Editor’s Note: Dr. Peggy Drexler is a research psychologist, documentary film producer and author, including two books about gender and family and the forthcoming “Mean,” a book about women behaving badly, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2024. Her latest film, “King Coal,” will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers. View more opinion on CNN.
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The soap opera that is Prince Harry versus the British monarchy continued this week with the buzz surrounding the upcoming release of his memoir, “Spare.” Contents leaked from the book and released excerpts from his forthcoming interviews with “60 Minutes” and ITV offered some eyebrow-raising anecdotes and heightened the already-sharp tension between the Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan Markle, and the royal family. Lurid details aside, the most notable disclosures included new details about Harry’s relationship with his brother, Prince William, whom Harry apparently refers to in the book as his “arch nemesis.”
Courtesy of Peggy Drexler
Public interest in the royal family is at an all-time high — thanks to both real world events that include the loss of Queen Elizabeth II, the impending coronation of Harry’s father King Charles III and the resignation of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, and to the wild popularity of fictionalized series like “The Crown” — and Harry and Meghan are certainly capitalizing on that. Meanwhile, the royal family, including William, has remained silent.
Good for them. Where Harry may have once engendered some sympathy for having endured a lifetime of being the “spare” — the lesser of the two brothers, now fifth in line for the throne (coming in behind his 7-year-old niece, Princess Charlotte) — empathy is running short. Harry and Meghan quit the royal family amid complaints that they preferred a private life as “regular people,” no longer wanting the media attention that came with being royals, including being tabloid fodder. In an excerpt from an upcoming interview, Harry told ITV: “I want a family. Not an institution.”
And yet here they are, fully and willingly creating that fodder themselves.
And fodder it is. Among the gossipy allegations Harry lobs at his brother in “Spare” are details of a physical altercation between the two during which William knocked Harry to the floor and left him scratched and bruised, and claims that William and his wife, Kate Middleton, were the ones responsible for encouraging Harry’s controversial Nazi costume in 2005. Revelations in “Spare” also dish on Meghan’s relationship with Kate, including a claim that Kate demanded Meghan apologize for once suggesting she had “baby brain.” Buckingham Palace has repeatedly declined to comment on the book.
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Through these disclosures, what we’re seeing is a little brother desperate to fight back against a lifetime of feeling inferior, but doing so in the dirtiest way possible. And, well, it seems pathetic.
Competition between children is common, and sibling rivalry between brothers even more so, especially when there are just two of them. Certainly, most aren’t born into families with set hierarchies that serve to remind them of their exact place. But brotherly discord has existed throughout time, inspiring countless works of art in all spheres (most of them tragedies). Harry is not special — his is one of the commonest dramas of human nature.
He’s also not a victim, nor blameless. While much has been made since their union began about Meghan’s influence on Harry’s defection from the family, by now it’s clear that he, wounded, went looking for what he needed: someone to help him separate from his family and, perhaps, someone who supported and understood his anger. He found it in her, a woman whose ambition drove her career as an actress and whose own family life included contentious relationships with her half-sister and her father; a woman who was not afraid to express herself, even to royalty.
It’s clear that Harry and Meghan are, at some level, trying to take control of the narrative about themselves after negative press coverage that brought misogyny and racism to bear on an already-toxic family dynamic. But Harry’s attempts now to heal those wounds by making public private family matters aren’t noble, and they won’t save him, either. In fact, through Harry’s revelations, one might now feel the most empathy for William, a man who was raised, from birth, with a set destiny, and, unlike Harry, few choices.
William will be king, and Harry will not. But whether that is something William desires, or something he’ll instead fulfill out of sheer patriotic and familial duty, is unknown. That’s because William is taking the high road of silence. Isn’t it ironic that we know so much more about Harry and Meghan, the couple who resigned from royal life because they wished to remain private, than the couple who opted to stay?
While we can, and should, have some disdain for how Harry has chosen to approach his life circumstances, it’s also possible to have some compassion for him — and understanding. He did not, after all, entirely create himself. And, sheltered and uber-privileged as he was for much of his upbringing, he is likely a fairly immature 38 year old.
Now, he’s pushing back against the machine that made him in the only way he knows how — and possibly doing so because it’s the only way he knows how to make his own money and live independently. He felt exploited as a child and younger adult; he’s now in turn profiting off his family (and earning an enormous amount of money in the process).
Perhaps someday we’ll hear from Harry as Harry, a man truly independent of the royal family from which he has claimed, time and again, he desperately wants to separate. Until then, we can likely expect more of the same negativity, blame, immaturity and victimization — qualities, in fact, quite unbecoming of a royal. But, then, Harry no longer is one.
Prince Harry told CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday he hasn’t spoken with his brother, Prince William, for “a while,” in the second of two major interviews ahead of the publication of his memoir, “Spare” on Monday.
The Duke of Sussex told Anderson Cooper he doesn’t “currently” speak with the Prince of Wales, “but I look forward to us being able to find peace,” he said. It follows an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, ahead of what is likely to be an explosive week for the British royals with the release of Harry’s memoirs.
The interviews address a wide range of topics from the death of Prince Harry’s mother, the Princess of Wales, his frustration towards the British press, the treatment of his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and the subsequent fallout with his family since his marriage.
Buckingham Palace has repeatedly declined to comment on the contents of Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir.
In the interview and in excerpts from his memoir shared by ITV, the Duke of Sussex addressed how strife in his family has been fueled by the relationship between Buckingham Palace and media outlets.
“We’re not just talking about family relationships, we’re talking about an antagonist, which is the British press, specifically the tabloids who want to create as much conflict as possible,” Prince Harry told Bradby. “The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict.”
He also stated that the “leaking” and “planting” of “a royal source” to the press “is not an unknown person, it is the palace specifically briefing the press, but covering their tracks by being unnamed.”
Prince Harry added that he thinks “that’s pretty shocking to people. Especially when you realize how many palace sources, palace insiders, senior palace officials, how many quotes are being attributed to those people, some of the most heinous, horrible things have been said about me and my wife, completely condoned by the palace because it’s coming from the palace, and those journalists have literally been spoon-fed that narrative without ever coming to us, without ever seeing or questioning the other side.”
He spoke about how his mother was hunted by paparazzi, recalling the traumatic night his father told him Princess Diana had died from injuries sustained in a car crash.
“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad. And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father,” Prince Harry said in the interview.
The Duke of Sussex also talked about his decision to write the book, saying, “thirty-eight years of having my story told by so many different people, with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to tell own my story and be able to tell it for myself. I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.”
Prince Harry pointed out that he has tried over the last six years to resolve his concerns with his family privately.
“It never needed to get to this point. I have had conversations, I have written letters, I have written emails, and everything is just, ‘No, you, this is not what’s happening. You, you are imagining it,’” he said. “That’s really hard to take. And if it had stopped, by the point that I fled my home country with my wife and my son fearing for our lives, then maybe this would have turned out differently. It’s hard.”
The duke said he wants “reconciliation but first there needs to be some accountability,” with respect to his family.
“You can’t just continue to say to me that I’m delusional and paranoid when all the evidence is stacked up, because I was genuinely terrified about what is going to happen to me,” he said.
“And then we have a 12-month transition period and everyone doubles. My wife shares her experience. And instead of backing off, both the institution and the tabloid media in the UK, both doubled down,” he added.
Still, the duke said, “forgiveness is 100 percent a possibility,” during the interview.
“There’s probably a lot of people who, after watching the documentary and reading the book, will go, how could you ever forgive your family for what they have done? People have already said that to me. And I said forgiveness is 100% a possibility because I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back. At the moment, I don’t recognize them, as much as they probably don’t recognize me,” Prince Harry said.
On Monday, the duke’s interview with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan will air on the ABC show, followed in the evening by a half-hour special on ABC News Live. And to top things off, the duke will make an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” hours after his book is released on Tuesday.
With that all to come before the public is even able to get their hands on book, one has to wonder if there will be any revelations left to read. For days now, leaks from the upcoming tome have sparked headlines around the world.
