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For a man who so desperately craves privacy, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a cynical, yet inch-perfect, media campaign for a launch of anything, ever. The “victim” has become the perpetrator – Harry, for all his hatred and protestations, is now the arch-media manipulator. He’s wilfully playing the game he professes to hate.
So once again this morning the eyes of the world are on Harry, just days before the launch of his autobiography Spare.
What must his poor dad be thinking? The sheer cruelty King Charles is suffering at the hands of his deeply angry and, I’m beginning to think, slightly unhinged son, defies belief.
Harry even captures his father’s deep anguish in the book. “Please, boys,” Harry quotes his father as saying. “Don’t make my final years a misery,” he writes.
Then, fully cognisant of Charles’s misery, Harry goes on to compound it.
For money.
It is a blessing his grandfather Prince Philip and grandmother The Queen are not around to see it.
Prince Philip was a war hero. He and his Royal Navy comrades faced the guns of the Italian navy in the Allies’ Mediterranean campaign, though tellingly he seldom spoke of it.
He must be up there with his brothers in arms wondering why he bothered.
The countdown is officially on for the release of Prince Harry’s bombshell memoir.
And with some claims from the book already in the open – including an alleged physical altercation between Prince Harry and Prince William – many are waiting for a response from the royals.
Follow the latest updates on Express.co.uk’s live blog HERE.
The age of quiet heroism is long dead, and we now live in the age of the victim – and Harry is the poster child of the victim generation.
To poor victims like the famous (and once) universally loved, multi-millionaire Prince Harry, life is something which is done to them – nothing is ever their fault. Because this, you see, absolves them from taking any responsibility for their own failings.
The snippets from the book revealed today are jaw-droppingly instructive of a man who has seemingly been taught to be a victim.
Yes, Harry had a bust-up with William in 2019. He says William called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive” and the confrontation escalated until William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.
A later apology by William is trashed with Harry spitting: “Are you serious? Help me? Sorry – is that what you call this? Helping me?”
What struck me here was not that two brothers had a bust-up (I have a brother, we had bust-ups, ho-hum) but Harry’s concern for his little necklace. Harry, a soldier with two tours of Afghanistan under his belt. Again, I defer to Prince Philip’s generation on this.
We are then told, from the horse’s mouth remember, Harry chose not to say sorry or go for a beer and patch things up, as families do all day long, but went to see his therapist – presumably to explore his feelings further.
Give me strength.
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In truth, even from the snippets released today, there is a lot about this book that feels manufactured and perhaps beyond Harry’s control (or even understanding).
Phrases Harry is supposed to have used “parrot the press narrative” (about Meghan) and “the whole rolling catastrophe” scream ghostwriter.
But the publication is of course down to Harry.
If you ask me, Harry needs a new media advisor if he wants any semblance of a happy life.
Might I recommend me? I’ll give you my first bit of media advice for free Harry: stop doing media. You have gazillions of dollars – enjoy it, bring up your kids, learn to windsurf, buy an RV, whatever.
That way the media will get bored and move on.
Er, actually that’s it. That’s all you need to know.
Sod it, done myself out of a very lucrative little earner there…
Spare by Prince Harry will be released by publishers Penguin Random House on January 10, 2023.
The tell-all memoir, which was ghostwritten by Pulitzer Prize winner J R Moehringer, promises to be packed full of explosive revelations and insight into the Royal Family – and there’s even an audiobook read by the Duke of Sussex himself.
You can buy your copy of Spare on Amazon.
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