can be to the older sibling. But in the moment, at the time, I didn’t really grasp that, I didn’t really realise it, but yes, I’ve always loved my brother.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Harry revealed that he has “no intentions” of hurting his brother and father, King Charles, with the revelations from his book. “I love my father. I love my brother. I love my family. I will always do,” he said. “Nothing of what I’ve done in this book or otherwise has ever been to, uh, any intention to harm them or hurt them. You know, the truth is something that I need to rely on.
The interview aired on ITV on Sunday
“After many, many years of lies being told about me and my family, there comes a point where, you know, again, going back to the relationship between certain members of the family and the tabloid press, those certain members have decided to get in the bed with the devil to rehabilitate their image.”
Source: hellomagazine.com
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
Prince Harry is acutely aware of the rumors about his “real father.”
For decades, there’s been speculation thatPrincess Diana‘s former lover James Hewitt is the 38-year-old’s true father (despite the fact that Harry was born in 1984 and the couple’s romance reportedly started in 1987.)
And allegedly, none other than King Charles III would laugh off the paternity claims, according to Harry’s new memoir, Spare.
“Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire,” Harry wrote in the book, per NBC News. He said Charles used to joke, “‘Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!’”
Recalling how Charles would “laugh and laugh,” Harry went on to say it was “a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt.”
“One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism,” Harry shared. “Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn’t the child of Prince Charles. They couldn’t get enough of this ‘joke,’ for some reason. Maybe it made them feel better about their lives that a young prince’s life was laughable.”
However, Harry set the record straight by noting in his memoir, “Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good to drop.”
James Hewitt, now 64, has also denied the claims, suggesting in 2017 that the rumor only continues to circulate because it “sells papers.” He added, “It’s worse for him probably, poor chap.”
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the book’s allegations when contacted by NBC News. (E! is a member of the NBCUniversal family.)
Read on for more bombshells from Prince Harry’s book, out Jan. 10.
Harry Regrets the Last Conversation He Had With His MotherHarry last spoke to his mother hours before the car crash that took her life on Aug. 31, 1997—but he regretfully remembers being too preoccupied to really sit down and talk.When she called earlier that night, “I was running around with Willy and my cousins and didn’t want to stop playing,” he writes. “So I’d been short with her. Impatient to get back to my games, I’d rushed Mummy of the phone. I wished I’d apologized for it. I wished I’d searched for the words to describe how much I loved her. I didn’t know that search would take decades.”The Long Walk at Diana’s FuneralAmid differing opinions over whether Harry, still days away from his 13th birthday, and William, 15, should have to walk behind their mother’s coffin in the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, Harry recalls that another option was considered.”Willy would walk alone. He was fifteen, after all,” Harry writes. “Leave the younger one out of it. Spare the Spare. This alternative plan was sent up the chain. Back came the answer. It must be both princes. To garner sympathy, presumably. Uncle Charles [Spencer, Diana’s brother] was furious. But I wasn’t. I didn’t want Willy to undergo an ordeal like that without me. Had the roles been reversed, he’d never have wanted me—indeed, allowed me—to go it alone.”And so both brothers made the 20-minute walk, with their father, grandfather Prince Philip and their uncle.”I remember feeling numb,” Harry writes. “I remember clenching my fists. I remember keeping a fraction of Willy always in the corner of my vision and drawing loads of strength from that. Most of all I remember the sounds, the clinking bridles and clopping hooves of the six sweaty brown horses, the squeaking wheels of the gun carriage they were hauling. (A relic from the First World War, someone said, which seemed right, since Mummy, much as she loved peace, often seemed a soldier, whether she was warring against the paps or Pa.) I believe I’ll remember those few sounds for the rest of my life, because they were such a sharp contrast to the otherwise all-encompassing silence.”
The Queen’s doctors expressed concern for her health on September 8, 2022, and her family hurried to her side in Balmoral, including Prince Harry, who just so happened to be in the UK with Meghan Markle for a number of events to promote charities. However, Queen Elizabeth passed away prior to his arrival.
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry admits his family did not inform him of the development. He had to find out online.
“When the plane started to descend I saw that my phone lit up. It was a message from Meg: ‘Call me when you get this,’” Harry reportedly writes. “I looked at the BBC website. My grandmother had died. My father was King.”
He promptly arrived at Balmoral to join the other royals, and he stayed in the UK to take part in the recognized days of mourning.
“Granny, while this final parting brings us great sadness, I am forever grateful for all of our first meetings—from my earliest childhood memories with you, to meeting you for the first time as my Commander-in-Chief, to the first moment you met my darling wife and hugged your beloved great-grandchildren,” Prince Harry said in a tribute to his grandmother in September, referencing the Queen’s words: “Life, of course, consists of final partings as well as first meetings.”
He concluded,”I cherish these times shared with you, and the many other special moments in between. You are already sorely missed, not just by us, but by the world over. And as it comes to first meetings, we now honour my father in his new role as King Charles III. Thank you for your commitment to service. Thank you for your sound advice. Thank you for your infectious smile. We, too, smile knowing that you and grandpa are reunited now, and both together in peace.”
Prince Harrymade a lot of revelations in his hugely talked about memoir Spare, mainly focused on his relationships with his family.
However, the Duke of Sussex also gave us an insight into his personal life, and there is lots of talk about his wonderful mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
The father-of-two even revealed one of his mother’s favourite perfumes, and you may be surprised to hear how cheap it is.
Harry reveals Diana’s favourite perfume
Harry name checks ‘First’ by Van Cleef & Arpels, which you can pick up for £33.42 at Fragrance X. The scent is a blend of pink jasmine, aldehydic notes, amber sandalwood and vanilla. Stunning.
This wasn’t the only fragrance the mother-of-two loved. According to online siteCelebrity Fragrance Guide, the blonde beauty had a few favourites that she often spritzed – and one of them was Penhaligon’s ‘Bluebell’, which you can still buy today but is pretty hard to get hold of. Penhaligon’s often takes it off their website from time to time. Normally priced at £386.02 for a l00ml bottle, the fresh and fruity fragrance has citrus headnotes, mixed in with essences of Lily of the Valley, jasmine and rose, as well as a drop of clove and cinnamon.
Diana was also known for her fabulous head of hair, and a product she swore by was Daniel Galvin’s ‘Love Your Highlights Clear Gloss’ and you can still purchase it today, for a mere £18. Amazing!
Daniel explained to HELLO!: “I looked after Diana for 10 years and always wanted to enhance her natural beauty through her hair colour. I customised Diana’s blonde to suit her and the highlights were placed in such a way, which gave her a natural, sunkissed look.
“Diana’s eyes sparkled and stood out, and this was thanks to my bespoke blonde; as I always say when you have the perfect hair colour, the first thing people should notice is their eyes.”
Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and the entire community of Montecito was forced under mandatory evacuation orders by Santa Barbara County officials due to mudslides from a torrential storm.
Ellen DeGeneres shared a video on Instagram of an overflowing creek by her home as she prepared to evacuate from the affluent town roughly 90 miles north of Los Angeles.
“Montecito is under complete evacuation, the entire town,” she said. “This is the five-year anniversary from the fire and mudslides that killed so many people and people lost their homes, their lives. This is crazy … on the five-year anniversary. We are having unprecedented rain.”
The town is also home to Katy Perry, Chris Pratt, Ariana Grande and Jennifer Aniston. Montecito local, Rob Lowe, made his directorial debut with the 2020 movie “Madness in the Hills.” It delved into the devastating 2018 mudslides which killed 23 people after the Thomas Fire burned for more than one month in 2017.
PRINCE HARRY’S TOP 5 ‘60 MINUTE’ BOMBSHELLS
Montecito was ordered to evacuate due to heavy downpours and mudslides.
DeGeneres added, “This creek next to our house never flows – ever. This is probably about nine feet up, and it’s going to go another two feet.”
Prince Harry has made a number of shocking allegations in his bombshell memoir Spare, which finally hit the shelves on 10 January.
As well as detailing an alleged physical assault between him and his brother Prince William and writing about his relationship with his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, Prince Harry opens up about his father, King Charles. Most poignant is an extract dedicated to the monarch’s longest-serving companion – a teddy bear
Prince Harry recalls King Charles taking his teddy “everywhere”, writing that it was the same teddy bear his father took to Gordonstoun – the school where the King was bullied as a boy. His Majesty attended Gordonstoun, a boarding school in Scotland, from the age of 13, following in the footsteps of his father Prince Philip. And speaking on a recent ITV documentary called Charles: Our New King, one of Charles’ former classmates claimed a young Prince Charles was regularly targeted by bullies, and was even physically attacked during a rugby match.
Prince Charles pictured at preparatory school in 1957Harry writes in his autobiography: “Teddy went everywhere with Pa. It was a pitiful object, with broken arms and dangly threads, holes patched up here and there.”He added: “Teddy expressed eloquently, better than Pa ever could, the essential loneliness of hischildhood.“While the idea of the monarch keeping a soft toy from his childhood may seem surprising to some, the act of keeping a sentimental ‘cuddly’ toy is not an unusual practice. A survey carried out in 2019 suggests that 44% of adults still have their childhood teddies and 34% still sleep with their soft toys every night.
Prince Harry recalls his father taking his teddy “everywhere “Speaking exclusively to HELLO!, Principal Psychologist at DH Consulting Dannielle Haig, said: “We often instigate lifelong coping mechanisms in childhood. When things are difficult or anxiety-inducing, humans often use certain behaviours to help ‘self-soothe’ the uncomfortableness.”Some people self-soothe with drinking, smoking, food, or shopping and of course, cuddling teddy bears.”Dannielle added: “There isn’t anything particularly unusual about finding comfort in a teddy bear and it can be far healthier than many other ‘adult’ coping strategies.”
This must be the strangest book ever written by a royal.
Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is part confession, part rant and part love letter. In places it feels like the longest angry drunk text ever sent.
It’s the view from inside what he calls a “surreal fishbowl” and “unending Truman Show”.
It’s disarmingly frank and intimate – showing the sheer weirdness of his often isolated life. And it’s the small details, rather than the set-piece moments, that give a glimpse of how little we really knew.
There are glimpses of him as a royal stoner, smoking a joint after dinner and worrying the smoke was going to blow over to his elderly neighbour the Duke of Kent.
Prince Harry’s memoir hit the bookshelves on Tuesday
What other royal recollection would cover losing his virginity behind a pub, or go into such prolonged detail about a frost-bitten penis? This royal appendage gets more lines than many of his relatives. Maybe there should be a spoiler alert for the special cushion that’s made.
He was also keenly conscious of girls with “throne syndrome”, who would be “visibly fitting herself with a crown the moment she shook my hand”.
Or there’s the story about when he’s in Buckingham Palace during the Golden Jubilee concert and listening to Brian May playing on the roof – and notices his grandmother Queen Elizabeth is wearing earplugs.
His pre-Meghan life in London was ostensibly full of luxury, but it also feels as though he was undercover in his own life.
Harry suffered from appalling panic attacks, awful for anyone, but debilitating for someone expected to speak and appear in public.
He describes his lonely life at home, self-medicating with psychedelic drugs, drying his clothes on a radiator and planning shopping trips like military raids, to be carried out in disguise and at speed.
Princess Diana and Harry: The book describes the trauma he felt at her loss
He doesn’t have an Amazon account, but he hits TK Maxx for clothes, and carries out a weekly food shop in a supermarket, rehearsing exactly where to find his favourite salmon and yoghurts. When he’s in there one day he overhears shoppers debating whether he’s gay.
But it’s a profoundly odd life, moving suddenly between this lack of glamour to time with the international jet set.
Harry says he watches the TV show Friends on a loop, identifying with the funny guy character of Chandler. But then on a trip to the US he is at a party with Courtney Cox, the actress who plays Chandler’s on-screen wife, Monica.
And this really is a trip, because he ends up taking hallucinogenic drugs and watches a pedal-bin coming to life. It’s a long way from the commentary for Trooping the Colour.
The ghost-written work is a fast-paced, quickfire account, looking out from the inside, always scratchily aware of the bodyguards outside the door and the cameras waiting to catch him. As a schoolboy, smoking cannabis with his friends, he watches the police outside there to guard him.
Leaks of the book revealed the scale of the conflict between Prince William and Prince Harry
At the very centre of this story, permeating almost every page, is the huge trauma that seems to have distorted the rest of his life – the death of his mother Princess Diana.
He adored her unreservedly and an overwhelming sense of unresolved grief is at the hub of all his other anxieties, like spokes on a wheel.
He really, really hates the press, blaming them for chasing his mother so relentlessly, including in the events leading to her death in Paris, with Harry returning obsessively to the scene of the car accident.
His anger at the news media is wide ranging, but Rupert Murdoch is singled out in particular and one of his executives is only described in anagram form, so much is his allergic reaction.
The rows with his brother Prince William are often framed by references to the closeness they had previously had with their mother.
His paralysing anxiety and self-destructiveness also seem to be consequences of the loss of his mother, taking away an emotional anchor that, until meeting Meghan, he had never replaced.
King Charles tried to offer support to Harry after the death of his mother
Warning: Some strong language is used in the following paragraphs
There is also something of a death obsession. Going into Westminster Abbey for his brother’s wedding he cheerfully thinks about the 3,000 people buried in the church over the centuries.
What’s missing from the book is any sense of awareness of any wider context of the rest of the world outside. It’s as if he has been blinded by the paparazzi flashlights. No one worries about paying gas bills in this book. He’s back and forth to Africa like he was going a few stops on the Northern Line.
Although, that would have been more exotic for him because he says the only time he got on a Tube train was on a school trip.
While copiously indiscreet about the interior of royal life – yes, that’s his father doing physio exercises in his boxers – it remains strangely silent on any views about the outside world, even though he’s no longer a working royal.
There are some glimpses. Harry talks about Prince William making what he calls a “vaguely anti-Brexit speech” which seems to annoy the tabloids.