It is now known the duke has made a slew of damaging accusations against the British royal family in “Spare” after several outlets obtained early copies of the book before the weekend. CNN has not seen a copy of the book but has requested an advance copy from the publisher Penguin Random House.
Perhaps the most incendiary revelation to emerge was Prince Harry’s claim of a scuffle with the Prince of Wales during an argument over his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2019, as he described while reading in an excerpt of his memoir on air on Sunday.
Prince Harry said his brother never tried to dissuade him from marrying Meghan, but expressed some concerns and told him, “‘This is going be really hard for you,’” Prince Harry recalled during his interview.
“I still to this day don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about,” Prince Harry continued. “Maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was going to be.”
His relationship with Prince William is just one of a series of incredibly candid accounts of life as the “spare heir” in his memoir.The book’s title of “Spare” – a reference to a nickname the duke lived with while growing up. Prince Harry’s version of events also tackles his final moments with the late Queen Elizabeth II, his attempts to seek closure after his mother’s death, and other deeply personal conversations with members of “The Firm.”
One part of the book that is seeing some backlash is his reported remarks on killing 25 Taliban fighters during his time in the British Army in Afghanistan. In addition to disclosing the figure, the duke is also quoted as describing the insurgents as “chess pieces” taken off the board rather than people, according to UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Prince Harry’s comments have prompted criticism from some British security and military figures – and an angry rebuke from the Taliban.
Before publicity ramped up around the duke’s book, the Sussexes had previously opened up about the challenges and hardships of royal life in their Netflix docuseries and to Oprah Winfrey.
In both those royal exposés, the couple outlined their acrimonious split with the House of Windsor and blamed the media for invasive, unrelenting coverage, particularly of Meghan.
The Sussexes announced in 2020 that they were stepping away from their roles as senior royals and planned to work towards becoming “financially independent.” The following year, the palace confirmed the couple had agreed with Queen Elizabeth II that they were not returning as working members of the royal family.
In the recent six-part Netflix documentary, Prince Harry didn’t hold back when he blamed the press for placing undue stress on his wife, saying it led to her having a miscarriage and suffering suicidal thoughts.
Meghan said she wanted to go somewhere for help but claimed she wasn’t allowed to because of the optics on the institution, without specifying who she believed stopped her. She made similar comments in her explosive 2021 interview with Winfrey.
Prince Harry said he is “100 percent” confident he can reconcile with his family, despite launching a fresh wave of attacks on King Charles, Queen Consort Camilla, Prince William and Princess Kate in an explosive 90-minute interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby that aired Sunday.
Claiming that his family and the British media drove him and Meghan Markle out of Britain, Harry said that some members of his family chose to “get into bed with the devil” to tarnish his and Meghan’s reputation in order to improve their own. While he claimed he wants to make peace, he said his family have “shown no willingness to reconcile.”
During the sit-down interview to promote his autobiography Spare (due out Tuesday) that aired on ITV, Harry read excerpts from the book, specifically passages that covered parts of his childhood, his school years and the traumatic impact Princess Diana’s death had on him. Harry described he and William as being “on different paths” since they were young boys, saying they dealt with their mother’s death in “different ways.”
He also revealed a deep sibling rivalry that dated back to their school days, however, he insisted “I’ve always loved my brother.” When asked whether there was any chance of a reconciliation between them, Harry said he “genuinely believes” there can be a resolution, saying, “I hope there can be a constructive conversation” but he insisted that they needed to keep “the antagonists” as he referred to the British tabloid press, out.
It was a matter Harry was pressed on by Bradby, an old friend who has interviewed the prince on numerous occasions over the years. When asked about the tirade of very public criticism he has leveled at his family, Harry blamed the British press for creating conflict and a culture war in the UK and said, “Silence only allows the abuser to abuse, I don’t see how silence can make things better.”
In his memoir, Harry writes that William feels he has been brainwashed by therapy, however, Harry told Bradby he was in a good place and happier than he has ever been.
Harry’s approach in promoting the blockbuster book has, unsurprisingly, irked the royals and those close to them, sources say. As one tells Vanity Fair, Harry “totally fails to see the irony and hypocrisy in what he says. When there have been private family conversations, it has been Harry who has leaked them to the press.”
On Saturday, sources close to the royal family expressed their shock at Harry’s book and interview saying, “He is on a path of self-destruction. There is so much vengeance. The late Queen would have been absolutely devastated.” They added that any reconciliation appears unlikely in the short term.
Before the interview aired, former Buckingham Palace communications advisor Dickie Arbiter told Vanity Fair he thought Harry would ultimately regret speaking out and that the Palace was unlikely to comment as the saga continues to escalate.
“If Harry wants to engage he has to eat humble pie and he doesn’t show any signs of doing that,” he said. “From my perspective, the institution did a lot to help Harry but he got to a point where he stopped taking the advice. Harry’s always been stubborn. He was always going to go his own way and do his own thing. As for his book, I think he’ll regret not having pulled it. It’s done now. He can’t undo this.”
Among the revelations to emerge from the Bradby interview are Harry’s claims that William and Kate made Meghan feel unwelcome from the start of their relationship, buying into the stereotyping of Meghan as a famous American actress, who was a divorcée and mixed race. Revealing that William and Kate were fans of Suits, the American legal drama in which Meghan starred, he said they were wary of his future wife from the outset.
Allies of Britain’s royal family pushed back Saturday against claims made by Prince Harry in his new memoir, which paints the monarchy as a cold and callous institution that failed to nurture or support him.
Buckingham Palace hasn’t officially commented on the book. But British newspapers and websites brimmed with quotes from unnamed “royal insiders,” rebutting Harry’s accusations. One said his public attacks on the royal family took a “toll” on the health of Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September.
Veteran journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, a biographer and friend of King Charles III, said Harry’s revelations were the type “that you’d expect? from a sort of B-list celebrity,” and that the king would be pained and frustrated by them.
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“His concern is to act as head of state for a nation which we all know is in pretty troubled condition,” Dimbleby told the BBC. “I think he will think this gets in the way.“
Harry’s book, “Spare,” is the latest in a string of very public pronouncements by the prince and his wife Meghan since they quit royal life and moved to California in 2020, citing what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of Meghan, who is biracial, and a lack of support from the palace. It follows an interview with Oprah Winfrey and a six-part Netflix documentary released last month.
Prince Harry memoir leak: Londoners react to ‘shocking’ claim of physical fight with William
Harry is not the first British royal to air family secrets _ both his parents used the media as their marriage fell apart. Charles cooperated on Dimbleby’s 1994 book and accompanying television documentary, which revealed that the then heir to the throne had had an affair during his marriage to Princess Diana.
Diana gave her side of the story in a BBC interview the following year, famously saying “there were three of us in this marriage” in reference to Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
But “Spare” goes into far more detail about private conversations and personal grievances than any previous royal revelation.
In the ghostwritten memoir, Harry discusses his grief at the death of his mother in 1997 and his long-simmering resentment at the role of royal “spare,” overshadowed by the “heir” _ older brother Prince William. He recounts arguments and a physical altercation with William, reveals how he lost his virginity (in a field) and describes using cocaine and cannabis.
He also says he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan _ a claim criticized by both the Taliban and British military veterans.
“Spare” is due to be published around the world on Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained an early Spanish-language copy.
Harry has said he expects counterattacks from the palace. He has long complained of “leaks” and “plants” of stories to the media by members of the royal household.
In an interview due to be broadcast on ITV on Sunday _ one of several he has recorded to promote the book _ Harry says people who accuse him of invading his family’s privacy “don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”
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“I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better,” he said.
Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, Spare, was accidentally leaked a week early in Spain. The highly-anticipated, secret-spilling, 416-page tome promised to be a revealing portrait of the Duke of Sussex’s life. And according to the Spanish translations which have dominated the current global news cycle, it delivers.
