The Duke of Sussex is being made to look like a ‘chump’ by Meghan Markle’s friends, who ‘constantly leak on her behalf’ to the US celeb magazines, and she will not ‘be as coy as Harry’ when her own book comes out
One of the UK's best-informed Royal Family insiders has said Prince Harry is being treated like a "useful idiot" by his wife's US "celebrity mates".
Flunkey, the longstanding royal correspondent for Private Eye magazine, was scathing in a brutal review of the Duke of Sussex's controversial new memoir, Spare.
The review suggests that Harry "pulled some punches when writing about the family" after his late revision of the manuscript in the wake of his grandmother's death last September.
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However, Flunkey warns: "This War of the Windsors Mark 2 will get nastier. Meghan is planning her own tome and won't be as coy as Harry in digging up some skeletons. Unlike him she has nothing to lose – and perhaps Harry himself may even be expendable. Spare is just a first volume."
Although their identity is a secret, Flunkey is generally held to either be somebody who either works in the Royal Household or has very good contacts in it.
The report states that Buckingham Palace lawyers were "ready to react to any unauthorised use of personal letters and private documents". In the event, however, they were "untroubled because Harry's truths don't come with corroborating evidence".
Flunkey points out that Spare "dispenses with quotation marks in favour of italicised sentences" and therefore it is impossible to know if they are "verbatim conversations" or "vague recollections from a hazy past".
"Spare, like the Spare himself, is a mess," writes the royal insider, adding that Harry has exposed himself as an "illiberal, cosseted brat wielding the sword of his own truth to destroy the monarchy and a free press so as to remould both in Meghan's image".
Despite the fact that Harry is incensed by courtiers and members of the Royal Family "leaking" stories to the press, Flunkey points out: "The Meg Set, the posse of US celebrity mates who for some unknown reason worship the soap star and leak on her behalf – most notoriously to People magazine, one of only two print interview's Harry gave during the book's publicity campaign – are delighted.
"Harry, the over-therapied princeling hamstrung by a lack of self-awareness, has become their useful idiot. Spare serves their agenda perfectly even if it makes Harry look like a chump."
* Spare by Prince Harry is available now from online retailers and high street book shops, rrp £28
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