“Brexit was their bread and butter. How dare he suggest it was bullshit,” he writes.
The other royals are claimed by Prince Harry to be obsessing over the score sheets of how many visits they’ve carried out compared with other family members, looking over their shoulders in case anyone should question their purpose.
But he is also unmistakably a creature of his own upbringing, describing shooting a deer in a way that doesn’t feel like the new-age therapy version of Californian Harry.
So who will be most upset about all these revelations in his book?
Netflix mostly. They paid a prince’s ransom for six hours of TV waffle and the smug contents of an Instagram feed, whereas the book crackles like a burning log with something bizarre on almost every page.
Plenty of the book will get people irritated too, particularly its self-absorption. He talks about a row over people parking near his palace accommodation with more detail than you’d expect from a small war.
There are some off-the-wall claims too, such as comparing the Spice Girls’ “crusade against sexism” with “Mandela’s struggle against apartheid”.
The leaks of the book have focused on the family conflicts and Harry’s resentment at a lack of support for him and Meghan.
Camilla arrives in the story to become his stepmother, with the narrative exuding a mixture of suspicion and a determined effort to be polite. But mostly suspicion really. It feels a bit divorced dad telling everyone he’s not bitter, he doesn’t mind that he paid for everything, really, not bitter at all, just wishing them both well…
But taken as a whole, beyond the excerpts, a much warmer picture emerges of his father, King Charles, even when it seems that the narrator is giving him a hard time.
Charles is seen padding around in his slippers, listening to his audio-books, obsessed with Shakespeare, wearing Dior scent and falling asleep at his desk. He’s seen as having faced terrible school bullying, still keeping a teddy bear as a totem of a lonely childhood.
His father tries to provide some emotional support for Harry after Diana’s death, sitting up with him until he falls asleep at night, but it feels as though his good intentions had to navigate some tricky barriers.
Charles leaves notes for him trying to say nice things – but Harry questions why he couldn’t say them in person. He goes to see Harry in a school play and laughs uproariously and is then criticised by his son for laughing in the wrong places.
When the adult brothers are feuding, Charles begins to sound like something of a Shakespearean figure himself, King Lear in tweed, begging his sons not to make his old age a misery.
The King is presented as old fashioned and rather unworldly. But he might be learning a new bit of text speak. TMI. Too much information…
Accusations that Prince Harry boasted about killing 25 Taliban fighters while on duty in Afghanistan have been called a “dangerous lie,” according to Prince Harry.
Several military leaders criticized the prince for bringing up murders in Spare, claiming it was improper to refer to the deceased as “chess pieces.”
Harry, however, claimed on US television that the media misinterpreted what he said and threatened his family with the misinterpretation.
He also defended his remarks by saying that his goal was to lower veteran suicide.
Spare, which was published on Tuesday, has become the fastest-selling non-fiction book ever in the UK.
Some 400,000 copies of the memoir have been bought, despite many excerpts being leaked in the press ahead of its official release.
In a wide-ranging interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show – the first conducted after details from the book were published – Harry suggested there had been attempts to undermine his book, spoke of his fractured relationship with his brother, and attacked the “bigoted” British press.
Harry said writing the book had been a “cathartic” experience and the “most vulnerable I have ever been in my life”, while also leaving him feeling stronger.
But he added: “The last few days have been hurtful and challenging, not being able to do anything about those leaks.”
In his condemnation of the media coverage, Harry claimed outlets had intentionally chosen to “strip away the context” of his account.
“Without a doubt, the most dangerous lie that they have told, is that I somehow boasted about the number of people I killed in Afghanistan,” he said.
“If I heard anyone boasting about that kind of thing, I would be angry. But it’s a lie.
“It’s really troubling and very disturbing that they can get away with it… My words are not dangerous – but the spin of my words are very dangerous to my family. That is a choice they’ve made.”
He said he had wanted to be honest about his experience inAfghanistan, and to give veterans the space to share theirs “without any shame”.
“My whole goal and my attempt with sharing that detail is to reduce the number of [veteran] suicides,” he added.
Harry also claimed Buckingham Palace attempted to undermine the stories told in his memoir, assisted by the British press.
No names were mentioned but host Colbert asked if there had been attempts by the palace to undermine the book.
“Of course, and mainly by the British press,” he replied, without going into more detail.
In lighter moments during the interview, Harry drank Tequila with Colbert, joked that it felt like “group therapy” and performed a skit introducing the show with Hollywood actor Tom Hanks.
Image caption,Harry served as an Apache helicopter pilot in 2012-13
In Spare, Prince Harry reveals for the first time that he killed 25 enemy fighters during two tours in the Helmand region of Afghanistan.
“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed,” he writes.
“When I was plunged into the heat and confusion of battle, I didn’t think about those as 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people.
“In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces taken off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys.”
Subsequent media coverage of the comments, which were leaked to the press ahead of the book’s publication, drew criticism from figures in the military.
Ex-army officer Col Richard Kemp, who oversaw forces in Afghanistan, told the BBC he was concerned at references to dead Taliban insurgents as chess pieces, saying such descriptions could give “propaganda to the enemy”.
And Ex-colonel Tim Collins, who gained worldwide fame for an eve-of battle speech to troops in Iraq, said: “He has badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”
The first of Prince Harry’s television interviews to promote his contentious new book, Spare, has already aired in the UK.
The prince and journalist Tom Bradby had a sit-down interview, which ITV aired on Sunday. Harry’s rift with the royal family, his learning of his mother Princess Diana’s passing in a 1997 car accident, and his hopes that he and wife Meghan Markle would collaborate closely with Prince William and Kate Middleton—a dream he admits was quickly dashed—were all topics of discussion during the men’s conversation.
Harry, 38, claimed that when accompanying his brother and sister-in-law on outings, he had occasionally been a “third wheel.”
“I had put a lot of hope in the idea that, you know, it’d be William and Kate and me and whoever,” he told Bradby. “I thought … the four of us would, you know, bring me and William closer together, we could go out and do work together, which I did a lot as the third wheel to them, which was fun at times but also, I guess, slightly awkward at times as well.”
But after meeting his future wife, then starring on the series Suits, he realized that things weren’t going to go quite so smoothly.
“I don’t think they were ever expecting me to get … into a relationship with someone like Meghan who had, you know, a very successful career,” Prince Charles’s younger son shared, adding that Meghan’s outsider status and fame led to a “a lot of stereotyping.”
“There was a lot of stereotyping that was happening, that I was guilty of as well, at the beginning,” Harry said, noting that this caused a “barrier” to his family “welcoming” the actress into their circle.
When asked to specify what stereotypes Meghan , who divorced producer Trevor Engelson in 2014, was subjected to, Harry responded: “American actress, divorced, biracial.”
“There’s all different parts to that and what that can mean but if you are, like a lot of my family do, if you are reading the press, the British tabloids, at the same time as living the life, then there is a tendency where you could actually end up living in the tabloid bubble rather than the actual reality,” he continued.
Prior to his 2018 wedding, Harry said that his older brother “aired some worries.”
It was the British press, he said, that branded the two royal couples as “the fab four,” something that bred “competition” rather than connection.
“The idea of the four of us being together was always a hope for me,” he said. “Before it was Meghan, whoever it was going to be, I always hoped that the four of us would get on. But very quickly it became Meghan versus Kate. And that, when it plays out so publicly, you can’t hide from that, right? Especially when within my family you have the newspapers laid out pretty much in every single palace and house that is around.”
The interview also saw Harry clarifying to longtime confidant Bradby that he and Meghan never accused the royal family of racism, despite revealing in their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey that there had been speculation as to what their son Archie’s skin color might be. “Having lived within that family,” Harry said, he attributed the comments to “unconscious bias” rather than racism.
The Duke of Sussex claims in his memoir that Queen Elizabeth II’s response to his request for her approval to marry Meghan was “cryptic.”
Prince Harry was unsure whether his grandmother was trying to tell him she wanted to refuse his request, was being sarcastic or playing word games.
The Duke feared he was “doomed to be the next Margaret”, he writes, in reference to his great aunt, Princess Margaret, who was not allowed to marry the love of her life, divorcee Peter Townsend.
The Duke recounts the moment he plucked up the courage to ask the Queen in his forthcoming book, Spare, which is officially published on Tuesday but was released early in Spain.
He admits he was “scared” and always nervous in her presence. And the moment was made even more awkward when the Queen simply replied: “Well then I suppose I have to say yes.”
Harry had no idea what she was saying.
‘She felt she had to say yes?’
He writes: “She felt she had to say yes? Did that mean that she was saying yes, but wanted to say no?
“I didn’t understand. Was she being sarcastic? Ironic? Deliberately cryptic? Was she allowing herself a bit of wordplay? I don’t remember my grandmother being a fan of wordplay and this would have been the strangest time to start being one (without mentioning tremendously inappropriate).”
The Duke had earlier confided in his aides, Ed Lane Fox and Jason Knauf, that he wanted to propose but was told there were “strict rules” governing such things and that first and foremost, he would have to ask his grandmother.
Harry suggests he was taken aback by the suggestion, asking if that was a “real rule”.
“It didn’t make any sense,” he writes. “A grown man asking his grandmother for permission to marry.”
However, he recalls the “absurdity” of his father, then 56, having to ask permission to marry the Queen Consort.
The Duke picked an October 2017 family shooting trip at Sandringham to make his move.
He opted not to tell Prince William of his plans because he had already warned him against it. “Too fast, too soon,” he is alleged to have said.
Harry claims his brother was “pretty discouraging” about him dating an “American actress” at all, implying that her nationality and profession was akin to being a “convicted criminal”.
Prince Harry claims his brother was ‘discouraging’ about him marrying an ‘American actress’ – KIRSTY O’CONNOR/AFP
On the day in question, he watched the late Queen drive a Range Rover into the middle of a field to look for dead birds, alone and with no security.
“I tried to engage her in some light chat to loosen her up,” he writes.
“The full seriousness of all this was finally starting to sink in.”
The Duke muses over what would happen if his grandmother said no. Would he dare to disobey her or would he have to end his relationship with Meghan?
“This moment was either the start of my life or the end,” he says. “It would all come down to the words I chose, how I delivered them and how granny heard them.”
With a dead bird in each hand, he chased after the Queen as she approached her vehicle, surrounded by hunting dogs.
“I needed to get to it without one more second of hesitation,” he writes.
“I saw her waiting for me to speak, and not waiting patiently.
“Her expression screamed: ‘Out with it.’”
Agonisingly long pause
He says: “Granny, you already know that I love Meg a lot, and I have decided that I’d like to ask her to marry me, and they’ve told me that… well…. I have to get your authorisation before asking for her hand.”
She replies: “You have to do that?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s what your people have said and mine too.”
The Duke reveals her expression was impenetrable during an agonisingly long pause.
Eventually, she replies: “Well then I suppose I have to say yes.”
He finally realises that she has given him permission to marry and “splutters” thank you.
He was desperate to hug her, he says, but did not. Instead, he helped her into the vehicle and they made their way back to the rest of the family.
As soon as Prince Harry’s memoir was on sale, bookstores all around London opened at midnight to fulfill the demand.
Fans queuing to buy a hardback copy described wanting to hear the story “from the horse’s mouth”.
It follows the chaotic launch of Spare with multiple leaks and copies being made available in Spain last week.
Waterstones says Prince Harry’s book has been one of its “biggest pre-order titles for a decade”.
The booksellers opened their flagship Piccadilly branch early on Tuesday in expectation of high customer demand, as the book was published around the world in 16 languages.
Branches of WH Smith in locations including Euston, Victoria, Heathrow and Gatwick were also among those to extend their hours for the release.
The memoir is already top of the best sellers in the UK for online retailer Amazon, after days of headline-grabbing revelations from leaks – ranging from how Prince Harry lost his virginity to claims that Prince Harry was attacked by his brother, Prince William.
The 410-page memoir, revealing the conflict and personal tensions inside royal palaces, shows Prince Harry’s version of growing up and then falling out with the Royal Family.
So far Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have not responded.
But the claims in the book include that Prince Harry begged his father not re-marry, that he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving in Afghanistan, that he took psychedelic drugs, partly in response to panic attacks, and that Meghan and Catherine had a difficult relationship.
Image caption, The book paints a picture of the brothers, “Harold” and “Willy” being in conflict
A major theme in the book is the sense of unresolved grief for the loss of his mother, Princess Diana, with Prince Harry saying he had a “post-traumatic stress injury”.
The press are held responsible for pursuing Diana and Prince Harry said in one of several interviews promoting the book that it would be his “life’s work” to change the media landscape.
There are also unexpected details such as Prince Harry and Prince William calling each other “Harold” and “Willy”, that Harry used to get his clothes at discount outlet TK Maxx and watched a lot of Friends on television.
Prince Harry recalls he first found out from the BBC website that the late Queen Elizabeth had died, rather than from his family.
There are also references to King Charles’ teddy bear – which his father took to Gordonstoun, the school where he was bullied as a child – described by Harry as a pitiful object that expressed “the essential loneliness of his childhood”.
Members of the Royal Family have been omitted from the acknowledgements section of the book. Instead, the duke gives special thanks to friends in the UK “who stuck by” him “amongst the fog”, adding: “Next round’s on me.”
Harry also says his therapist helped him “unravel years of unresolved trauma”.
The revelations about tensions with the Royal Family, including Camilla, the Queen Consort, and the Prince and Princess of Wales, have provoked much controversy.
But Prince Harry said the divide between him and his family “couldn’t [have been] greater before this book” when asked if its publication would help with, or hinder, the chance of reconciliation.
“There are things that will still anger me, but I’m not angry any more, because I am exactly where I am supposed to be,” he told Good Morning America.
In response to the passing of his mother, Diana, the Princess of Wales, in 1997, Prince Harry has disclosed he cried just once.
Prince Harry describes how he and Prince William were unable to express any emotion as they visited mourners in public in a new interview clip to promote the release of his autobiography Spare.