His wild experimentation with drugs from his teenage years to adulthood
His unrequited crush on former Friends star Courtney Cox
His strained relationship with his daddy, King Charles
How it was his brother who encouraged him to wear that Halloween costume
His shocking time in the army (including the number of people he killed)
And, most compellingly, his gradual falling out with said brother, the royal golden-boy, Prince William
The most talked about and memed passage in the book (so far) details a scuffle between the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge over Harry’s relationship with Meghan Markle, the now-Dutchess of Sussex. William had been vociferously against their marriage, and they actually had a knock-down-drag-out fracas in Nottingham Cottage that ended with broken crockery and Harry’s bum in a dog bowl. Such outrage is detailed in his memoir.
Obviously, the internet had a field day with this alleged altercation. The best take on the fight was a reenactment on Thursday, January 5th’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! In this hilarious skit, two actors dressed as the rock legend Prince go at it in a spoof of the Harry and William brawl.
Watch the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Prince Harry and Prince William fight skit here:
u201cA reenactment of Prince William & Prince Harryu2019s fistfight! ud83dudc51ud83eudd4au201d
— Jimmy Kimmel Live (@Jimmy Kimmel Live) 1672981228
The brilliant premise has the two princes played by a pair of actors each dressed as Prince to reenact the fight without getting into too much trouble.
Meanwhile, a voiceover reads from the memoir as the actors perform a word-for-word version of the events. To signify Nottingham Cottage, a sign reads “Nott Cott.” The wordplay is subtle, yet uproarious.
The most riotous moment happens when Harry describes the dog bowl breaking beneath him — which is far funnier when played by the two actors in flamboyant wigs and Prince’s superstar get-up.
The skit is already viral and is sure to rack up sales in anticipation to the memoir’s actual release date. All I can say is, this fight better be the inspiration for Ryan Murphy’s next season of Feud. And godspeed to the writers of the coming seasons of The Crown.
u201cthe crown writers running to put all of Prince Harryu2019s accusations in the future seasonsnu201d
You’ll have heard about Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir, Spare, by now, whether you wanted to or not. The content of its pages has seeped into the water table and osmosis-ed into your brain, where it’ll fester for a bit, then harden. From there, the book’s words will etch themselves into the deepest grooves of your memory. One day, sooner than you ever thought possible, you’ll be aged and bedridden with a tenuous handle on the world around you. Even though you’ll have forgotten the faces of your children, King Charles III’s offspring will remain lodged, and for comfort or because it’s all that’s left, you’ll return to what you know from an earlier time, shouting to the reluctant stranger changing your bedpan: “Kate and Wills were huge Suits fans before they met Meghan Markle!” or “Prince William broke Prince Harry’s necklace when William grabbed Harry by the collar and threw him down on the dog’s bowl! Allegedly!”
Sorry about all that. I had to do some priming. As we’ve processed the torrent of leaks from Spare this week, it’s almost been hard to keep track of it all. But for my money, the most genuinely jarring bits have been the corporeal candor that Prince Harry took in writing the book. Like when he addressed one rumor that I don’t recall ever reading—that Princess Diana did not want the boys to be circumcised. Turns out they are. So there’s another little fact to shout at the overworked orderly in the years hence. It’s a pretty stark diversion from the Windsor clan’s usually steadfast commitment to decorum.
The Duke of Sussex didn’t bring this detail about his most private parts up out of nowhere in the book, which has dominated headlines nearly everywhere since the first excerpts of it leaked on Wednesday. There was context. The context was that before the wedding of his brother and Kate Middleton in April 2011, Harry had been on a charity expedition to the North Pole, where he’d walked 200 miles across arctic landscape alongside fellow soldiers who’d served in Afghanistan. The thing about walking 200 miles across arctic landscape is that your extremities will possibly suffer, and his did. Harry’s ears, cheeks, and penis got frostbitten. His circumcised penis, that is. (Before we go on, it should be clarified that “Willy” is what he calls his brother and “todger” is the polite term he uses to refer to his penis.)
“There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised,” he reportedly writes in the memoir. “Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.”
The frostbite healed as the duke returned to England’s gentler climes, and most was well in time for the big royal wedding. But, as would be expected, the most extreme of his extremities took a little longer to get back to normal. So, he reportedly writes, as he walked down that aisle of Westminster in support of his brother’s new chapter in life, his “todger” was ailing. I don’t know exactly what sharing all of this is for necessarily, but now, you can google “Prince Harry penis” and receive vaguely more safe-for-work results than before. (I assume!)
The big freeze is not the only bit of body horror that has made headlines from this memoir. The other one—the one that is deeply funny and sad and has been banging around my skull since yesterday—is the moment after their grandfather Prince Philip’s funeral, when the boys and their father, the soon-to-be-crowned King Charles III, convened in the family cemetery to talk about Harry and Meghan’s decision to defect to America. It was a moment when Harry felt misunderstood, and worse, as though no one was even trying to understand him.
He reportedly writes, “I looked at Willy, really looked at him, perhaps for the first time since we were little, taking in every detail: his familiar scowl, which had always been the norm in his dealings with me.” William was balding, Harry noted, and it was more “advanced than mine.” That’s a great burn to levy between brothers. But then this: Harry noted that with the balding, William’s resemblance to their late mother had “faded.”
Harry’s brother was, in a way, unrecognizable to him. And what’s more horrifying than that? The person who is perhaps the only one who has access to what you went through—the struggles of the monarchy, having that father and those expectations, the tragedy of losing their mother—fading into something different, something more bald. William had aged out of the thing—his hair, and thus the resemblance—that had made him a bridge to what came before, and what’s worse, he’s Harry’s big brother.
These moments, first with the frostbite and then with the hairline, make it seem as though Harry’s masculinity, and more so his humanity, is at stake in the writing of Spare. These parts are when the book—which, we should remember, few people outside of Spain have been able to read cover to cover—seems most like an exorcism so far, especially when paired with the Sussex’s Oprah interview and their Netflix documentary. Whether this is the intention or not, the duke has blanketed the internet, the television, the published word with his own stories about every single bit of himself, down to the most personal, physical matters.
To some, watching the whole exercise might register as the real body horror here. But if this is useful for him—if he’s able to find peace in the informational spew—then we can at least understand it. After all, sometimes getting all the sick out is the only relief you can find.
Yes, there seems to be a reference to penile frostbite in Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, Spare, but the first detail to make it to the public in this week of leaked excerpts is still the most shocking one. On Wednesday, The Guardianquoted a few sections from the book where Harry alleges that Prince William physically assaulted him during a 2019 argument over the younger prince’s wife, Meghan Markle. It’s been clear since Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries dropped last month that the couple has the new Prince of Wales squarely in their sights, but the book looks to be an even greater escalation, bringing William’s wife, Kate Middleton, into the ring as well. Add in Harry’s reported reference to William’s “alarming” hairline, and it’s clear that the younger brother is happy to punch below the belt—or at the scalp.
Since the Sussexes’ royal exit, royal watchers have wondered whether Harry and William will be able to make amends after more than six years of private feuding. On the royal beat at Vanity Fair, we’ve approached the question in ahundreddifferentways, going in depth about how wary William is that their private conversations might make it to the public. But by telling the story of an alleged violent argument, Harry has finally raised the question that has been worth asking all along: Does he even want to make nice with his family at all?
Though Harry told Tom Bradby, in an interview set to air Sunday night, that he would like to repair his relationships with his brother and father, King Charles III, the stories in the book make the terms of any reunion clear. Harry’s willingness to make this physical fight public, or mention his frustration with his father’s press strategy, proves that he feels deeply wronged by the events of both the last five years and the last two decades. If William and Charles are ever going to attempt to make amends, they now have no choice but to jump this fairly high hurdle first.
It’s too soon to tell if the senior royals will respond to the book publicly at all, and it’s important to remember that few people have actually gotten to read the entire thing. So far most of the information we have from the book comes from the Spanish-language version, which went on sale early in Spain and has been acquired by media organizations across the world. There’s something kind of perfect about the fact that our early introductions to the book’s details are coming as a translation of a translation. Harry’s own words are still largely unknowable, but we are getting all of the shocking details.
