When Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, was published in January, it quickly became the fastest-selling nonfiction book in UK history, selling more than 3.2 million copies in only one week.
But is it really any surprise given that the novel was jam-packed with some incredibly sensual confessions and yet more shocking revelations about the royal family (such as Prince Harry describing the day he lost his virginity in a field outside a bar)? And if rumors that the Duke of Sussex is adding another chapter are to be believed, we might be in for much more.
“Prince Harry is already planning to add at least one new chapter… to the paperback version… out later this year or early next, when the hardcover sales have ended,” a source told Page Six, adding that: “Readers are eager to know [Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle’s] feelings about the royal backlash they have suffered after the airing of their Netflix doc, and the publication of Spare.”
The hardback edition of Spare was released by Penguin Random House on 10 January, with Prince Harry narrating the audio version. As of yet, details of a paperback release have not been announced, but a representative for Harry reportedly told Page Six that claims he’s planning to add a new chapter are “not true”.
Matt Cardy – Getty Images
Previously, Prince Harry admitted that the first draft of his memoir was a whopping 800 pages, with only 416 making the final cut. “It could have been two books, put it that way,” Harry told The Telegraph. The Duke has maintained that he has no intention of publishing the cut materials, because he doesn’t think his family “would never forgive” him if he did.
“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,” he said.
Although the royal family was reportedly hurt and blindsided when Prince Harry, 38, and Meghan Markle, 41, shockingly announced that they would be stepping down as working royals in January 2020, rumour has it that King Charles never actually wanted Meghan to be a working royal in the first place and actually wanted her to “carry on working” as an actress. Wow!
The unexpected revelation came from the Duke of Sussex himself, when recalling a conversation he had with his father about Meghan’s future in the royal family in his bombshell memoir, Spare.
When recalling a conversation he and his father had, King Charles reportedly asked his son, “Does she want to carry on working?” to which Prince Harry replied, “Say again?” King Charles then reportedly replied, “Does she want to keep on acting?” which led Prince Harry to say, “Oh. I mean, I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. I expect she’ll want to be with me, doing the job, you know, which would rule out Suits… since they film in… Toronto.”
King Charles then allegedly said, “Hmm. I see. Well, darling boy, you know there’s not enough money to go around.” Prince Harry then wrote in his memoir that he “stared” at his father after he said this, and then thought, “What was he banging on about? He explained. Or tried to. ‘I can’t pay for anyone else. I’m already having to pay for your brother and Catherine.’”
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”.
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.”
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.
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.