He admitted to crying during his mother’s funeral to Tom Bradby of ITV.
The Duke of Sussex said he had felt “some guilt” walking among crowds who left flowers outside Kensington Palace.
The book is not due to be published until 10 January, but extracts were leaked after some copies went on sale early in Spain. BBC News has obtained a copy and has been translating it.
In the ITV interview, due to be broadcast on Sunday evening, Prince Harry said “everyone knows where they were” when his mother died in a car crash in Paris in August 1997.He said he had looked back on the footage of him and his brother meeting mourners a few days later.
“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail [in Spare] about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace,” he said.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling…
“And the wet hands that we were shaking, we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.”
Prince Harry adds: “Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.”
Spare includes details of Prince Harry’s walk behind his mother’s coffin at her funeral, where crowds reached out to him and how he felt unable to cry in public.
He also writes about getting a driver to take him through the road tunnel in Paris where his mother died, hoping for closure from a “decade of unrelenting pain”.
And he says his father did not hug him when he broke the news Princess Diana had died, sitting on his bed in Balmoral.
Image caption, A number of sensational claims from Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare have leaked out ahead of its publication
Prince Harry’s ITV interview will be the first of four broadcast appearances to be aired over the coming days to promote Spare. He also spoke to three US TV networks – Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes on CBS News on Sunday night, Michael Strahan of Good Morning America on Monday and Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on CBS on Tuesday.
Among the other revelations in Spare are a claim by Prince Harry that he was physically attacked by his brother; information on how Harry lost his virginity; details about drug taking; and a claim he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving in Afghanistan.
A number of high-profile military veterans have criticised his claim of killing Taliban fighters.
Ex-colonel Tim Collins, best known for delivering the Eve-of-Battle speech during the Iraq War in which he called on his officers to “show respect”, said Prince Harry had “badly let the side down” and “we don’t do notches on the rifle butt”.
Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have both said they will not comment on the contents of the book.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they would be stepping back from their senior royal duties in 2020, saying they intended to become financially independent.
In February last year, they spoke to Oprah Winfrey about their difficult relationship with other members of the royal family, and a Netflix documentary.
The Taliban administration has declared that Duke of Sussex Prince Harry, who has admitted to killing 25 Afghan soldiers, will appear before the International Court.
The Taliban’s police spokesman, Khalid Zadran, made this declaration on Friday in Kabul, the nation’s capital.
The Telegraph reports that Zadran responded to Prince Harry’s admission that he killed 25 Taliban fighters while operating an Apache helicopter during the conflict.
The Duke of Sussex described how he flew six sorties during his second tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2012 and killed 25 Taliban in his upcoming biography, Spare.
Reacting, the Taliban official said, “Prince Harry will always be remembered in Helmand – Afghans will never forget the killing of their innocent countrymen.”
“The perpetrators of such crimes will one day be brought to the international court and criminals like Harry who proudly confess their crimes will be brought to the court table in front of the international community.”
Zadran added that Prince Harry’s description of those he had killed as “chess pieces” and that he was “neither proud nor ashamed” of his actions, was “cruel”, “barbaric” and that such actions had legitimised the Taliban’s deadly insurgency against NATO troops in Afghanistan.
“Occupying forces in Afghanistan used to start operations under nightfall on our villages. Prince Harry was involved in this and he has taken the lives of dozens of defenseless Afghans,” said Zadran.
“The cruel and barbaric actions of Harry and others aroused the Afghan population and led to an armed uprising against them. We call this kind of uprising holy jihad,” he added.
According to a veteran British commander, Prince Harry’s comments about murdering Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have damaged his reputation.
In his memoir, the Duke of Sussex describes his 25 kills as “chess pieces taken off the board”.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former army officer, told the BBC that Harry’s remarks were “ill-judged.”
He stated that the comments might have jeopardized his security and aroused retaliation.
In his biography Spare, which BBC News has a copy of after it went on sale early in Spain, Prince Harry goes into depth about his time serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
After two deployments in the country’s Helmand province, he makes the first public admission in it that he killed 25 enemy combatants.
“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed,” he writes.
“When I was plunged into the heat and confusion of battle, I didn’t think about those as 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people.
“In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces taken off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys.
“They trained me to ‘other’ them and they trained me well.”
Prior to beginning his second longer tour while piloting Apache helicopters, Harry temporarily worked as a forward air controller on the ground calling in strikes.
Responding to the prince’s comments, a senior Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted: “Mr Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return…
“I don’t expect that the (International Criminal Court) will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you.”
The US and its Nato allies invaded in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, whom they said were harbouring Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda figures linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Col Kemp, who was sent to Kabul in 2003 to take command of forces in Afghanistan, said the Taliban insurgents killed were bad people and he did not have a problem with Prince Harry revealing his kill number – but took issue with the way Harry suggested Taliban insurgents were seen by the army as “sub-human and just as chess pieces to be knocked over”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “I think he’s wrong when he says in his book that insurgents were seen just as being virtually unhuman – subhuman perhaps – just as chess pieces to be knocked over.
“That’s not the case at all. And it’s not the way the British Army trains people as he claims…
“I think that sort of comment that doesn’t reflect reality, is misleading and potentially valuable to those people who wish the British forces and British government harm, so I think it was an error of judgement.”
In defense of Harry, he claimed that the prince should be “proud” of his kill total because of the “effective impact” it would have had on the campaign, his bravery in the field, and the way he has supported wounded soldiers.
However, he warned that it would make the duke’s security issues worse and might “provoke attempt revenge” among those who support the Taliban.
Adam Holloway, the Conservative MP for Gravesham who fought in Iraq for the British Army, wrote in the Spectator that many soldiers did not think it was appropriate to publicise their kill count.
“It’s not about macho codes. It’s about decency and respect for the lives you have taken,” he wrote.
Ben McBean, who lost an arm and a leg serving with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan and was described by Prince Harry as a hero after the pair met at several events, said the royal needed to “shut up”.
He wrote on Twitter: “Love you #PrinceHarry but you need to shut up! Makes you wonder the people he’s hanging around with.
“If it was good people somebody by now would have told him to stop.”
Another serviceman still serving told the BBC Harry’s comments were “very unsoldier-like”.
The soldier, who’s done several tours of Afghanistan, said he would struggle to work out how many “kills” he had been directly involved in – without access to all the specific patrol reports. Lots of people firing roughly in the same direction would make it harder to tell too.
And like many military personnel he said he had no interest in keeping count. More often it is those who write books who seem to take more of an interest in their kill statistics.
Harry in his role as a helicopter pilot would have had a better view than most from his cockpit – seeing individuals up close using sensors and screens.
He would also see the impact of his cannon and hellfire missiles – although clarity would be soon obscured by dust – and he would be able to review footage from the cockpit. But it is not always possible to count bodies on the ground or to distinguish between someone injured or killed.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would not comment on the appropriateness of the prince’s 25 kills claim, but added he was “enormously grateful to our armed forces”.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson, when asked about the prince’s kill number, said: “We do not comment on operational details for security reasons.”
TheDuke of Sussex has been open about his strained relationships with members of the royal family, however, there was a time when he once shared a close bond with his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, over the years.
The pair have known each other since they were teenagers with Kate having met Harry’s brother, Prince William, while they were studying at the University of St Andrews.
As a royal girlfriend, she joined her future husband William on family holidays with King Charles and Harry. And at the Order of the Garter ceremony in Windsor in 2008, Harry made sure that Kate felt at ease at such a public outing by making her laugh.
When William and Kate announced their engagement in 2010, Harry was delighted for the pair, telling German newspaper Bild: “I’ve always wanted a sister and now I’ve got one. I’ve known Kate for years, and it’s fantastic that she is becoming part of the family.”
Take a look at Prince Harry and Kate’s sweetest photos together in HELLO!‘s gallery…
At the Thanksgiving service to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 at St Paul’s Cathedral, the then-Duchess appeared to get the giggles when her brother-in-law leaned in to whisper to her.
The royal family played a huge role in supporting Team GB at the London 2012 Olympics, and an excitable Harry and Kate, along with William, watched the Olympic torch relay outside Buckingham Palace.
When William, Kate and Harry shared a joint household, they would often carry out engagements together. One of our favourite events was when the trio visited the Harry Potter film set at Warner Bros. Studios in 2013. They laughed as they played with wands during their tour.
The Princess was also pregnant with her eldest child, Prince George, at the time, and Harry has previously spoken about his love for his nephews, George and Prince Louis, and niece, Princess Charlotte, telling The Daily Mail: “They are the most amazing things ever.”
We wonder what Harry said to his sister-in-law to make her giggle so much on the balcony of Buckingham Palace as they attended Trooping the Colour in 2014. The pair often share a carriage in the procession, usually with Queen Consort Camilla, and then later with Harry’s wife Meghan Markle.
William, Harry and Kate were all hysterical with laughter as they tried ‘welly wanging’, with children and representatives from charities and Aardman Animations, during a meeting of the Charities Forum at BAFTA in 2015.
Prince Harry was just weeks away from becoming a father for the first time in April 2019 when he joined Kate at the Anzac Day service. The pair stepped out together for the service, chatting and laughing as they arrived at Westminster Abbey.
In the end, when relationships were already broken, Kate was seen walking with Harry towards Windsor Castle following Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021. At the time, their reunion went viral as it appeared Kate was trying to be a bridge between the two brothers.
Over a year later, shortly after the Queen’s death, the Prince and Princess of Wales made an appearance in Winsdor and were surprisingly reunited with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for the emotional outing. Harry and Meghan joined the pair after the Prince of Wales personally extended an invitation to them. Crowds broke into applause seeing the royals couples together with William, Kate and Meghan shaking hands with members of the public.
Prince Harry has described how Meghan Markle, who was then dating him, knelt beside Princess Diana’s grave and prayed for guidance.
He remembered the first time she visited Diana’s final burial place on the Althorp estate in his explosive memoir Spare, which went on sale early in Spain yesterday.
On the 20th anniversary of his mother’s passing, Harry recalled how they traveled by boat to the island where she is buried.
He had a moment to himself to contemplate before he realized Meghan too needed some alone time.
‘When I returned, she was on her knees with her eyes closed and her palms flat against the stone,’ he said, adding that she’d told him she’d asked Diana for ‘clarity and guidance’.
The visit happened in August 2017, around a year after the pair started dating.
When he visited the Queen’s body at Balmoral hours after she passed away, Prince Harry says his farewell words to her.
At her childhood home of Althorp House in Northamptonshire, the late Princess was put to rest in 1997. The burial was rededicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2017 in advance of the 20th anniversary of her passing.
Following his father’s passing in 1992, Earl Spencer received the family estate of Althorp, where he now resides with his third wife, Karen, and their daughter, Lady Charlotte.
Prince Harry has mentioned how Meghan makes him think of his late mother.
In the couple’s bombshell Netflix series, released last month, he said: ‘So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mum.
‘She has the same compassion. She has the same empathy. She has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.’
In a preview for his interview with Tom Bradby of ITV, Harry made some brand-new revelations today.
The Duke of Sussex described William’s ‘red mist’ in a fight over Meghan before admitting that he took cannabis, magic mushrooms and cocaine in another clip from his ITV interview, out on Sunday.
In addition, Harry insisted to Mr. Bradby that he wants to make amends with his family, despite the fact that the King has been hurt by his memoir and that it has caused the Royal Family’s deepest crisis since the passing of his mother in 1997.
Harry claimed that the army instructed him not to see Taliban members as actual individuals, according to The Telegraph, which got an excerpt from the book. He continued by saying that his kill total as a pilot of an Apache assault helicopter is “neither proud nor ashamed.”
Prince Harry in his upcoming memoir ‘Spare,’ wrote that he killed more than two dozen people in Afghanistan during his time as a soldier hunting Taliban extremists.
According to The Telegraph, which obtained an excerpt from the book, Harry said the army taught him not to view members of the Taliban as people. He further stated that he is “neither proud nor ashamed” of his kill count as an Apache attack helicopter pilot.
Harry, the Duke of Sussex, served in Afghanistan first as a forward air controller in air raids from 2007-2008, then flying the attack helicopter between 2012 and 2013.
The 38-year-old is due to release a book, Spare, in the next week, in which he revealed that he undertook six missions as a pilot that led to him “taking human lives”.
According to the report, Harry said he was neither proud nor ashamed of doing so. He also described eliminating the targets as removing “chess pieces” from a board.
“My number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.
The prince explained his justification for his actions because of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and meeting the families of the victims.
He said those responsible and their sympathisers were “enemies of humanity” and fighting them was an act of vengeance for a crime against humanity.
The US-led foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of military occupation that left tens of thousands of people dead, mostly civilians.
In the already controversial book to be published on January 10, Harry talked for the first time about the number of Taliban fighters he killed during his service.
Prince Harry’s autobiography ‘Spare’ is not due out until next week but it dominated headlines on Thursday after a Spanish-language version of the memoir mistakenly went on sale.
The book was hurriedly withdrawn from shelves in Spain but not before copies were obtained by media outlets, who pored over its contents and published key excerpts.
They include how Harry was allegedly physically attacked by his older brother, Prince William, in a blazing 2019 row about his wife, Meghan Markle. He wrote that his fight with William came after his brother called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
The memoir also touches on his strained relationship with his father, King Charles III, as well as disclosures about how he was told of the death of his mother Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997, and his use of cocaine as a teenager.
Prince Harry has written about the moment he learned his mother, Princess Diana, had been killed in a car accident.
Spare, details a series of revelations in which Harry admits to using cocaine and discusses how he lost his virginity.
When his mother died, he was woken up by his father, who “sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on my knee,” he wrote.
“My dear son, mum has had a car accident,” he says Charles said.
“There have been complications. Mum has been seriously injured and has been taken to hospital, my dear son.”
The book added: “He would always call me ‘dear son’, but he was repeating it a lot.
“He spoke quietly. It gave me the impression he was in shock.”
Diana died in 1997 following a car crash in Paris.