When Harry first announced his deal to produce a memoir with Penguin Random House in July 2021, reports also came that Tender Bar author J.R. Moehringer had signed on as a ghostwriter. It seemed like an apt choice because Moehringer had written movingly about masculinity, ambition, and, in his work on Andre Agassi’s Open, father-son relationships. It wasn’t until Wednesday, when The Guardian published the first substantive leak from Spare, that I remembered exactly how splashy Open was, accompanied by a trickle of headlines about methamphetamines, Agassi’s disdain for the sport that formed him, and his experimentations with a toupee. The combination of depth and utter, even silly, honesty has made Open a classic of the form. Though I’ve read plenty of celebrity memoirs that divulge mostly nothing in a brisk and entertaining manner, it’s clear now that Spare will be something else entirely. The last few days of leaks, both serious and humorous, have proven that Harry is taking the Agassi route, down to the frank sexual details and drug use—and it’s working.
The prince has a long lineage of carousing and brawling ancestors, but it seems like putting his name on something so tawdry might be the biggest possible betrayal of his family. The negative response to the book in the British press so far seems to be an instinctual reaction to the embarrassment, and it might mean that the palace never needs to provide a response because it’s satisfied by its side’s defenders. In the Daily Mail on Thursday, combative columnist Jan Moir summed up a common response to the news, calling Harry a “grudge-toting manbaby” in a column with the headline, “If Big Willy really did push Little Harold over (and break his necklace) one can understand why.” A combination of Sussex fatigue and knee-jerk defense of the stiff upper lip means that the Windsors will get the benefit of the doubt in the audience that truly matters to them.
This is, of course, the strategy the royals have been pursuing all along, and it’s precisely the one that Harry is criticizing. On the Vanity Fair podcast DYNASTY, my colleague Katie Nicholl and I traced the history of how the monarchy survived a tumultuous 20th century by managing the media and paying close attention to the public’s reaction. But we also discussed how an emphasis on surface appearances over values is often reflected in the palace’s desire to protect the images of the monarch and the heir at all costs, including allowing and inflicting reputational damage to other family members.
Harry’s deep grievances against his family are just the latest example in a long history of Windsor tabloid misadventures resulting from this dynamic. Accepting negative coverage of Harry in the interest of protecting William, a tactic that Harry has alleged, has always seemed like a risky strategy, precisely because it distorted Harry’s interest in protecting his own reputation. On the covers of the tabloids for two decades, Harry has been the risky, impulsive, rebellious brother to a future king, even as hints of William’s alleged “temper” have emerged. As Harry surely knew, authoring a book divulging plenty of deeply personal family information would be the most effective way for him to attack William’s growing position within that system.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s DYNASTY podcast now.
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Prince Harry claimed that his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton urged him to wear the Nazi uniform he infamously donned for a 2005 costume party and “howled with laughter” when they saw him dressed up.
The accusation is reportedly detailed in Harry’s upcoming memoir, “Spare,” according to Page Six. Harry wrote that he couldn’t decide between a normal pilot uniform and that of a Nazi, the outlet reported, leading the young prince to call his brother for help.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” wrote Harry.
When he tried on the uniform for them, he wrote, “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
Harry was 20 when he attended the “Native and Colonial”-themed costume party. Tabloid photos showed him with a red swastika-emblazoned armband on his biceps. His brother was dressed as a lion.
All I wanted to do was make it right,” he continued. “I sat down and spoke to the chief rabbi in London, which had a profound impact on me. I went to Berlin and spoke to a Holocaust survivor.”
Photos of Prince Harry wearing a Nazi costume spread around the globe like wildfire.
JIM WATSON via Getty Images
Royal historian Robert Lacey, in his 2020 book “Battle of Brothers,” said the costume incident signaled the start of Harry and William’s falling out.
“Harry chose his costume in conjunction with his elder brother — the future King William V, then 22, who had laughed all the way back to Highgrove (Charles’ country home) with the younger sibling he was supposedly mentoring — and then onwards to the party together,” Lacey wrote, per Page Six.
“For the first time, their relationship really suffered and they barely spoke,” a former aide told Lacey. “Harry resented the fact that William got away so lightly.”
King Charles III remembers late mother Queen Elizabeth II
Pre-taped in the Quire of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, King Charles III began his Christmas address by fondly mentioning his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away on September 8 at age 96: “I am standing here in this exquisite Chapel of St George at Windsor Castle, so close to where my beloved mother, the late Queen, is laid to rest with my dear father. I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards and messages which so many of you have sent my wife [Queen Consort Camilla] and myself and I cannot thank you enough for the love and sympathy you have shown our whole family,” via BBC.
Talking about how Christmas is a bittersweet feeling when grief is involved, Charles added, “Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones. We feel their absence at every familiar turn of the season and remember them in each cherished tradition.”
King Charles III acknowledges Armed Forces, Emergency Services
King Charles III then highlighted his mother’s belief in light empowering darkness: “In the much-loved carol O Little Town Of Bethlehem we sing of how ‘in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light’. My mother’s belief in the power of that light was an essential part of her faith in God, but also her faith in people and it is one which I share with my whole heart. It is a belief in the extraordinary ability of each person to touch, with goodness and compassion, the lives of others, and to shine a light in the world around them.”
Giving a shoutout to the Armed Forces, Emergency Services, health and social care professionals, teachers and public service workers Charles shared, “This is the essence of our community and the very foundation of our society. We see it in the selfless dedication of our Armed Forces and Emergency Services who work tirelessly to keep us all safe, and who performed so magnificently as we mourned the passing of our late Queen. We see it in our health and social care professionals, our teachers and indeed all those working in public service, whose skill and commitment are at the heart of our communities.”
King Charles III commends “solidarity” to combat hunger and poverty
King Charles III also highlighted the UK public’s solidarity in combating hunger and poverty: “And at this time of great anxiety and hardship, be it for those around the world facing conflict, famine or natural disaster, or for those at home finding ways to pay their bills and keep their families fed and warm, we see it in the humanity of people throughout our nations and the Commonwealth who so readily respond to the plight of others.”
“I particularly want to pay tribute to all those wonderfully kind people who so generously give food or donations, or that most precious commodity of all, their time, to support those around them in greatest need, together with the many charitable organizations which do such extraordinary work in the most difficult circumstances. Our churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and gurdwaras, have once again united in feeding the hungry, providing love and support throughout the year. Such heartfelt solidarity is the most inspiring expression of loving our neighbour as our self,” Charles included.
King Charles III mentions Prince William and Kate Middleton
Furthermore, in his Christmas speech, King Charles III mentioned his son Prince William and daughter-in-law Kate Middleton – who now go by Prince and Princess of Wales – alongside the couple’s footage from their recent Wales trip, highlighting the royal family’s work towards the Commonwealth: “The Prince and Princess of Wales recently visited Wales, shining a light on practical examples of this community spirit.”
King Charles III then recalled a touching moment which meant a lot to him: “Some years ago, I was able to fulfil a life-long wish to visit Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. There, I went down into the Chapel of the Manger and stood in silent reverence by the Silver Star that is inlaid on the floor and marks the place of our Lord Jesus Christ’s birth. It meant more to me than I can possibly express to stand on that spot where, as the Bible tells us, ‘The light that has come into the world’ was born.”
As a parting note, King Charles III hoped people could find “hope in the future” by being of service to others: “While Christmas is, of course, a Christian celebration, the power of light overcoming darkness is celebrated across the boundaries of faith and belief. So, whatever faith you have, or whether you have none, it is in this life-giving light, and with the true humility that lies in our service to others, that I believe we can find hope for the future.”
“Let us therefore celebrate it together, and cherish it always. With all my heart, I wish each of you a Christmas of peace, happiness and everlasting light,” the King concluded.
No mention of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in King Charles III’s speech
While King Charles III made it a point to mention Prince William and Kate Middleton, the monarch skipped out on mentioning his younger son Prince Harry and daughter-in-law Meghan Markle. With how Harry & Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s documentary, reportedly ruffled the royal family feathers, one wonders if that’s the reason for the Christmas speech snub. Notably, in his first address to the nation after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, Charles made it a point to mention Harry and Meghan: “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
During the same address, Charles had said of William and Kate, “As my heir, William now assumes the Scottish titles which have meant so much to me. He succeeds me as Duke of Cornwall and takes on the responsibilities for the Duchy of Cornwall which I have undertaken for more than five decades. Today, I am proud to create him Prince of Wales, Tywysog Cymru, the country whose title I have been so greatly privileged to bear during so much of my life and duty. With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations, helping to bring the marginal to the centre ground where vital help can be given.”