The book Spare was mistakenly put on shelves in Spain, five days ahead of the official release date – but Sky News has obtained a copy.
Image:From left: The then Prince Charles, William, the then Duchess of Cornwall and Harry
‘Don’t remarry’
Prince Harry also says in his new book that he asked his father not to marry Camilla.
The Duke of Sussex also talks about the moment he was told his mother had a car accident, amongst a number of other revelations.
Speaking about his father marrying Camilla, the prince writes: “That’s why when the question came, Willy and I promised our father that we would welcome Camilla to the family. The only thing we asked for in return was that he didn’t marry her. ‘You don’t need to get married again’ we asked him.”
Image:Harry in Afghanistan in 2012
Harry killed 25 people in Afghanistan
In Spare, the duke also said that he killed 25 people while serving inAfghanistan.
Writing about his two tours of duty, the Prince, who spent 10 years in the Army, said: “So my number: twenty-five. It was not something that filled me with satisfaction, but I was not ashamed either. Naturally, I would have preferred not to have that figure on my military resume, or in my head, but I would also have preferred to live in a world without the Taliban, a world without war.”
Prince claims he was dissuaded from asking for Diana investigation
Harry also claims in his memoir that he and his brother William were dissuaded from jointly asking for an investigation into their mother’s death.
He wrote: “Especially the summary conclusion, that our mother’s driver was drunk and, as a result, that was the only cause of the accident. It was simplistic and absurd. Even if the man had been drinking, even if he had been drunk, he wouldn’t have had any problem driving through such a short tunnel.
“Unless paparazzi were following him and dazzled him. Why had those paparazzi got off lightly? Why weren’t they in prison? Who had sent them? And why weren’t those people in jail either? What other reason could there be apart from corruption and cover-ups being the order of the day? We agreed on all those questions, and also what we should do next. We would issue a statement, asking jointly for the investigation to be reopened. We might call a press conference. Those who decided dissuaded us.”
Harry admits he took cocaine
In the book, he also admitted that he took cocaine, spoke about how he lost his virginity and claimed his brother physically attacked him during a row over his marriage to Meghan Markle.
Speaking about using cocaine,Prince Harry said “it wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy”.
Harry described losing his virginity as “a humiliating episode with an older lady”.
He said it was “with an older lady, who loved horses very much and treated me like a young stallion”.
The excerpt read: “‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and held me back… one of my mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us’.”
Whether Prince Harry will be present at his father’s coronation in May is not made clear in the most recent trailer for an upcoming TV interview. When asked if he will play a role in the monarchy’s future, he says he still believes in it but says, “I don’t know.”
The “door is always open” to his family for reconciliation, according to Prince Harry, but “the ball is in their court.”
In the most recent ITV clip, when asked if he would be at his father’s coronation in May, the young man responds, “There’s a lot that can happen between now and then.”
“But you know, the door is always open. The ball is in their court.
“There is a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they are willing to sit down and talk about it.”
Harry says: “I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better.”
Put to him that some people would say he has railed against invasions of his privacy all his life – and now he is invading the privacy of his nearest and dearest without permission – Harry replies: “That would be the accusation… from the people that don’t understand, or don’t want to believe, that my family have been briefing the press.”
Asked if he believes in the monarchy, the prince says, “yes”, but when further pressed if he will play a part in its future, he replies: “I don’t know.”
It comes after a leaked extract of his highly anticipated autobiography, Spare, to The Guardian newspaper, reportedly claims he was physically attacked by his brother over the younger prince’s marriage to Meghan.
‘I landed on the dog’s bowl… the pieces cutting into me’
The incident allegedly took place at Nottingham Cottage in 2019 when Harry was living there and started when William arrived and complained about the American actress.
He goes on to allege William had called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
The Duke of Sussex claims the Prince of Wales was being irrational, leading to the siblings shouting over each other and exchanging insults.
“It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me,” Harry reportedly wrote in the book.
“I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out,” the excerpt continued.
‘Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare’
Harry alleges William urged him to hit back but he refused. Shortly afterwards though, the elder brother apologised, according to The Guardian’s copy.
William then told his brother not to tell Meghan about the confrontation. Harry said: “You mean that you attacked me?” – to which William replied: “I didn’t attack you, Harold.”
According to The Guardian, Harry also recounts in the book what his father said to his mother Diana on the day of his birth.
Harry claims the King told the then Princess of Wales: “Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare – my work is done.”
Sky News has approached Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, and both said they will not be commenting on the allegations.
The video you are trying to watch cannot be viewed from your current country or locationPrince Harry wants his father ‘back’
‘They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile’
In a trailer released earlier this week for the upcoming ITV interview by journalist Tom Bradby, Harry says: “I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back”.
Filmed in California where the duke now lives, he says “I want a family, not an institution” and “they’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile”.
“It never needed to be this way,” says the duke, and refers to “the leaking and the planting”.
The interview will be broadcast on Sunday – two days before Harry’s autobiography Spare is published on 10 January.
In a separate interview with CBS News, due to air the same day, Harry criticises Buckingham Palace over an alleged failure to defend him and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, before they stepped down as senior royals.
Last month, the couple’s Netflix documentary series contained new allegations against the Royal Family, as the Sussexes also hit out at their treatment at the hands of the media.
Prince Harry has alleged that his brother Prince William physically assaulted him, according to the Guardian, which claims to have read a copy of the duke’s upcoming memoir, Spare.
The newspaper reported that the book sets out an argument between the pair over Prince Harry’s wife Meghan.
“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor,” the Guardian quotes Prince Harry as writing.
BBC News has not seen a copy of Spare.
The memoir will not be published until next Tuesday, but the Guardian said it obtained a copy amid what it called “stringent pre-launch security”.
According to the Guardian, the book says the row was sparked by comments Prince William made to Prince Harry at his London home in 2019.
Prince Harry, the paper says, writes that his brother was critical of his marriage to Meghan Markle – and that Prince William described her as “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
The Duke of Sussex reportedly writes that his brother was “parrot[ing] the press narrative” as the confrontation escalated.
Prince Harry is said to describe what happened next, including an alleged physical altercation.
“He set down [a glass of] water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast.
“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
“I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”
Martin Pengelly, a journalist for the Guardian’s US website who wrote its story, said he did not approach Prince William’s communication team.
The reporter said that his article is “a report on Harry’s book, which he’s written, it’s Harry’s account”.
Mr Pengelly told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We carefully, obviously in reporting it, didn’t call it a fight because Harry says he didn’t fight back.”
Prince Harry writes that his brother urged him to hit back and he refused to do so, according to the Guardian, but Prince William later looked “regretful, and apologised”.
Photographs suggest Prince Harry regularly wore a dark necklace at events such as the Invictus Games, and on foreign tours with Meghan, as recently as September 2019.
Image caption, Prince Harry, wearing a distinctive dark necklace, alongside Meghan in South Africa, months before they stepped back from royal duties
While publishers at Penguin Random House are yet to confirm whether the leaked excerpts from the book are genuine, Prince Harry has recently spoken of his troubled relationship with his brother.
In the couple’s Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary, Prince Harry describes a meeting he attended with his brother, and father, the now King.
Prince Harry described the conference in early 2020, which was also attended by the late Queen, as “terrifying”.
“It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in,” he said.
The Guardian says Prince Harry details a meeting with Charles, then Prince of Wales, and Prince William after the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Phillip, in April 2021.
According to the paper, Prince Harry writes his father stood between him and Prince William, and said “please, boys, don’t make my final years a misery”.
In a trailer for a sit-down interview, which will be broadcast on 8 January ahead of the book release, the prince said: “I would like to get my father back, I would like to have my brother back”.
However, Prince Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby “they’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile,” although it was not clear who he was referring to.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on this.
Spare, ghostwritten by memoirist JR Moehringer and part of a multi-million dollar book deal, was previously believed to be subject to the upmost secrecy with few details known about its content.
“For Harry, this is his story at last,” Penguin Random House said in a publicity statement back in October.
“With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
Welcome book lovers! It’s that time of year to cosy up and feast your eyes on the luscious literary offerings for the year ahead.
We’ve rounded up a select few of 2023’s major titles (apologies to those who missed the cut but this article may otherwise have ended up longer than War and Peace).
First up, it’s memoirs and we kick off the year with a certain Prince Harry‘s autobiography, Spare, a reference to the phrase “the heir and the spare”, one assumes.
It’s expected to include the Prince’s full account behind his decision to give up royal duties and move to the US (although after Oprah and a six-hour Netflix documentary, how much more can be left to reveal?)
While it promises “raw, unflinching honesty”, we’ll have to wait and see just how many bridges it will burn back in the UK when it’s published. Released 10 January, Penguin.
Other biographies of note include that of renowned children’s author and poet Michael Rosen, who shares his story and life lessons in Getting Better. If anyone knows how to build resilience, it’s Rosen, who here explores both his grief at losing a child and his long battle against Covid-19. 2 February, Penguin.
Blake Morrison‘s groundbreaking confessional memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? was published nearly 30 years ago and his latest book comes out on its anniversary.
Two Sisters tackles the guilt and shame familiar to many who have a family member with an addiction – Blake’s sister Gill struggled with alcoholism – while he also unearths the story behind his half-sister Josie. 16 February, HarperCollins.
On a lighter note, from Studio 54 to Sex and the City, fashion stylist Patricia Field tells all in her memoir Pat in the City – get it? HarperCollins, 14 February.
Actor and trans advocate Elliot Page will also release a coming-of-age memoir. 6 June, Penguin.
Fiction
Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone was made into a Netflix series
One of the most talked about forthcoming books in literary circles is Kevin Jared Hosain‘s Hungry Ghosts, an epic saga about two contrasting families living in 1940s Trinidad who become embroiled in a number of mysterious and disturbing events.
The late, great Hilary Mantel described it as “deeply impressive” while fellow Booker winner Bernadine Evaristo said it is an “astonishing novel”. Bloomsbury, 16 February.
There’s more historical fiction from Kate Morton in Homecoming, which is set in her native Australia. An unsolved murder case dating back to the 1950s is thrust back into the spotlight when journalist Jess starts digging around in her nan’s Sydney home 60 years later. PanMacmillan, 13 April.
If contemporary fiction is more your thing, you could do worse than pick up a copy of RF Kuang‘s Yellow Face, a shocking satirical thriller set in the cut-throat world of publishing. It tackles identity politics, toxic friendships and cultural appropriation with razor-sharp humour and pace. HarperCollins, 25 May.
For fantasy fans, Hell Bent is the highly anticipated sequel to Leigh Bardugo‘s Ninth House. It sees the return of high school dropout Alex Stern in another fantastical tale of magic, monsters and violence with plenty of twists to keep you guessing. 10 January, Gollancz Publishing.
Balli Kaur Jaswal‘s Now You See Us is also enjoying a lot of chatter – it’s about the lives of three migrant women who are domestic workers for rich families in Singapore and has been described as The Help meets Crazy Rich Asians. 25 May, HarperCollins.
Max Porter, the bestselling author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny, returns with Shy, which documents a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. 6 April, Faber & Faber.
The heavy hitters
Several of the literary scene’s most revered authors have books out this year, including one of our greatest living writers, Salman Rushdie.
Many will celebrate the publication of his fantastical epic tale Victory City with perhaps more fervour than usual as he continues his rehabilitation after being attacked earlier this year.
Set in 14th Century southern India, it features a nine-year-old girl who has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. 7 February, Random House.
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis is the latest novel from the author who brought you Less Than Zero and American Psycho. It tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. 17 January, Penguin Random House.
If you want to feel well-read in double-quick time, try Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering, which is set in a New York city tenement in the early days of the pandemic. It has a novel twist (pardon the pun) – each character has been secretly written by a different author from Margaret Atwood and John Grisham to Dave Eggers and Celeste Ng. 30 May, Penguin.
Eleanor Catton won the Booker prize for her 2013 novel The Luminaries. She returns 10 years on with Birnam Wood, a psychological thriller based around a guerrilla gardening group who join forces with an unlikely collaborator in the shape of an enigmatic billionaire, in order to take over an abandoned farm. 2 March, Granta.
Deborah Levy‘s 2019 novel The Man Who Saw Everything was longlisted for the Booker and now she’s back with August Blue. Levy takes us on a mesmerising journey across Europe when classical pianist Elsa stumbles upon her double in an Athens flea market, setting them both on a search for identity. 4 May, Penguin.
The queen of magic realism, Isabelle Allende, follows two parallel stories of war and immigration in The Wind Knows My Name. One Jewish child’s mother is desperate for him to escape Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, while eight decades later, a child and her mother escape danger in El Salvador only to be separated once they reach the United States. 6 June, Random House.
From the bestselling author of The Wonder (recently adapted for Netflix starring Florence Pugh) and Oscar-winning film Room, Emma Donoghue‘s Learned by Heart tells the real-life love story of Eliza Raine and Anne Lister, whose diaries were the inspiration for the BBC series Gentleman Jack. 15 August, Little Brown.
Writer and podcast host Elizabeth Day also returns with her non-fiction title, Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, in which she discusses her own relationship journeys while analysing the significance and evolution of friendship. 30 March, Fourth Estate.
Joanne Harris is back with her first standalone novel for more than 10 years. Broken Light examines how women can feel invisible as they grow older and what happens when they decide to take back control. It’s set against the backdrop of the murder of a woman in the local park. 11 May, Orion.
The debutantes
Cecilia Rabess previously worked as a data scientist at Google and as an associate at Goldman Sachs
Speaking of murder, Lady Macbethad by actor, former bookseller and now debut author Isabelle Schuler is the suspense-filled origin story of one of Shakespeare’s best-known characters. 2 March, Bloomsbury.
Stephen Buoro is also one to watch – his debut, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, is a coming of age novel set in north Nigeria and has been hailed by Ian Rankin as “wonderfully vivid… instantly engaging”. 13 April, Bloomsbury.
One of this year’s big US debuts comes courtesy of Cecilia Rabess. Everything’s Fine is about a dark romance between a liberal black woman and is set in the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump. 8 June, Picador.
On our side of the pond is the first novel from Sarah May. Set against the 90s tabloid era, Becky is the story of Becky Sharpe (ring any bells Vanity Fair fans?), a young woman determined to make a place for herself in high society and get to the top of the ladder at the newspaper where she works, no matter how many lives she ruins in the process. 26 January, Picador.
Another novel on our radar is Really Good Actually, the witty debut by Schitt’s Creek screenwriter Monica Heisy, about a woman navigating her first year as a young divorcee. 17 January, Fourth Estate.
BookTok
Emily Henry enjoyed a big boost to her career thanks to BookTok with romcom novels such as Beach Read and You and Me on Vacation.
Influencer Payten Jewell tells me Henry’s upcoming novel, Happy Place (27 April, Penguin), is one of the most anticipated among the BookTok community. It features a couple who have recently split up but pretend they are still together for the sake of a group holiday with old friends. What could possibly go wrong?!
Jewell’s other picks for 2023 include Taste Like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma, Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey and an as yet untitled release by her all-time favourite Tia Williams, author of Seven Days in June, which will be published in June.
Celebrity Fiction
Tom Hanks’s first novel will be published in May
Cosy crime continues to trend into 2023, with the Rev Richard Coles releasing A Death in the Parish, the sequel to his 2022 novel, Murder Before Evensong. 8 June, Orion
Many fans of the genre will be looking forward to Stig Abell‘s debut, Death Under a Little Sky. The Times Radio presenter has written several non-fiction books but this rural whodunnit is his first foray into fiction. 13 April, HarperCollins.
And the publishing juggernaut that is Richard Osman is back later this year with his latest Thursday Murder Club book, the fourth in the series (as yet untitled). 14 September, Penguin.
Moving away from murder mysteries, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks is the first full-length novel from the A-list star. It offers an insider’s take on the momentous effort required to make a fictional superhero film, spanning 80 years of US history. 9 May, Penguin Random House.
Actress and writer Carrie Hope Fletcher also returns with The Double Trouble Society 2. 7 July, Penguin Random House.
And if you’re looking for something for the little people in your life, chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver has turned his hand to children’s fiction with his debut Billy and the Giant Adventure about a group of friends who go on a quest in the forbidden Waterfall Woods. 13 April, Penguin Random House. Which brings us to…
Prince Harrysaid that he and Prince William had “been through hell together” in his 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, but the final episodes of Netflix’s Harry & Meghan revealed a rift.
More than ever, Prince Harry is discussing his relationship with his brother, Prince William.
The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex discussed his strained relationship with his 40-year-old brother in brand-new episodes of Harry & Meghan that debuted on Thursday on Netflix.
During the Sandringham Summit, in which Harry and William sat down with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to discuss how the Sussexes could both lead an independent life while remaining of service to the Queen, “It became very clear very quickly that that goal was not up for discussion or debate,” said Harry. “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in.”
Leaving the monumental meeting without a clear path forward, “The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother, so that he’s now on the institution’s side,” Harry continued. “Part of that I get, I understand, right, that’s his inheritance. So to some extent, it’s already ingrained in him that part of his responsibility is the survivability and continuation of this institution.”
CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY
To that end, Harry opened up about the family’s relationship with the press: how there’s “leaking, but there’s also planting, of sorts,” and how “if the comms team want to be able to remove a negative story about their principal [royal figure], they will trade and give you something about someone else’s principal. So the offices end up working against each other.”
“William and I both saw what happened in our dad [King Charles III]’s office, and we made an agreement that we would never let that happen to our office,” Harry continued.
However, in 2020, Harry felt that promise was broken when William’s office released a joint statement from the brothers rebutting reports that Harry and Meghan’s step back from royal life had to do with bullying by William.
Prince Harry and Prince William. KARWAI TANG/WIREIMAGE
“We couldn’t believe it,” Harry said. “No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that. And I rang M and I told her and she burst into floods of tears because within four hours, they were happy to lie to protect my brother. And yet, for three years, they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
In this week’s issue of PEOPLE, a palace source shares that Prince William and Kate Middleton are avoiding the Harry & Meghan docuseries, having aides watch instead.
Despite an apparent olive branch following Queen Elizabeth’s death in September, when Prince Harry and Meghan joined Prince William and Kate to view tributes to the monarch outside Windsor Castle, the relationship between the brothers remains strained.
“It will take a long time before there is harmony between the brothers,” says a source close to the royal household. “There is a lot of anger there.”
CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY
In the first three episodes of the Netflix series following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Meghan spoke about her lack of understanding of royal life, including her surprise when she first met Kate.
“When Will and Kate came over and I had met her for the first time, they came over for dinner,” Meghan said in Harry & Meghan. “I remember I was in ripped jeans and barefoot.”
“Like I was a hugger, always been a hugger,” she added. “I didn’t realize that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
“I guess I’d start to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside, carried through on the inside,” she continued. “There is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and you relax now. But that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.”
A friend of the Princess of Wales tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story that the royal is “warm and friendly.”
“Kate’s a big hugger,” the friend says. “She is warm and friendly and greets everyone with a big hug and kiss. It comes naturally to her to be like that.”
PAUL GROVER- WPA POOL/GETTY
In Prince Harry and Meghan’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry said his relationship with Prince William “is space at the moment,” but added that he “loves William to bits — we’ve been through hell together.”
“And you know, time heals all things, hopefully,” he said.
Volumes one and two Harry & Meghan are now streaming on Netflix.
Doria Ragland, a hands-on grandmother in California, was by her daughter’s side for her royal wedding and the birth of Archie.
Meghan Markle and Doria Ragland. PHOTO: STEVE PARSONS – POOL / GETTY
Meghan Markle and her mom Doria Ragland have a strong daughter-mother bond.
Ragland has been by her daughter’s side through it all, from Meghan’s early career as an actress to falling in love with Prince Harry.
When Meghan and Prince Harry were still living in the U.K., Ragland often traveled from her home state of California to visit her daughter and son-in-law during milestone moments like their 2018 royal wedding and the birth of their son Archie in 2019. Now that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have moved stateside, Ragland is closer than ever to her daughter and two grandchildren.
“Meghan draws a lot of strength from her mother. Doria is classy, chic and confident, but not unapproachable,” Meghan’s longtime friend and makeup artist Daniel Martin told PEOPLE in 2018. “I definitely feel Meghan gets a lot of that from her mother.”
Ragland spoke about her daughter’s relationship with Harry for the first time in the 2022 Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, admitting “the last five years have been challenging.” Still, she couldn’t be happier that Meghan found “the one” and seems to be quite the proud grandmother, too.
From her love of yoga to the way she made royal history alongside her daughter, here is everything to know about Meghan Markle’s mom, Doria Ragland.
She lives in California
Meghan Markle and Doria Ragland. SYLVAIN GABOURY/PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY
Ragland was born in Ohio on Sept. 2, 1956. She eventually moved to California, where she met her ex-husband Thomas Markle in the late ’70s, according to a 2015 essay Meghan wrote for Elle. After Ragland and Markle wed, they welcomed Meghan in 1981 and moved to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
Though Ragland and Markle split when Meghan was young, Ragland has remained in California and lives not far from Meghan and Prince Harry’s Montecito home.
She is a yoga instructor
It is no secret that Meghan is a fan of yoga — and she seems to have inherited her love for the exercise from her mother. Ragland is a yoga instructor and former social worker and has been seen attending yoga classes both solo and with Meghan.
Ahead of the royal wedding in 2018, Ragland even joined Oprah Winfrey for yoga at the media mogul’s home. “She’s great at yoga, so I said, ‘Bring your yoga mat and your sneaks in case we just want to do yoga on the lawn,’ ” Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight.
And yoga isn’t the only way Ragland stays active — she has also shown an interest in running. She participated in the 21st Annual Alive and Running 5k for Suicide Prevention run in Los Angeles in 2019.
She calls Meghan “Flower”
BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY
When Meghan was young, Ragland gave her the nickname “Flower.” The Duchess of Sussex revealed the sweet moniker on her now-defunct lifestyle blog The Tig, listing her many nicknames as “Meg, MM, M&M, and Flower (which my mom has called me since I was little).”
The name of Meghan and Harry’s daughter, Lilibet, also seems to be a nod to Ragland’s endearing term for Meghan. While the couple paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth when naming their baby girl in 2021 (the late Queen’s family nickname was Lilibet), they call her Lili for short.
She faced challenges during Meghan’s early relationship with Prince Harry
Doria Ragland. NETFLIX
In the 2022 Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, Ragland opened up about the early days of her daughter’s relationship with the royal. “We were on the phone, and she says, ‘Mommy, I’m going out with Prince Harry,’ and I start whispering, ‘Oh my God,’ ” she recalled.
“And so it was from the beginning, it was very sort of, ‘Oh my God, nobody can know,’ ” she added.
According to Ragland, Prince Harry was “handsome,” “really nice” and had “great manners” when she first met him. “And they looked really happy together,” she said of Meghan and Harry. “Once it was announced that they were together, it seemed kind of like a novelty.”
After Meghan and Harry’s relationship was made public in 2017, Ragland noted that she felt “stalked by the paparazzi.” She explained, “I felt unsafe a lot. I can’t just go walk my dogs. I can’t just go to work. There was always someone there waiting for me.”
She escorted Meghan to her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry
Doria Ragland and Meghan Markle. OLI SCARFF/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
After meeting Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip for the first time at Windsor Castle the day before Meghan’s royal wedding to Prince Harry in 2018, Ragland spent the evening with her daughter at Cliveden House Hotel.
The following morning, Ragland traveled with Meghan to St. George’s Chapel in a red Rolls-Royce. However, despite speculation that Ragland would walk her daughter down the aisle after it was revealed that Meghan’s father wouldn’t attend the wedding, the bride chose to walk solo before being joined by Prince Charles halfway to the altar.
For her role as mother-of-the-bride, Ragland wore a bespoke pale green dress and day coat designed by the creative directors of Oscar de la Renta, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim. She accessorized with a custom Stephen Jones hat and Aquazzara heels.
She is a doting grandmother
Ragland became a first-time grandmother in 2019 when Meghan and Prince Harry welcomed their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The Duchess of Sussex’s mother was in London for the baby’s birth on May 4, 2019, with a statement from the royal family saying Ragland was “overjoyed by the arrival of her first grandchild.”
She was also present when Meghan and Harry introduced the newborn to the Queen and Prince Philip — a moment that made royal history as it marked the first time a British monarch was pictured next to a royal baby’s Black grandmother.
Ragland became a grandmother for a second time with the arrival of Meghan and Harry’s daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, in June 2021.
She has joined Meghan and Prince Harry at many events
BEN STANSALL/AFP/GETTY
The proud mom was on hand to support Meghan at her first royal hosting event in September 2018, which celebrated the publication of Together: Our Community Cookbook with a palace luncheon.
In 2022, Ragland also joined Meghan and Prince Harry at the 53rd annual NAACP Image Awards where the Duke and Duchess received the President’s Award.
“My mom’s here with us tonight, and we all feel very proud,” Meghan said at the end of her acceptance speech.
She made a surprise cameo on Meghan’s podcast Archetypes
BRIAN LAWLESS – WPA POOL/GETTY
Even though Ragland wasn’t a guest on Meghan’s Archetypes podcast, the yoga instructor did FaceTime her daughter while Meghan was recording an episode.
“Oh sugar, my mom’s FaceTiming me,” Meghan told her guest before answering the call. “Hey, how’s my girl?” asked Ragland over the phone before telling her daughter she had on a “smiley face.”
Once the brief call ended, Meghan narrated, “But my mom did this thing … you may have heard this clicking sound that she was doing.”
“My mom literally just pulled out a reference of what I came up with as a cool handshake to do with her when I was about 8, which was snap, scissors, cut, chicken wing. I’m 41 years old and she’s like, okay — that’s great.”
She continued, “And it just put me right back into the past. Thinking about my childhood, our little quirks together … and then, with this episode on my brain, it got me thinking about all the ways my mom supported me, how she took care of me and the house and herself … and how she just juggled so much.”
The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry has opened up on how he met and fell in love with Meghan Markle.
According to him, he met his wife through Instagram.
The couple spoke about how they met on the first episode of the ‘Harry and Meghan’ docuseries, which aired on Netflix on Thursday.
According to Harry, the first time he saw Meghan was in 2016. He said he was scrolling through his Instagram feed and stumbled across a Snapchat video of a friend of his with the former US actress.
The picture, Harry said, was that of her using a dog filter that had fluffy ears and a long tongue.
“Meghan and I met over Instagram. I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them, it was like a Snapchat,” he said.
“That was the first thing and I was like, who is that?”
On her part, Meghan said it was a mutual friend of theirs that ended up mailing her that the prince was asking about her and then set up their meeting.
The couple tied the knot in 2018. The union has since then been in the public eye over the wave of controversies involving the British royal family.
In 2020, Harry and his wife were stripped of their royal titles as well as public funds associated with royal duties.
The same year, the couple left the United Kingdom for the US after their explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey wherein they opened up about their struggles with the royal family.
However, following the death of Queen Elizabeth, their children inherited the title of Prince Archie and Princess Lillibert of Sussex.
The couple criticises the paparazzi’s persistentharassment throughout the first three episodes of Netflix’s “Harry & Meghan” docuseries, with the Duke of Sussex claiming that being swarmed by cameras makes up most of his early memories.
Harry recalled how the “Paparazzi used to harass us to the point where we had to be forced into smiling and answering questions to their travelling press pack,” and that made me feel really uncomfortable from the get-go.” Harry said.
He continued by saying that he had always been told not to respond to cameras and to never “feed into it.”
And while the press were allegedly supposed to give him and his brother Prince William privacy while attending school, it never worked and there was always photographers.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took aim at the UK press in their new docuseries. Netflix
Harry said most of his earliest memories were of being swarmed by the media.