What did you think of King Charles III’s first Christmas speech? Share your personal opinion with Pinkvilla in the comments section below.
The adorable young royal was in attendance at the Christmas morning service at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Norfolk, England with his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and his older siblings, Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 7.
Due to restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic, last Christmas the royal family could not do the traditional public greeting and formal debut they are able to conduct this year.
Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images
The royal family looked dapper in their holiday ensembles, with Kate Middleton wearing a dark green, fitted coat that was finished with a stylish hat of the same color. Princess Charlotte complimented her mother’s outfit in perfect Christmas fashion, wearing a red coat. Prince William and Prince George twinned in matching bright blue ties and navy suits. For his part, Prince Louis looked adorable in a navy-and-black coat that he wore with knee-high socks.
Prince Louis’ outfit holds family significance, as it appears to be the very same style his father wore during his first Christmas debut in 1987 at 5 years old. Back then, Prince William wore a powder-blue coat with white knee-high socks.
Prince William in 1987 – Photo: Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Images
This Christmas season marks the first since Queen Elizabeth II‘s death in September. During King Charles II‘s holiday address, released earlier today, the newly appointed monarch mourned the recent death of Queen Elizabeth and extend gratitude for those who shared in his family’s grieving.
Prince Harry said it was “terrifying” to have his brother, Prince William, scream at him during his bitter split from the royal family, in the final installments of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s controversial Netflix documentary that were released Thursday.
The fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of “Harry & Meghan” cover the pair’s challenges since their 2018 wedding,Meghan’s deteriorating mental health and her 2020 miscarriage, and ultimately their decision to quit as working members of the family.
Harry said he initially asked for a “half in, half out” arrangement, where Harry and Meghan would have their own jobs but still work in support of the Queen, during a crunch family meeting. “But it became very clear very quickly that that goal was not up for discussion or debate,” Harry said.
“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 take it all in,” he said, recalling the conversations with Prince William, then-Prince Charles, and Queen Elizabeth II.
“But you have to understand that from the family’s perspectives, especially from hers, there are ways of doing things. And her ultimate mission and goal, responsibility, is the institution … she’s going to go on the advice that she’s given,” Harry said.
The pair describe throughout the new episodes how, in their view, their position within the royal family became untenable after constant hounding from Britain’s media and repeated disregard for the couple’s wellbeing inside palace walls.
Buckingham Palace reiterated it will not comment on the documentary on Thursday. Royal engagements are meanwhile continuing, with King Charles and Camilla, the Queen Consort, set to visit a community kitchen in London and attend a carol service with the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the family.
Harry hinted that there was jealousy from other royals towards Meghan given the amount of media attention she was initially receiving. “The issue is when someone who is marrying in, who should be a supporting act, is then stealing the limelight or is doing the job better than the person who is born to do this,” he said.
“That upsets people. It upsets the balance. Because you have been led to believe that the only way that your charities can succeed and your mission can grow is if you are on the front pages of those newspapers.”
The series also touches on Meghan’s deteriorating mental health and her miscarriage in July 2020. “I was pregnant. I really wasn’t sleeping. The first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried,” Meghan said.
She described experiencing suicidal ideation, telling the filmmakers she believed “all of this will stop if I’m not here. And that was the scariest thing about it, it was such clear thinking.”
“The lies, that’s one thing. You kind of get used to that when you live within this family,” Harry added. “But what they were doing to her, and the effect it was having on her… enough. Enough of the pain, enough of the suffering.”
“I just did everything I could to make them proud, and to really be a part of the family,” Meghan said in the fifth episode, speaking of her relationship with the other royals. “And then the bubble burst.”
“I realized that I wasn’t just being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves,” she said.
The highly anticipated Netflix documentary marks the Sussexes’ latest attempt to reclaim the narrative surrounding their departure from royal life.
It features details on the increasingly tense relationships between Harry and his brother, WIlliam, and his father, King Charles III. And it emphasizes the suggestion that the royals wanted to sideline and isolate the couple, often through the planting of negative media reporting, rather than have them dwarf more senior royals in popularity.
“My dad said to me: ‘Darling boy, you can’t take on the media. The media will always be the media,” Harry said, describing the palace’s relationship with news outlets as a “dirty game.”
The culmination of the breakdown between the royal institution and Harry and Meghan, who were once touted by parts of the media as the modernizing force the monarchy needed, was their historic and controversial decision in early 2020 to quit as working royals and leave the UK.
Harry said he spoke to Queen Elizabeth II and arranged to meet her, with Meghan, before that split was finalized.
“She knew that we were finding things hard. I’d spoken to her many times about it,” Harry said. But as the meeting approached, Meghan said they received a message from an aide telling them they were not allowed to see the monarch.
“I’ve actually been told that I’m busy all week,” the Queen then told Harry, according to his recollection. “I was like, wow,” Harry said. “This is when a family and a family business are in direct conflict … really what they’re doing is blocking a grandson from seeing his grandmother,” added Meghan.
The couple were critical of the Queen’s aides but again were again complimentary of the late monarch herself, who died aged 96 in September, shortly after filming concluded for the series.
Their documentary, and Harry’s upcoming memoir, focus more attention on the difficult relationship between the prince and his father, King Charles.
Thursday’s release follows last week’s batch of episodes, in which Prince Harry criticized “unconscious bias” inside the family.
It remains to be seen whether the venture will enhance the reputation of the couple as they look to sculpt their post-royalty personas.
Six in 10 Brits believe it was a bad idea for the duke and duchess to release the Netflix documentary, according to a Savanta poll of 2,250 British adults carried out online between December 9 and 11, between the release of the first and second parts of the series.
The same poll found that Harry and Meghan both have negative approval ratings among the British public – -3 and -19 respectively, when subtracting those with a negative opinion from those with a positive one – unlike the high popularity of Prince William (+60) and Charles III (+36).
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 to connect with a trained counselor or visit the NSPL site. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.
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Kate Middleton and Prince William have revealed their 2022 holiday card.
The Prince and Princess of Wales are seen holding hands with their children- Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4- in the new portrait used for the family’s annual greeting card.
Each of the five family members are dressed casually as William and Kate both don a pair of jeans while their children are dressed in shorts and sneakers.
“Sharing a new picture of the family for this year’s Christmas card!” the Prince and Princess of Wales captioned the photo, shared to their official Instagram account.
The sunny outdoor stroll was photographed earlier this year by Matt Porteous in Norfolk, where the family spends a lot of time at their Anmer Hall country home, part of the royal family’s Sandringham estate. The 19th century country house is where Kate has been said to feel most at home.
The final three episodes of the series are set to drop on Thursday, with their contents teased in a new clip that dropped on Monday.
In it, Harry is seen celebrating on what he calls a “freedom flight” – presumably as he and Meghan left the U.K. for the U.S. – before he calls out “institutional gaslighting.”
“I wonder what would have happened to us had we not got out when we did,” he begins.
Harry is then heard saying: “They were happy to lie to protect my brother. They were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
Meghan also says: “I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves, I was being fed to the wolves.”
The trailer highlights the couple’s new beginnings in the U.S., with Meghan noting how the move had given them “a chance to create that home that we had always wanted.”
“I’ve always felt that this was a fight worth fighting for,” Harry adds.
Prince William, the Prince of Wales.
Max Mumby/Indigo via Getty Images
The “unprecedented and in-depth” docuseries, directed by Oscar-nominated Liz Garbus, was billed as a Netflix global event, with Harry and Meghan sharing “the other side of their high-profile love story.”
Netflix and the royal family later clashed over whether the institution had been contacted for comment on the series, as a statement that opens the show claims.
A royal source told HuffPost that Netflix made no attempt to contact members of the royal household, Kensington Palace or Buckingham Palace.
However, a Netflix source insisted to HuffPost that both King Charles and Prince William’s offices were contacted and were given time to respond ahead of the docuseries release.