“I remember thinking how am I ever going to find someone who is willing and capable to be able to withstand all the baggage that comes with being with me?” he said.
Harry, whose ex-girlfriends include Chelsey Davy and Cressida Bonas, claimed that women would second-guess their relationship with him due to the press surrounding the relationship.
“Every relationship that I had within a matter of weeks or months were splattered all over the newspapers and that person’s family harassed and their lives turned upside down,” he said.
“When I got to meet M, I was terrified of her being driven away by the media. The same media that had driven so many other people away from me.”
Markle, meanwhile, claimed in the second episode of the documentary that paparazzi paid her neighbors in Toronto — where she filmed her show “Suits” in the early days of her relationship with Harry — to live-stream her backyard.
Harry has previously slammed the UK press as “toxic.” Netflix
Harry and Markle have been vocal about their disdain for the UK press since they quit the royal family in March 2020, even claiming it was the “toxic” media that led them to leave.
“We all know what the British press can be like and it was destroying my mental health,” he told James Corden in 2021. “So I did what any husband and what any father would do — I need to get my family out of here.”
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry shared a slew of never-before-seen photos and video of their life and children in the new Netflix docuseries “Harry & Meghan.”
The ex-royals — who share Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1 — shared several snaps and videos in the first three episodes of the show, which dropped Thursday, of their son.
One video shows him riding around on a suitcase, while another reveals Markle introducing him to a photo of his late grandmother, Princess Diana.
Up Next
“I have always been a hugger… I didn’t realize that…
The pair also shared pics of themselves before their relationship became public, including shots of them in a photo booth and on their now-famous third date to Botswana in 2016.
They also included shots of the couple FaceTiming in the early days of their relationship.
Harry, 38, and Markle, 41 — who left the UK in March 2020 and moved to Montecito, Calif. — were “having second thoughts” about the series following Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September, Page Six previously reported.
Enlarge ImageIn one video, Markle introduces her son to his late grandmother Princess Diana.Netflix
“Harry and Meghan are panicked about trying to tone down even the most basic language,” an insider told us at the time.
Since stepping down from their royal duties, the couple — who tied the knot in 2018 — has been the target of international media, TV personalities and social media commentators alike.
Enlarge ImageThey also shared photos from early on in their relationship.Netflix
They eventually sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a tell-all interview in March 2021, where Markle revealed the scrutiny she was put under by the British press drove her to contemplate suicide while pregnant with her son, Archie.
“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” she told Winfrey, explaining that she “just didn’t see a solution” to the tidal wave of negative reports about her.
Up Next
“I have always been a hugger… I didn’t realize that…
“I would sit up at night, and I was just like, ‘I don’t understand how all of this is being churned out.’”
The “Deal or No Deal” alum and the grandson of the late Queen Elizabeth ll later revealed they had signed on to film a series with the streaming giant, and chose Liz Garbus to direct.
Enlarge ImageThe first three episodes of their docuseries dropped Thursday.Netflix
“It’s nice to be able to trust someone with our story — a seasoned director whose work I’ve long admired — even if it means it may not be the way we would have told it,” the former “Suits” star told Variety in October about working with the Oscar-nominated director.
Markle also told The Cut that the series would focus on the couple’s “love story.”
“[It’s] the piece of my life I haven’t been able to share, that people haven’t been able to see … our love story,” she said.
The last three episodes of the Netflix series comes out Dec. 15.
“So much of what Meghan is and how she is, is so similar to my mom,” Harry said in the first episode of the highly anticipated docuseries. “She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence. She has this warmth about her.”
During the episode, in which Harry repeatedly slams the press for “harassing” him his entire life, he expressed his deep concerns that Markle was going to suffer the same fate as Diana, who died in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi in 1997.
“I was terrified of her being driven away by the media,” Harry admitted.
It’s not the first time that Harry has brought up the parallels between his mother — who died in a car accident while being chased by paparazzi in 1997 — and Markle.
“My biggest regret is not making more of a stance earlier on in my relationship with my wife and calling out the racism when I did,” he said on the AppleTV+ series, “The Me You Can’t See.”
“History was repeating itself. My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn’t white, and now look what’s happened.
He added, “You want to talk about history repeating itself — they’re not going to stop until [Meghan] dies. It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life, but the list is growing. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry.”
The “Spare” author, 38, reportedly believes Markle, 41, is also similar to Diana in other ways too.
Prince Harry has described wearing a Nazi uniform to a costume party in 2005 as “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
In the third episode of the Netflix limited series “Harry and Meghan,” released Thursday morning, the royal expressed regret for his clothing selection, saying he “felt so ashamed afterwards.”
“It was probably one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my life.” “I felt so ashamed afterwards,” the prince admitted.
Prince Harry, who was 20 at the time, arrived at a party in London dressed as a nazi soldier with a red armband inscribed with a large swastika.
Discussing the fallout after the world caught wind of the then 20-year-old’s costume, Prince Harry said, “All I wanted to do was make it right.”
The royal teen was ordered by his father Prince Charles to do a multitude of things to help mitigate his actions, including visiting Poland’s infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz and watching ‘Schindler’s List,’ The Post reported in 2005.
Prince Harry also shared that he spoke with the Chief Rabbi in London, saying that his visit had “a profound impact on me.”
The Sun released an image of the teenage royal donning the swastika at the 2005 London party.
Prince Harry has expressed remorse for his choices as a 20-year-old, calling the Nazi costume “one of the biggest mistakes in my life.”
Additionally, the royal said in the episode that he went to Berlin to speak with a Holocaust survivor.
“I could’ve just ignored it and probably made the same mistakes over and over again in my life, but I learned from that,” the prince said.
Prince Harry made a surprise stop on Veterans Day.
The Duke of Sussex, 41, visited Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, last Friday afternoon, touring the USS Arizona Memorial, PEOPLE confirms. A somber site in American history books, the battleship was bombed by Japanese forces in December 1941. Over 1,100 crew members died in the attack, which drove the U.S. to enter World War II.
Harry visited the memorial in a personal capacity. The USS Arizona Memorial on the island of Oahu is a short flight from his home in Montecito, California, where he lives with his wife Meghan Markle and their two children, son Archie, 3, and daughter Lilibet, 1.
“He kind of approached us,” Dan Conover, who was also touring the USS Arizona with his family on Friday, tells PEOPLE.
“I moved out of his way because he’s royalty, I figured I’d let him do his thing. He basically gave me a greeting,” Conover, 23, explains. “He was very respectful and courteous and nice. I moved out of his way, and he kind of patted me on the back and said, ‘You’re all good mate.’ It was a simple interaction, but he was very nice and courteous and respectful.”
Prince Harry visits the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. DEBBIE BISHOP CONOVER
The eyewitness added that there was an expert “who was basically explaining things to Prince Harry — ‘This is what happened on this day, how the USS Arizona, etc.’ “
The outing was likely emotional for Prince Harry, who served in the British Army for 10 years and completed two tours of Afghanistan. Before stepping back from his senior royal role, he held three honorary military titles — Captain General of the Royal Marines, Honorary Air Commandant of RAF Honington and Commodore-in-Chief, Small Ships and Diving, Royal Naval Command.
Prince Harry visits the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. DEBBIE BISHOP CONOVER
November 11 is Veterans Day in the U.S., and Remembrance Day in the U.K. In honor of the solemn holidays, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex released a new photo and simple statement on their Archewell Foundation website. In the black and white snap, taken by their wedding photographer Chris Allerton, the couple faced military personnel, including a serviceman holding an American flag.
“On this Veterans Day and Remembrance Day, we honor service members across the world,” Harry and Meghan, 41, wrote. “These brave men and women, as well as their families, have made tremendous sacrifices and embody duty and service.”
“We are proud to work with so many organizations that support veterans and military families, including The Invictus Games Foundation, The Mission Continues, Team Rubicon, Scotty’s Little Soldiers and The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation. Today and every day, thank you for your service,” the statement wrapped.
Last year on Veterans Day, the couple paid a surprise visit to a New Jersey military base. At a luncheon for service members and their spouses at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Meghan and Harry discussed topics like mental health and the importance of community.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. LEE MORGAN
The stop in N.J. came one day after attending the 2021 Salute to Freedom gala at the Intrepid Museum in New York City. In prepared remarks at the gala, Prince Harry discussed the isolation service members often feel when returning home and stressed the importance of supporting veterans.
“My experience in the military made me who I am today, and I will always be grateful for the people I got to serve with — wherever in the world we were,” said Harry. “But in war, you also see and experience things you hope no one else has to. These stay with us, sometimes like a slideshow of images.”
Harry said that he created the Invictus Games “to honor the legacy of those who have given so much” as well as to show “that the men and women who have experienced service injuries, as well as their families, are the strongest people in the world…and they deserve a platform to be seen, a platform to be recognized, and a platform to be truly celebrated.”
The prince went on to welcome the 2021 Intrepid Valor Award honorees, who he said “are part of an everlasting bond. You are part of the team of teams. And we will always have your backs. You are not alone.”
Prince Harry is connecting with military children who have experienced the death of a parent who served in the British Armed Forces.
In honor of Remembrance Sunday, the Duke of Sussex penned a letter to Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a U.K. charity for bereaved military children and young people. Having lost his mother Princess Diana at age 12, Prince Harry said, “We share a bond even without ever meeting one another, because we share in having lost a parent. I know first-hand the pain and grief that comes with loss and want you to know that you are not alone.”
He continued, “While difficult feelings will come up today as we pay tribute to heroes like your mum or dad, I hope you can find comfort and strength in knowing that their love for you lives and shines on. Whenever you need a reminder of this, I encourage you to lean into your friends at Scotty’s Little Soldiers. One of the ways I’ve learned to cope has been through community and talking about my grief, and I couldn’t be more grateful and relieved that you have amazing people walking beside you throughout your journey. We all know some days are harder than others, but together those days are made easier.”
“Today and every day, I admire and respect all the men and women who have given their lives in service of us — especially those in your family,” Harry said. “I am also incredibly proud of you for being the best example in remembering them.”
On Sunday, 55 members of the Scotty’s Little Soldiers and their parents marched in the National Service of Remembrance parade in London, sporting yellow and black scarves.
“When you march together in today’s parade, wearing your yellow and black scarves, I know it will be hard, but equally important to do,” Prince Harry wrote. “Today you will bring new awareness to young people, just like you, who will benefit from this community of support. I salute you for serving others in need, in the most honourable memory of your parent.”
He signed the letter, “With my deepest respect, Harry.”
Scotty’s Little Soldiers said on their website, “Prince Harry knows November can be a proud but emotional time for bereaved British Forces children, and he understands what it is like to experience the death of a parent. He has been involved with the charity for several years, and today he wrote this special letter for our members at Remembrance.”
Scotty member 14-year-old Samuel Hall, who was only 3 years old when his dad Lt Cdr Andrew Hall died by illness in 2012, said: “It’s comforting to know Prince Harry understands how we feel and cares about us. It was great to receive the letter. Remembrance is a difficult time and being with Scotty’s helps me and the other members know people are there for us.”
Georgia Paterson, a 14-year-old girl whose father Cpl Norman Stevenson died when she was 7 years old, said: “It’s amazing knowing someone as important as Prince Harry has reached out to us. To know he’s thinking about us and our parents means a lot. I feel able to relate to him as he understands what we have been through.”
The charity was set up by war widow Nikki Scott in 2010 following the death of her husband Corporal Lee Scott in Afghanistan the previous year.
“We are so grateful to Prince Harry for his continued support,” Scott said in a statement. “Our members know that he truly understands what it’s like to grow up without a parent and it means so much to them to know his thoughts are with them. To receive his letter on Remembrance Sunday has given them a huge boost on a proud but difficult day.”
The Duke of Sussex met Nikki and some of the charity’s members at 2017’s Party at the Palace. When Prince Harry married Meghan Markle in 2018, Scotty’s was selected as one of the charities to benefit from donations to mark the couple’s wedding.
Princess Diana and Prince Harry.Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty
Prince Harry, 38, and Meghan, 41, marked Veterans Day in the U.S. and Armistice Day in the U.K. on Friday by sharing a new post on their Archewell Foundation website. The couple shared a photo by Chris Allerton, their wedding photographer, where they face military personnel, including one holding an American flag.
“On this Veterans Day and Remembrance Day, we honor service members across the world,” they wrote. “These brave men and women, as well as their families, have made tremendous sacrifices and embody duty and service. We are proud to work with so many organizations that support veterans and military families, including: The Invictus Games Foundation, The Mission Continues, Team Rubicon, Scotty’s Little Soldiers and The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation. Today and every day, thank you for your service.”
Last year, Meghan and Prince Harry made a surprise visit to a New Jersey military base to mark Veterans Day after attending the 2021 Salute to Freedom gala at the Intrepid Museum in New York City. In a speech at the gala, Prince Harry discussed the isolation service members often feel when returning home and stressed the importance of supporting veterans.
“My experience in the military made me who I am today, and I will always be grateful for the people I got to serve with — wherever in the world we were,” said Harry, who served a decade in the British army and undertook two tours in Afghanistan. “But in war, you also see and experience things you hope no one else has to. These stay with us, sometimes like a slideshow of images.”
He went on to welcome the 2021 Intrepid Valor Award honorees, who he said “are part of an everlasting bond. You are part of the team of teams. And we will always have your backs. You are not alone.”
Meghan Markle has had a “dramatic change of heart regarding titles,” a royal expert has claimed, which goes against what she said in her bombshell Oprah interview back in March 2021, whereby she said that titles weren’t important to her.
Meghan Markle wants to keep royal title after realizing how beneficial it can be
Royal commentator Neil Sean told The Daily Express that the Duchess of Sussex, 41, had the alleged change of heart after speaking with Prince Harry’s cousins, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, as they helped her realize just how important and beneficial having those titles can be. And she reportedly wants to do whatever it takes to hang on to her Duchess of Sussex title to ensure that her and Prince Harry’s children – three-year-old son Archie and one-year-old daughter Lilibet – are offered titles of their own.