The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan are available on Netflix now, with the final three dropping on Thursday.
Members of the royal family are raised to conduct themselves with a graceful temperament that rarely allows for emotional disclosure. In a rare personal statement online, however, Prince William publicly paid tribute to a friend — who died in a plane crash Thursday.
“Yesterday, I lost a friend, who dedicated his life to protecting wildlife in some of East Africa’s most renowned national parks,” William tweeted Friday. “Mark Jenkins, and his son Peter, were tragically killed while flying over Tsavo National Park while conducting an aerial patrol.”
The 40-year-old continued: “Tonight, I’m thinking about Mark’s wife, family and colleagues who’ve sadly lost a man we all loved and admired.”
William and Jenkins first met during his gap year after graduating from Eton College in 2000, per People. The young prince had foregone family tradition as royals usually attended Gordonstoun in Scotland, but Princess Diana wanted him to follow in her father’s footsteps, per Town & Country.
Yesterday, I lost a friend, who dedicated his life to protecting wildlife in some of East Africa’s most renowned national parks. Mark Jenkins, and his son Peter, were tragically killed when flying over Tsavo National Park while conducting an aerial patrol.
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) December 9, 2022
Jenkins was so inspired by William and his African wildlife conservation work with the Tusk charity that he pursued the same endeavor in 2005. Jenkins eventually became a ranger, conservationist and professional bush pilot, according to Hello Magazine.
Thursday, however, Jenkins and his son were conducting an aerial patrol in a Cessna 185 for the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust — for which they volunteered — and crashed at around 7:15 a.m. while trying to drive cattle out of the expansive Kenya park.
“Kenya Wildlife Service and David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) teams are at the scene to investigate the circumstances of the crash,” the service told Hello in a statement. “KWS wishes to express our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the deceased.”
“Passionate, principled, and strong-willed, Mark was never afraid to speak his mind and stand for what he believed in,” said his obituary from the Frankfurt Zoological Society. “He was a commanding presence and made an indelible impression wherever he went.”
St. Edward’s Crown, the centerpiece of the Crown Jewels viewed by millions of people every year at the Tower of London, has been moved to an undisclosed location for modification in preparation for the coronation of King Charles III next year
LONDON — St. Edward’s Crown, the centerpiece of the Crown Jewels viewed by millions of people every year at the Tower of London, has been moved to an undisclosed location for modification in preparation for the coronation of King Charles III next year.
The move was kept secret for security reasons until the operation was complete, Buckingham Palace said in a statement Saturday. The palace provided no details and didn’t say where the modification work would take place.
Charles will be crowned on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony that will embrace the past but look to the modern world after the 70-year reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II. The Imperial State Crown will also be used during the service.
Versions of St. Edward’s Crown are believed to have been used by monarchs since the 11th century.
The current crown was made for Charles II in 1661, as a replacement for the original, which was melted down in 1649 after the House of Commons abolished the monarchy and declared a commonwealth during the English Civil War. The original was thought to date back to Edward the Confessor, who reigned in 1042-1066.
The crown includes a 2.23-kilogram (4.91-pound) solid gold frame — set with rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, topazes and tourmalines — a purple velvet cap and ermine band. It was worn by Elizabeth during her coronation in 1953.
Charles will be crowned in a solemn religious ceremony conducted by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, the palace said in a statement. Camilla, the queen consort, will be crowned alongside her husband.
The palace is planning the coronation, known as Operation Golden Orb, as Charles and his heir, Prince William, seek to demonstrate that the monarchy is still relevant in modern, multi-cultural Britain.
While there was widespread respect for Elizabeth, as demonstrated by the tens of thousands of people who waited hours to file past her coffin, there is no guarantee that reverence will transfer to Charles.
At last year’s first-ever Earthshot Prize ceremony, Kate Middleton wore a lilac Alexander McQueen gown that had been in her wardrobe for a decade, because the award encourages its guests to think about sustainability when choosing their outfits. So it was a bit of a surprise on Friday night, when Prince William and Kate arrived on the recycled green carpet of Boston’s MGM Music Hall, and Kate was wearing a never-before-seen bright green dress by Solace London.
It turned out that the Princess rented her dress from the UK platform HÜRR, which has a mission to undo fashion’s reputation as one of the most polluting industries. She paired the dress with a familiar pair of glittering pumps from Gianvito Rossi and a very special Windsor family heirloom, a cabochon emerald and diamond choker necklace that once belonged to Diana, Princess of Wales. The necklace was a gift from Queen Elizabeth II upon Diana’s 1981 marriage to King Charles III, and she made headlines by once wearing it as a choker.
Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Prince of Wales attend The Earthshot Prize 2022 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway on December 02, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Samir Hussein
The decision to rent the dress was one of a few steps that the couple took to limit their carbon footprint on their trip to the United States, which also included taking a commercial British Airways flight to and from Logan Airport and driving hybrid Range Rovers around the city.
The couple was joined at the ceremony by Earthshot Prize Council Members Indra Nooyi, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, and Naoko Yamazaki. Radio broadcaster Clara Amfo and actor Daniel Dae Kim hosted the night, which featured live performances by Annie Lennox, Chloe x Halle, and Ellie Goulding, and prerecorded contributions from Billie Eilish and Cate Blanchett. The awards were presented by environmental advocates Catherine O’Hara, David Beckham, Rami Malek, and Shailene Woodley.
Chloe Bailey and Halle Bailey attend The Earthshot Prize 2022 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway on December 02, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
During the ceremony, Kate took to the stage to present the award in the Clean Our Air category to Mukuru Stoves, a Kenyan company that creates safer, cleaner cookstoves founded five years ago. She clapped, with admiration in her eyes, as a video told the story of the company’s founder Charlot Magayi, who designed the product after her daughter suffered burns from a substandard stove.
Early on after he founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020, William mentioned that he drew inspiration from President John F. Kennedy’s quest to send American astronauts to the moon. On Friday morning, William met with Caroline Kennedy, the former president’s daughter and the current US ambassador to Australia, and her two children, Jack and Tatiana Schlossberg, at the JFK Presidential library, where they also viewed historical documents related to the space program.
On Wednesday, the Prince and Princess of Wales were greeted by torrential rain on their first trip to the US since 2014, but it didn’t stop a crowd from gathering to see the couple on the steps of Boston City Hall. In a speech discussing the Earthshot Prize, the climate prize he founded in 2020, he thanked “all the hardy Bostonians for braving the rain this evening,” speaking in front of a sea of umbrellas. William and Kate stood onstage alongside Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu and Massachusetts governor-elect Maura Healy, and the group watched as green lights illuminated City Hall.
William and Kate arrived at Logan airport on Wednesday afternoon for a series of largely climate-focused events before a Friday ceremony where the winners of the Earthshot Prize will be announced, along with performances from Billie Eilish, Ellie Goulding, and a handful of celebrity presenters. Before the public ceremony, William and Kate met with Wu, her husband Conor Pewarski, and their two sons, Blaise and Cass, where the group discussed composting and Kate, wearing a Burberry dress, inquired about the boys’ schoolwork. Wu also showed the prince and princess black-and-white photos of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the city in 1976.
Photo by Paul Edwards – Pool/Getty Images.
Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images.
A travel disruption prevented Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, who is helping to plan the Friday’s Earthshot Awards, from attending, but William thanked her and mentioned her father, former president John F. Kennedy, quoting one of his famous lines. “Sixty years ago, President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” speech laid down a challenge to American innovation and ingenuity. ‘We choose to go to the moon,’ he said, ‘not because it is easy but because it is hard,’” he said. “It was that Moonshot speech that inspired me to launch the Earthshot Prize with the aim of doing the same for climate change as President Kennedy did for the space race.”
The first Earthshot Prize ceremony took place in London in 2021, and on Wednesday, William said that Boston was the “obvious choice” for the second ceremony because it was the former president’s hometown, the home to the foundation that carries on his work, and a center for science and innovation, which are at the heart of the Earthshot Prize. “Like President Kennedy, Catherine and I firmly believe that we all have it in ourselves to achieve great things, and that human beings have the ability to lead, innovate and problem-solve.”