Harry and Meghan are very, very keen to cling onto those royal titles. After much deliberation, Meghan decided that the titles would be a good thing, not just for her but for both her children too,” Sean said.
“Meghan has become very friendly with senior members of the monarchy, predominantly Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice. After this, Meghan realized how useful a title can be, particularly when you want to move in the correct circles,” he added, in reference to Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and Fergie, the Duchess of York’s daughters. “That is the reason why they want to clutch hold of titles. It’s really down to the fact that after befriending Beatrice and Eugenie, she saw how useful those titles are to them. Their father, Prince Andrew, had to push very hard to make sure his children got those titles.”
f you cast your minds back to the infamous Oprah Winfrey interview, Meghan said: “All the grandeur surrounding this stuff is an attachmentI don’t personally have. I’ve been a waitress, an actress, a princess, a Duchess – I’ve always still just been Meghan, right? I’ve been clear on who I am, independent of all that stuff, and the most important title I’ll ever have is mom. I know that.”
However, she and Prince Harry have since made it very clear how important a royal title would be for their children, especially because of the security and protection that comes along with it. So we never really believed that Meghan would snub another royal title if it was given to her or her children!
Prince Harry And Meghan’s Children’s Titles
The future of Prince Harry and Meghan’s children’s titles is currently up in the air, as many sources are hinting that King Charles III is waiting for Prince Harry’s bombshell memoir to be published in January, 2023 to make his decision about his grandchildren’s titles, depending on how much he trashes the royal family.
“Charles has made various threats to Meghan and Harry and warned them that if they go ahead, they will find themselves ostracized in a way they cannot believe. And so they are worried,” royal author Tom Bower told OK, in reference to their Netflix docu-series and Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare. “I do not think their children will get titles if they go ahead and slander the royal family. But they have also got to consider their own titles, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, could be taken away by Charles if they misbehave,” he added.
King Charleshas been named the ceremonial commander of the Royal Marines, a position previously held by his son, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
Prince Harry was Captain General of the Royal Marines until he retired and moved to the United States.
The position was previously held by the King’s father, the Duke of Edinburgh, as well as his grandfather, George VI.
The King said he was “exceptionally proud” to follow in their footsteps.
The Duke of Edinburgh held the position of Captain General for 64 years before he was succeeded by Prince Harry in 2017.
Prince Harry’s position was removed in February 2021, along with his other honorary military titles and patronages, after he stopped being a working royal.
This week, the prince’s publishers announced that his memoirs, with his view of these events, would be published in January.
The announcement of the King as the new Captain General was made on the 358th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Marines, in October 1664 during King Charles II’s reign.
King Charles III praised the Royal Marines for their “courage, determination, self-discipline, and a remarkable capacity to endure in the most extreme environments”.
The Duke of Sussex’s memoir will be published on 10 January, his publisher Penguin Random House has said.
The book by Prince Harry – which will include his own account of his decision to give up royal duties and move to the US – will be titled Spare.
Random House said: “As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling – and how their lives would play out…
“For Harry, this is his story at last.”
Some of the proceeds from the book will be used to support British charities, including Sentebale and WellChild. The publisher confirmed this was in the form of two donations of $1.5m and £300,000 respectively to the two named charities.
Spare, the title of Prince Harry’s memoir, is presumably a nod to the phrase that monarchies need an “heir and a spare”.
Prince William is the heir and Prince Harry will tell his version of his life in that ambiguous territory of the “spare”, the younger royal sibling unlikely to ever be on the throne and therefore looking for their own sense of purpose.
This book, a guaranteed best-seller before a page has been printed, promises “raw, unflinching honesty”, and the cover shows a steely-looking Prince Harry.
But it will also have to be a delicate balancing act. Much has changed since this book was first announced. Queen Elizabeth II has died, his father is King, Camilla is Queen Consort. The book itself is now later than expected.
There will be more of an appetite for tell-all tales, rather than therapy speak about self-discovery. But how many bridges will be burned by saying too much? How many of the incendiary grievances raised by Prince Harry and Meghan in the Oprah TV interview will get another rerun?
Who will he spare in the process?
When the deal for Prince Harry to write his story was announced in 2021, the prince promised he would reflect “the highs and lows” and be “accurate and wholly truthful”.
That theme is picked up in the publicity statement for the book, which says: “With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
The book will be published on the same date worldwide and it will be available in 16 languages.
With the proceeds from his book sales, Prince Harry hopes to support British charities such as Sentebale and WellChild.
The title and details of Prince Harry’s memoir have been revealed.
The Duke of Sussex’s story, SPARE, is set to be released on January 10, 2023.
SPARE appears to be a reference to the phrase ‘heir and a spare – suggesting his attitude toward his place in the Royal Family.
Details of Princess Diana’s funeral are mentioned in the book, with the publishers saying: “SPARE takes readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow-and horror.
“As Diana, Princess of Wales was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling and how their lives would play out from that point on.”
Billed as “his story at last”, the book also delves into his “personal journey from trauma to healing”.
“With its raw, unflinching honesty, SPARE is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief,” a description of the book reads.
Prince Harry is hoping to support British charities, including Sentebale and WellChild, with donations from the proceeds of his book sales.
“Penguin Random House is honoured to be publishing Prince Harry’s candid and emotionally powerful story for readers everywhere,” said the publisher’s chief executive, Markus Dohle.
“He shares a remarkably moving personal journey from trauma to healing, one that speaks to the power of love and will inspire and encourage millions of people around the world.”
The memoir will be available in English in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Canada, and it will also be published in 15 additional languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, and Chinese.
The role of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry in standing in for King Charles for official duties has been questioned in the House of Lords.
They continue to be two of the five “counsellors of state” who can carry out important constitutional duties if the monarch is ill or away.
When one had “left public life” and the other had “left the country,” Viscount Stansgate questioned their status.
It was time for a “sensible amendment” to end this arrangement, he said.
Lord Addington, a Liberal Democrat, suggested that working royals – “somebody who actually undertakes royal duties” – should be given priority for these roles.
In response to questions from peers, the Lord Privy Seal, Lord True, said he would not comment on “specific circumstances”, and the Royal Household would need to be consulted about any change.
But Lord True told the House of Lords: “The government will always consider what arrangements are needed to ensure resilience in our constitutional arrangements.
“And in the past, we have seen that the point of accession has proved a useful opportunity to consider the arrangements in place.”
At present these are Camilla, the Queen Consort; Prince William, the Prince of Wales; Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex; Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and his daughter, Princess Beatrice.
They can carry out official duties, such as signing documents, receiving ambassadors or attending Privy Council meetings, if the monarch is temporarily ill or abroad,
This authority was used earlier this year to allow the then Prince Charles to carry out the State Opening of Parliament on behalf of the late Queen.
Labour peer Viscount Stansgate – who is Stephen Benn, the eldest son of Labour politician Tony Benn – said this showed the value of updating the Regency Act, to ensure royals were available to stand in.
“It is the only reason why it was possible to open the current session of this Parliament,” he told peers.
And he called on the government to approach the King over changes to the current arrangements, now that Prince Harry was living in the United States and Prince Andrew no longer carried out royal duties.
Changes to the legislation would be the responsibility of the Cabinet Office and a spokeswoman referred back to the comments of the Lord Privy Seal.
The upcoming season ofThe Crownis going to be covering some of the most painful times in recent memory for the Royal Family, and it might prove to be very difficult for Prince William and Prince Harry to stomach.
ET recently sat down with royal expert Katie Nicholl, who helped shine some light on what the princes may be struggling with when it comes to season 5 of The Crown, which largely covers the 1990s — a particularly tumultuous and dark time for the family.
“I think this series is going to be quite uncomfortable viewing, not just for [Queen Consort] Camilla and [King] Charles but also for William and Harry,” Nicholl explained. “Scenes leading up to their mother’s death are going to be very, very uncomfortable for them.”
Princess Diana died in a shocking car crash in Paris in 1997, at the age of 36. At the time, William and Harry were 15 and 12, respectively.
“This is a period that they had to live out so publicly. We heard Harry talk about the very real impact it’s had on his life, and William as well,” Nicholl shared. “So for this to sort of be revisited, even if it’s done tastefully … for this to be brought up all over again is incredibly hard for William and Harry.”
“[There is] a sense that, really, their mother’s ghost can’t ever be laid to rest for them,” she added. “I think [that] is really still something that’s very real and very difficult for them.”
Nicholl explained that the “biggest problem” the royal family and critics of the show have with the current seasons is that it “is about people who are still alive today.”
“The events, yes, are 25 years old, but they still feel very current because they’re constantly still making headlines — largely through films and TV series like this,” she said. “Those early [seasons] felt like there was enough history, felt like there was enough distance. But this just feels uncomfortably close.”
“That being said, with all the media hype and the attention the series has been getting, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is the biggest rated [season] for the series, in terms of viewing figures,” Nicholl added.
Another element of awkwardness may stem from the casting of Dominic West — a real-life friend of Harry — to play a younger Charles.
“For Dominic West, going into that role playing Charles, during some of the most tumultuous years of the Royal Family — and at a time when Charles’ popularity was absolutely rock bottom — I think any actor would jump at the chance because, obviously, it’s a wonderful opportunity,” Nicholl said. “But [they might] also think twice about it as well. I mean, when they were making The Crown they would have known, given the queen’s age, given her frailty, [that] there was always a real risk that this series was going to go out when she was either close to death or indeed had died, as is the case.”
“So I think that is a big responsibility for the actors,” Nicholl said. “It’s not just a role, it’s not just a character, it’s not just a part. It’s a real person who now happens to be king, and it is the dredging up of a past which he’d much rather move on from.”
Season 5 of The Crown premieres Nov. 9 on Netflix.
Prince Harry and Sir Elton John are among a group of celebrities suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Mail Online.
The action claims they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” they have been “victims of abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers”.
Prince Harry and Sir Elton John are among a group of celebrities suing the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and Mail Online.
The action claims they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” they have been “victims of abhorrent criminal activity” and “gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers”.
Also in the group is Baroness Doreen Lawrence, David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, and Sadie Frost said a statement from the law firm Hamlins.
Associated Newspapers has not yet responded to a request for comment by the Reuters news agency.
Prince Harrysuccessfully sued Associated Newspapers in the past with a judge ruling in July that parts of an article in The Mail On Sunday were defamatory.
And in 2021 he accepted an apology and “substantial damages”over false claims he snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal.
Meghan alsowon damages following a three-year legal battle against the publisher for printing parts of a letter to her father.
After the passing of Queen Elizabeth IIon September 8, her eldest son Charles ascended to the throne and declared his wife Camilla to be the next monarch.
Additionally, Charles declared that his daughter-in-law Kate Middleton and son-in-law Prince William will succeed to the titles of Prince and Princess of Wales.
Prince Harry and Meghan’s children were still referred to as “Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor” and “Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor” despite an update to the royal family website to reflect these changes.
Behind the scenes, there have been arguments over titles for Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1.
Under current guidelines, grandchildren of a monarch could be princes or princesses. A rule established by King George V after he issued a Letters Patent in 1917 read: “…the grandchildren of the sons of any such sovereign in the direct male line (save only the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales) shall have and enjoy in all occasions the style and title enjoyed by the children of dukes of these our realms.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.BEN STANSALL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
As monarch, King Charles III could change that rule, but it’s unlikely he’ll choose to do so.
A spokesperson said that nothing would be decided or said about the issue while the family was in mourning, a period that lasts one week past the funeral.
A source previously told PEOPLE: “Archie will almost certainly become a prince one day. Charles isn’t going to disavow his grandson, so it’s hugely unlikely that he’ll change the rules to stop it happening. The Charles also isn’t going to say that Archie can’t use the title any time soon.”
Chris Jackson/Getty; Taylor Hill/WireImage
When Prince Harry, 38, and Meghan, 41, were married in May 2018, the Queen gave them the titles of Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Archie was entitled to the “courtesy title” of Earl of Dumbarton upon his birth. However, the couple announced that they had not given him a courtesy title and he would be known as Archie Mountbatten-Windsor. Down the line, Archie could be given the secondary Sussex title, before inheriting the dukedom.
The couple relocated to California after stepping back as senior members of the royal family in 2020.
During Meghan and Prince Harry’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess of Sussex revealed there was a conversation about titles ahead of Archie’s birth.
“They were saying they didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” Meghan said. “This went on for the last few months of our pregnancy where I was going, hold on for a second.”
“And it’s not our decision to make,” she said. “Even though I have a lot of clarity of what comes with the titles good and bad…that is their birthright to then make a choice about.”
In his first speech as monarch, King Charles mentioned his younger son and daughter-in-law.
“I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas,” he said.
Despite taking a break from royal duties, Prince Harry joined his brother for the state funeral services for the Queen, and observers watched the pair’s every move and conversation intently.
When the Queen’s coffin was being removed from Westminster Hall, at the centre of the Palace of Westminster, where she had been lying in state, William, wearing his RAF No. 1 uniform, and the Duke of Sussex, wearing traditional funeral wear and medals, marched gently behind their father, the King.
As the procession came to a halt after its short journey around Parliament Square, the Prince of Wales saluted, while his brother bowed his head, as the coffin was lifted from the gun carriage.
Once inside, the Princess of Wales, with her two older children George and Charlotte, and the Duchess of Sussex, both wearing wide-brimmed black hats and with solemn expressions, joined the procession behind the coffin to the nave.
Following some controversy about Harry and Meghan holding hands as they left Westminster Hall following the short service at the beginning of the Queen’s lying in the state last week, the couple walked side by side, but this time did not hold hands.
They were seated directly behind the King and Queen Consort, facing the coffin, while William and Kate– for whom the abbey holds happier memories as the place of their wedding more than a decade ago – were across the aisle with their two children.