William and Kate have never visited the city on official duties, but many members of his family have. In 1976, Prince Philip and the late queen made an extended visit to the US for the country’s bicentennial celebration, sailing from the UK to Boston in the royal yacht. She became the first reigning British monarch to visit the city where the Revolutionary War began. In 1986, King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, visited to deliver a speech at the 350th anniversary celebrations for Harvard University.
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Most people know by now that King Charles III really cares about the environment. It’s been repeated often in the months since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, especially by the people who admire him. What may be less known among the general public is exactly how respected among environmental advocates he really is.
This year, Charles reportedly canceled plans to attend COP27 in Egypt last week due to advice from Liz Truss’s short-lived administration, which was upheld by the new prime minister, but he did host a Buckingham Palace reception for over 200 politicians and activists who were on their way to Egypt. For Charles, trips to the United Nations Climate Change Conferences are about more than keeping up appearances—he actually participates. At 2015’s COP21 in Paris, where a landmark treaty was set to be negotiated, Charles used his opening remarks to remind the attendees to think of the world they were leaving their grandchildren. On his last trip to COP26 in Glasgow, Charles gave four separate speeches and introduced a video message from his mother.
One obvious reason for his passion for the environment is that he was simply in the right place at the right time. Historians have named 1970 as the year when threats to the environment broke through to the mainstream, and as a 22-year-old finishing up his university degree in anthropology and archeology and planning his career, the concern came naturally. For a handful of baby boomers, caring for the environment became a countercultural lifestyle, and though Charles was never a committed member of the Back-to-the-Land Movement, some of his beliefs and practices—from his organic farm at Highgrove to his concerns about GMOs—weren’t too far off.
Still, Charles remained unusually committed to environmental concerns even after the ’70s drew to a close, perhaps because it spoke to something deeper in him. Through speeches about the environment spanning five decades, he has described his interest in the environment in elemental terms, speaking of beauty, awareness, synthesis, and imagination. He has also been remarkably astute when it comes to incorporating new information and following the movement’s buzzwords. But engaging with his history in the movement also helps illustrate some of the pitfalls that have made action regarding the climate much harder to achieve.
The future king made his initial forays into environmental concerns long before global warming was even on the agenda. On a drab day in February 1970, Charles followed his father, Prince Philip, into a room at Strasbourg’s city hall for a conference about wildlife conservation. In a dark suit, looking younger than his 22 years, Charles sat in the audience as his father delivered a speech about resource depletion, endangered wildlife, and the need for more land to be set aside for conservation. These were the issues that Philip spent most of his life committed to, and they were fairly normal concerns for European royalty at the time. Charles and Philip were joined by four other European princes at the conference, which brought together government representatives and activists to launch the European Conservation Year.
By 1970, Charles had already been involved with the European Conservation Year planning for nearly two years. Many of Charles’s decisions about education and employment were planned by Queen Elizabeth II and her advisers, and his initial forays into the world of environmental activism were motivated by their desire for him to form closer connections in Wales. In 1968, Charles started preparing for his responsibilities as heir apparent by spending more time in the nation. First, he chaired a committee tasked with planning the nation’s participation in the upcoming European Conservation Year, his first time serving as the head of a meeting. The next year, he returned to take a summer course in the Welsh language before his lavish investiture in Caernarfon Castle in July 1969.
Charles’s 1970 trip to France was part of a larger plan to launch him into his career in public life. His university studies would come to an end that spring, so for the year following his investiture, he committed to a hectic travel schedule to serve as a royal apprentice before beginning his military training at the Royal Navy College, Dartmouth. After leaving the conference in Strasbourg, Charles traveled to Paris to attend the state funeral of French leader Charles de Gaulle.
LONDON (AP) — A bubble barrier that prevents plastic waste from reaching the ocean is one of 15 initiatives named as finalists for the year’s Earthshot Prize, a global competition aimed at finding new ways to protect the planet and tackle climate change.
Prince William, the heir to the British throne, unveiled the finalists on Friday. The five winners, who will be announced next month in Boston, will receive 1 million pounds ($1.1 million) to develop their ideas and scale up their projects.
The prince and his charity, the Royal Foundation, launched the prize in 2020 inspired by U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 “Moonshot” speech that challenged Americans to go to the moon by the end of the decade.
William described the finalists as “visionaries” who offer reasons to be optimistic about the planet’s future.
“They are directing their time, energy and talent towards bold solutions with the power to not only solve our planet’s greatest environmental challenges, but to create healthier, more prosperous, and more sustainable communities for generations to come,” he said in a statement.
Among the finalists are The Great Bubble Barrier, a Dutch invention that pumps air through perforated tubes installed in riverbeds and canals to create a curtain of bubbles designed to push plastic up to the surface and into a waste collection system.
This removes plastic from the waterways and prevents it from reaching the ocean, “where it is nearly impossible to capture and remove,” the promoters say.
A startup from Kenya aims to provide cleaner burning stoves to make cooking safer and reduce indoor air pollution. It was the brainwave of Charlot Magayi, who grew up in one of Nairobi’s largest slums and sold charcoal for fuel. When her daughter was severely burnt by a charcoal-burning stove in 2012, she developed a stove that uses a safer fuel made from a combination of charcoal, wood and sugarcane.
The stoves cut costs for users, reduce toxic emissions and lower the risk of burns, Magayi says.
Other projects include Fleather, a project in in India that creates an alternative to leather out of floral waste; Hutan, a conservation project in Malaysia to protects orangutans; and SeaForester, a cutting-edge seaweed farming effort meant to restore the ocean’s forgotten forests.
INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA: In this image released on May 2, Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, speaks … [+] onstage during Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World will be broadcast on May 8, 2021. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE)
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The first rumors that Harry might be wanting to tone down some of his recollections in his $20-million as-told-to autobiography, Spare, surfaced in the publishing lunchrooms of Manhattan last summer, which is to say, after Harry returned from the rather grand but toned down April funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip. It was at that funeral in Windsor that Harry came face to face with his immediate family and his larger, extended family, seeing many of them for the first time since the announcement of his upcoming book, and since he and Meghan Markle sat for their extended televised sit-down with Oprah Winfrey in the CBS /global broadcasting event in March 2021.
His grandfather’s funeral — that of a rather grand and blustery old-school patriarch — would ordinarily be an occasion for the Windsors to come together to celebrate a long, well-lived life. But the event was the opposite of that for the prince. He soldiered through it, and, though he was seen speaking with them, not a lot of his family really knew what they should do with him. There was a distinct distance and a chill that most of them kept. Kate made a notable effort to include him, and Harry and his brother walked up the hill together. But what Harry confronted, two years after moving to Canada and thence to the States, was that his strivings in Hollywood, on television, on podcasts, in speeches and in print, had had an effect back home.
The title of the his upcoming book is simple, quite blunt, and carries gravitas precisely because it deftly exploits the old rhymed cliche “an heir and a spare,” the British polity’s wry gift to the language, rooted in Cockney rhyming-slang, in assessment of their monarch’s breeding duties to ensure the stability of succession. Suffice it to say, Charles and Diana gave Britain an exact fulfillment of the cliche’s requirements. Prince Harry would likely have himself joked about and/or been robustly teased with the designation across decades, at Eton, at Sandhurst, in the Army, wherever his crew of blokes would have wanted to rag him.
But whether or not he came up with the idea of using it in this instance, the act of taking on the cutting derogation as his book title is Harry’s own move. It’s a bold one, and it dovetails nicely with what we know of the straight-spoken combat chopper pilot and his two tours in Afghanistan. The prince’s use of the word opens a cosmos of connotations, bringing weaponly swagger as well as going straight into Harry’s role as an outsider in the monarchy. There’s power in that level of ownership; this usage shows Prince Harry recognizes it. Not least, it makes deft literary and enormous marketing sense. You want a tome on a royal family from an outsider who gives his book a title like that. There could be no better or simpler flag to get the browsing masses to ask themselves this book-buying question: What could lie between the covers of that?