After the funeral ended with a rendition of the national anthem, the two brothers joined the huge procession escorting the Queen on the beginning of her final journey, marching once again with sombre expressions behind the gun carriage as their wives followed behind in slowly-driven cars.
William saluted the Cenotaph, while Harry bowed his head as they passed the memorial to Britain’s war dead.
Later, on arrival in Windsor, William and Harry walked next to each other as they followed the coffin into St George’s Chapel – but no words were exchanged in front of the TV cameras.
Once inside the chapel, William and Kate stood aside so that Harry and Meghan could enter a front pew.
The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex will be among the grandchildren of the Queen who will keep watch over her coffin this evening as she lies in state in Westminster Hall.
Prince Harry will don a military uniform for the first time in 2020 at King Charles’ request.
Since the Queen’s passing, Prince Harry has appeared in public wearing regular clothes.
The King and the Queen’s children manned the guard duty for around ten minutes on Friday night.
As they left the hall, members of the public applauded them.
The grandchildren’s vigil is expected to last around 15 minutes.
The King’s two sons will be joined by Peter Phillips, Zara Tindall, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Lady Louise Windsor, and James, Viscount Severn.
He served two tours in Afghanistan as part of the Army. He now lives in California with his wife Meghan and their two children.
Prince Harry wore a morning suit to walk behind the Queen’s coffin, while his brother wore a military uniform
Prince Andrew was also allowed to wear his military uniform as he stood guard on Friday. The 62-year-old stepped down as a working royal in 2019, after a Newsnight interview about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The prince was later stripped of his military titles.
Before the vigil, the Queen’s youngest child, Prince Edward, thanked the public for their support.
“We have been overwhelmed by the tide of emotion that has engulfed us and the sheer number of people who have gone out of their way to express their own love, admiration and respect to such a very special and unique person who was always there for us,” he said.
“And now, we are there for her, united in grief.”
The Queen will lie in state at Westminster Hall until her funeral on Monday. The queue to see the coffin stretches as far as Southwark Park. Officials have said if the park reaches capacity, entry will be paused.
At the park, there is a queue for wristbands and to join the queue properly. Further along, an LED display warns people of how long they should expect to wait. Many are anticipating a long stay, wearing parkas, hats, and big jumpers.
At 14:00 BST on Saturday, the government website said the waiting time was now up to 16.5 hours.
Foreign dignitaries are traveling to London ahead of Monday’s funeral, which will be one of the biggest diplomatic events of recent years, with some 500 heads of state and other dignitaries expected to attend.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese laid flowers in Green Park, central London, before meeting King Charles at Buckingham Palace on Saturday. Mr Albanese said it was a “great honour” to represent Australia and commemorate “a life well-lived”.
Meanwhile, King Charles is back in London, having completed a tour of the UK’s four nations.
On Saturday the King met the heads of the armed forces at Buckingham Palace and visited the Metropolitan Police’s headquarters, New Scotland Yard.
He then went to Lambeth Bridge, alongside Prince William, to shake hands and greet those queuing for the lying-in-state. He is meeting world leaders this afternoon.
A senior Metropolitan Police officer described the Queen’s funeral as “the largest single policing event [the force] has ever undertaken”.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said the “hugely complex” operation surpasses the London 2012 Olympics – which saw up to 10,000 police officers on duty each day.
Events, moments of reflection, and public screenings of the funeral are also taking place across the UK this weekend, outside London.
In Blackpool, the tower illuminations – which were changed to red, white, and blue for the period of mourning – will be switched off at 20:00 on Sunday, when a national one-minute silence will take place.
Queen Elizabeth made some last-minute changes to her will to make sure Kate Middleton and Princess Charlotte would get the bulk of her jewellery collection worth $110M, a new report claimed.
Sources told Star Magazine, in its latest edition, that Queen Elizabethhas been rethinking her plans amid her health issues.
The monarch has been rarely seen in public lately, but she joined Princess Anne in opening a new building at Thames Hospice in Maidenhead, England.
At the time, Queen Elizabeth donned a blue floral frock and sported her signature necklace of pearls and a large, bejewelled brooch that belonged to her personally and not to the Crown. It is said to be an important distinction, especially for her heirs.
The jewels belonging to the Royal Collection, part of the regalia used in state ceremonies, will automatically pass to Prince Charles during his reign as King.
Why Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family don’t have last names
However, the personal pieces of Queen Elizabeth, which are more than 300 items are hers to give as she chooses.
An unnamed source told the entertainment news outlet, “She’s been focusing on her beloved pieces and who deserves what.
“The whispers are that she’s made some last-minute changes to her will that’ll be a shocking surprise for her heirs.”
Insiders believe that Kate Middleton will be the big winner. Queen Elizabeth is rumoured to hand over some of her baubles to Princess Anne and Prince Andrew’s daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
The unnamed informant claimed, “Kate Middleton and her daughter, Princess Charlotte are likely to get the bulk of the collection. Kate is clearly the family favourite.”
Camilla Parker-Bowles, who will wear the crown before Kate Middleton, has reportedly never been close with Queen Elizabeth and should not expect more than a token.
A tattler said, “She’d never say it, of course, but it’s one of the reasons Camilla resents Kate.”
Star Magazine noted that Prince Charles’ second wife could take some comfort that it’s the other duchess, Meghan Markle, and her daughter, Lilibet,who could really end up getting the royal shaft.
An unnamed source said, “There’s very good chance Queen won’t leave either of them any jewels of value.”
However, given Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s decision to move to the U.S., “it’s not surprising, since they’re not working members of the royal family anymore. But, it would be a real slap in the face.
Queen Elizabeth has yet to report to the claims that she is taking account of her heirs, with more than $110M worth of jewellery in her private collection.
So, avid supporters of the British monarch should take all these unverified reports with a huge grain of salt until everything is proven true and correct.
The couple’s most recent visit to the UK was in June for the Platinum Jubilee festivities.
The Sussexes, who stepped down as senior royals in January 2020, live in California.
They kept a low-key presence during the celebrations for the Platinum Jubilee – watching the Trooping the Colour parade in London from a window and not taking part in the carriage procession.
A spokesperson for the couple said they are “delighted” to be visiting the UK.
The Duchess, who will give a keynote address at the opening ceremony, is a counselor for One Young World, among others including Jamie Oliver, Sir Richard Branson, and Justin Trudeau.
Prince Harry and Meghan will return to the UK on 8 September for the WellChild Awards in London where the duke will make a speech.
Before that, they will attend the Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023 One Year to Go event.
The duke was inspired to set up the Invictus Games after seeing a similar event in the US were injured and retired service personnel competed.
The first competition was held in London in 2014, with the following games being held in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Prince Harry is currently involved in a legal battle with the Home Office over his security arrangements in the UK.
He has asked for a review of the decision to not allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his family while in the country.
The Platinum Jubilee was the first time the duke and duchess had made an appearance together at a royal engagement since 2020.
The couple visited the Queen in April on their way to the Invictus Games in the Netherlands.
Before this, Prince Harry was last reported to be in the UK in the previous July, while Meghan was not thought to have been in the country since 2020.
For such a high-profile couple, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have maintained a remarkably low-key presence on the first day of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Prince Harry and Meghan’s travel over the Atlantic for the Jubilee weekend had been treated beforehand like some kind of unpredictable weather front approaching.
Storms were feared. Royal officials feared the damage. But it’s been very low-profile for a couple who provoke such a high level of public attention.
They watched Trooping the Colour from a window, not part of the carriage procession or the family group allowed on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
There’s no escaping their big box-office status, but here they were watching from the wings.
They also dodged any airport arrival photo-fest, with suggestions the Queen sent cars to collect them from a private airport. Everything stayed under the radar.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS
Image caption, The Queen, it is suggested, sent cars to pick up Prince Harry and Meghan from a private airport
Such a low profile is not likely to be accidental, with Prince Harry and Meghan wanting to avoid any accusations of stealing the limelight.
This is the Queen’s big weekend, celebrating her 70 years as monarch, and there are likely to have been warnings about avoiding anything that could overshadow the Jubilee events.
So it’s likely that Prince Harry and Meghan will have been urged to stay on-message and remain in the background, part of the backing band rather than the centre of attention.
It might be seen as a way of building bridges. It’s the Sussexes back to take part in a big event in a way perhaps not seen since leaving their royal roles in 2020.
Their daughter Lilibet, aged one this weekend, until this week hadn’t met her great-grandmother the Queen.
This quieter approach, without appearances and interviews, might be a way of re-establishing family links and connections with home.
While limiting the Buckingham Palace balcony to “working royals” meant excluding Prince Harry, Meghan and Prince Andrew, the two California-based royals were still part of the family group watching.
Covid is going to keep Prince Andrew away from the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s on Friday – an announcement on Thursday afternoon that raised some eyebrows. But Prince Harry and Meghan will be there and it will be a further sign of inclusion.
If the ambition of Buckingham Palace is for Prince Harry and Meghan to be there but not to draw attention to themselves, it won’t be easy. Because there is no escaping how much public interest they generate and how easily they could start making headlines.
IMAGE SOURCE, GOFFPHOTOS
Image caption, Meghan Markle with Savannah Phillips and Mia Tindall watching Trooping the Colour
If many of the Jubilee events are rather worthy events like lighting beacons, Prince Harry and Meghan can generate media fireworks, touching on issues of race and representation, celebrity and wealth. They are a news tinderbox, even without trying.
They certainly divide opinion, provoking strong positive and negative responses. They attract and they irritate. And such interest drives media attention, not to say huge web traffic to news stories, like moths drawn to a digital light.
According to a survey from YouGov this week, young people are more likely to be supportive of Prince Harry and Meghan. But overall the couple have lost much public sympathy in the UK, with their popularity at its lowest recorded level. But everyone has an opinion.
As the Jubilee weekend progresses there will be more attention on the Sussexes.
There have been expectations they will meet the Queen, but it’s understood that any such meetings will be considered as private and any details will remain speculation.
If the appearances so far are any guide, it could be a case of cryptic smiles from a distance and a determined effort to say little. In PR terms, it might not be a bad tactic.
A 95-year-old Ghanaian World War Two veteran is to be honoured by Queen Elizabeth for his fundraising efforts.
Private Joseph Hammond walked two miles (3.2km) a day for a week in May, raising $35,000 (£28,000) for frontline health workers and veterans in Africa.
“I was overwhelmed and filled with joy,” he said on hearing he was to get a Commonwealth Point of Light award.
He said he had been inspired by fellow veteran Capt Tom Moore, who raised more than £32m in the UK to fight Covid-19.
Capt Moore completed 100 laps of his garden in the run-up to his 100th birthday in April for NHS charities.
This prompted Pte Hammond to start his own campaign to raise money to buy personal protection equipment (PPE) for health workers and to protect vulnerable veterans on the African continent.
He started each day’s walk in the capital, Accra, early in the morning so he could complete his two miles before the heat and humidity of the day peaked, reports the BBC’s Thomas Naadi.
He wants to raise about $600,000 in total, so the former Ghanaian soldier, who like Capt Moore fought in Burma, hopes donations will continue to be made, our reporter says.
‘He is a force of nature’
Iain Walker, the UK high commissioner to Ghana who joined Pte Hammond on his walk, said the Queen presented Points of Light awards to outstanding volunteers across the Commonwealth who changed the lives of their community.
“Pte Hammond exemplifies these qualities. It has been a privilege to get to know Pte Hammond and to experience his selflessness,” he said.
“He is a force of nature and an inspiration to many, including me.”
Pte Hammond, who was drafted into the Royal West African Frontier Force at the age 16, will receive the award at the UK High Commission in Accra at a date still to be decided.
“This is marvellous, this is wonderful, it’s beyond my comprehension,” he tweeted in a video produced by the Guba Foundation and Forces Help Africa, the two non-governmental organisations helping him in his fundraising efforts.
“Surprises keep coming – I’m short of words, I don’t know what to say,” he said.
Earlier this month, he had received a letter from Prince Harry, the Queen’s grandson, commending him on his walk.
Pte Hammond had met Prince Harry, who works to support veterans, during an event at the Field of Remembrance in the grounds of Westminster Abbey in London last year.
Three years after the end of World War Two, Ghana, then the Gold Coast, was rocked by riots following the killing of three Ghanaian veterans who had been demanding compensation for their service during the conflict.
It became a milestone in Ghana’s struggle for independence from the UK, which was achieved in 1957.
They will no longer carry out duties on behalf of the Queen but arrangements will be reviewed after 12 months.
‘We are all just to call him Harry’
They have indicated that they will split their time between the UK and North America.
What are Canadians saying?
RCMP has been providing security to the couple at the request of the Metropolitan Police.
“The Duke and Duchess of Sussex choosing to re-locate to Canada on a part-time basis presented our government with a unique and unprecedented set of circumstances,” said Canada’s federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair in a statement on Thursday.
“The RCMP has been engaged with officials in the UK from the very beginning regarding security considerations. As the duke and duchess are currently recognised as Internationally Protected Persons, Canada has an obligation to provide security assistance on an as needed basis.”
Justin Trudeau: “We’re not entirely sure what the final decisions will be”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had faced repeated questions over who would be paying to provide security for the prince and his wife Meghan.
“The assistance will cease in the coming weeks, in keeping with their change in status,” according to the statement from public safety.
Neither the Metropolitan Police nor a spokeswoman for the couple would comment on security matters.
The Canadian government’s confirmation was first reported by CBC News.
What are the couple’s plans?
Earlier this year Harry and Meghan announced they would be stepping back from royal duties and working to become financially independent.
The couple have been in Canada with their son Archie for much of this year, after briefly returning to the UK in January following an extended six-week Christmas break on Vancouver Island.
When news broke that the couple would be spending part of their time in Canada, one of the main preoccupations was about who would foot the bill, especially if they are spending the bulk of their time as private citizens.
A public opinion poll released in January by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute indicated that 73% of Canadians had no interest in paying any of the costs for security and other expenditures associated with their relocation.
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