Seven thousand miles east of Montecito, California, the proud use of the word as a derogatory noun — along with a few other words describing the book’s narrative in the promotional jacket copy, notably, the participle “unflinching” — will have caused some concern in Buckingham Palace. To say that King Charles, Prince William, and/or their senior courtiers have been “dreading” the book is arguably an overstatement, with the possible exception of those courtiers whose direct mandates include spinning webs of positivity around any negative anecdotal flotsam coming off the book’s reviews or its drop date of January 10. Those courtiers would be well within their rights to dread the first few weeks of the British press playing hacky-sack with the thing. But the regent Charles, and the lone heir in the cliche that the book’s title so eloquently evokes, William, have a kingdom to run and with it, more productive things to do than worry about how they’re being portrayed by Harry. Harry’s given Charles, particularly, a couple of good solid years of practice. Charles can take it.
That’s not to say that the book won’t have impact. Spare will make an enormous splash, first, across America and the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, and secondly on the Continent, some of whose royal families are related to the Windsors, and whose people still look to the British royals as the preeminent noble family in Europe. Harry is particularly beloved on the Continent for his Invictus Games in service of disabled military veterans, the next installment of which will be held in Düsseldorf, Germany, a few short months after his book drops.
Ergo, the coverage will be global, and varied. We can look forward to much of the same breathless television coverage that attends Prince Harry and Meghan Markle whatever they do or wherever they go, both pro and con. Some of Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s more vocal detractors in England — such as Fox broadcaster Piers Morgan, who was fired by his former network, ITV, for not publicly apologizing for expressing his opinions about Meghan Markle on air, when in fact his opinions were one big reason for his and his program’s immense popularity — will be quick off the mark, both on air and in print. More sympathetic interlocutors will be scheduled by Harry and his hardworking phalanx of publicists with certain outlets. Certainly, with Oprah Winfrey and CBS This Morning’s Gayle King being friends with the couple, those bookings will be widely awaited. This is not to mention the robust advertising campaign that the publisher will be engineering.
The point is that, no matter the platform and no matter the slant — whether it is Harry himself making an appearance on at a book-signing, Piers Morgan exploding on talkTV about Harry’s take on certain royal family events, or Tina Brown creatively doubling down upon and/or having to eat her words that the book would “never see the light of day” — Spare will be Topic A for weeks.
The security around the Spare manuscript, in whatever format, has been admirably and understandably tight thus far. Eventually, actual review copies will have to be sent out, presumably with some architecture of an embargo. With an embargo or without, at that review-copy moment, the cat’s out of the bag on Fleet Street. Some sort of leak will occur. Somebody — and there are a thousands of somebodies on both sides of the Atlantic who can be classified as parties whose commercial interests would mean that they’d be highly interested in a peek at an advance copy of Spare — will get a leak. It can be digital, it can be in manuscript form, it can be incomplete, or it can be read and simply chatted about over drinks. And that leak, in whatever form, will find its way to the people who care about it the most, namely, Fleet Street. Whether that happens this month or next will matter to Harry and his publisher, which is why security is tight, but its date of occurrence doesn’t materially affect what happens when the dam is eventually breached, which will be that the British press will kick into high gear and begin parsing Harry’s every adjective about his family. The appetite will be especially great among those actors who have axes to grind, such as the Daily Mail, or any of the publishers whom Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have sued and/or personally blacklisted from any kind of cooperation.
First serial rights, meaning, the publication of a serious extract from the book rather than quotes and/or opinions of it, can have been retained by Harry and team or can reside with the publisher. It can be assumed that they will be spectacularly sold, but it also can be that, in this special instance, they remain unexercized in favor of making the January 10 splash all that much bigger. Usually, first serial are considered, a way to recoup part of an advance, and as good advertisement for the book. But it’s unclear whether first serial would work for any periodical trying to bring a chunk of it out.
Most significantly, the production and news-stand (read: sales) time is getting short between now and January 10 for a monthly, or even for a weekly, to wade in with presumably big cash for a piece of the Spare action. That (theoretical) excerpt would have to be in the teeth of production (fact checking, copy editing and art) now, for a monthly to recoup any sales. For a weekly, the latest they would want to put it into production would be by early December. Time would be capable of performing what they call “crashing” the story into print somewhat later than that, but not many others could do it. It’s not outside the realm of possibility for anybody to do it of course, given the manpower, and it would only be entertaining if they did, but for a monthly, the editors would really have to be on their toes. It’s possible that a bright and tidy excerpt could go to one of Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s few friends in print journalism. Edward Enninful, editor of British Vogue, springs to mind.
Whether first serial rights are exercised or not, it seems Harry’s book will debut on two very different stages at once. The first stage will be rather more serious, involving book review pages, critics, and that possible serialization. That will be international, but its starting point will be in New York, seat of Penguin Random House US and of many of the best periodicals in the English-speaking world. The second, far louder stage will be the book’s minute, generally hostile dissection in the UK, where Fleet Street will instantly put it through the food processor and then probe the resulting puree for any possible inaccuracy, exaggeration and/or insult to the Crown, the Queen, Charles, or William made by Harry.
For his part, Harry’s dad is a busy king. Charles has shown a remarkably fleet turn of foot since the day after his mother’s death on September 8, blasting out to seal the official transfer of the crown before the parliaments of Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, and the Welsh Senedd. During all that, he seamlessly led the nation in mourning from Balmoral down to Buckingham Palace and on to Westminster, where Elizabeth lay in state. Those stages of the cross included not just the grand military sendoff procession from Balmoral, in Scotland, but the Vigil of the Princes both in Scotland and in London, as well as the reception of Commonwealth and world leaders.
At each turn Charles gave short, graceful speeches, open about his own grief, taking the time to thank everyone for their moving tributes to his mother. In short, he led. It was what he was brought up to do.
GALLIPOLI, TURKEY – APRIL 25: Prince Harry chats with Prince Charles, Prince of Wales during a visit … [+] to The Nek, a narrow stretch of ridge in the Anzac battlefield on the Gallipoli Peninsula, as part of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 25, 2015 in Gallipoli,Turkey. Turkish and Allied powers representatives, as well as family members of those who served, are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign with ceremonies at memorials across the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Gallipoli land campaign, in which a combined Allied force of British, French, Australian, New Zealand and Indian troops sought to occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula and the strategic Dardanelles Strait during World War I, began on April 25, 1915 against Turkish forces of the Ottoman Empire. The Allies, unable to advance more than a few kilometers, withdrew after eight months. The campaign cost the Allies approximately 50,000 killed and up to 200,000 wounded, the Ottomans approximately 85,000 killed and 160,000 wounded. (Photo by Niall Carson-Pool/Getty Images)
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He’s limning his mother still, making the Commonwealth and parliamentary rounds, ushering Liz Truss out the door of 10 Downing and welcoming Rishi Sunak in, full of old-fashioned get-up-and-go. Nothing gets in his way. In shaping his team, he’s quietly drawing his younger siblings Edward and Anne into the day-to-day core family team in the absence of Harry. In the ultra-traditional latter-day Greek stage play that the British Royal Family present when they publicly appear, Charles’ has been a performance that perfectly communicated the thousand-year monarchy’s one basic message: Continuity. It’s going to be a fun, fit, no-nonsense reign. He lets nothing get in his way.
Not so Charles III’s younger son. Though Harry’s been back to England and to his family since he left for his “vacation” in western Canada in 2019, perhaps his most remarkable accomplishment is his thorough alienation of himself from his family, beginning with his father and brother. Harry was caught somewhat flat-footed down in London by his grandmother’s death in early September. He had refused an invitation from her to Balmoral; this was to be a charity trip for him and for Meghan Markle, including a pop over to Germany to check on Invictus preparations for next year.
When he got the summons to Balmoral, he was late getting in the air, and his grandmother died while he was en route. A lot of things both big and small shifted for Harry as his father assumed the kingship. Over the next days of the family vigils and the funeral, Harry’s “otherness” shone through, exactly as it did at his grandfather’s funeral last year. Yes, he walked with them behind Elizabeth’s caisson down the Mall. But he was faced with the fact that, in his absence, his home and his family had changed forever.
