Duke of Sussex reveals many surprising details about his past in Spare, from his previous drug-taking to how he lost his virginity
Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir Spare has not even been officially released, but damning revelations have already begun leaking.
The book was due to be published on January 10, but the Guardian newspaper printed leaked extracts overnight on Thursday, while Spanish-language versions of the book went on sale early in Spain.
Here are some of the most controversial passages:
Prince Harry says that when he was 17 he was offered a line of cocaine at someone’s house and consumed the drug on several other occasions, although he insists media reports suggesting he was a drug addict were false and that he did not enjoy it.
"It wasn’t much fun and it did not make me feel especially happy as it seemed to do to everyone else, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. I was a 17-year-old boy ready to try anything that altered the pre-established order," he writes.
Harry also recounts how, as a student at Eton College, he used to smoke cannabis in a bathroom at his house while the Thames Valley police served as his bodyguards, patrolling the exterior of the building.
In 2002, King Charles sent Harry to Featherstone Lodge, a drug rehabilitation clinic in Peckham, south London, after he admitted to smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol.
He then says he went to California with friends in January 2016, and got drunk on tequila and took magic mushrooms.
The duke says he started hallucinating, believing a bin in a bathroom was staring at him before growing a head.
Harry recounts losing his virginity in a field behind a busy pub in 2001 aged 17, to an "older lady" who "loved horses very much".
The excerpt reads: "I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and held me back… one of my mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us."
But he says it was a "humiliating episode".
The recollections feature an acknowledgement that he killed 25 people while serving as an Apache attack helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.
"It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me," he writes, likening hitting his targets to knocking "chess pieces" from a board.
He says that in war soldiers do not usually know how many enemies they have killed, but "in the era of Apaches and laptops" he was able to say "with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed. And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number".
Part of his reason for feeling no guilt about taking lives, he says, is that he never forgot being in the TV room at Eton, watching news coverage of the 9/11 attacks in New York. He later met the families of victims of the attacks on visits to America.
It is the first time the prince, 38, has discussed the number of Taliban fighters he killed during his military service, and is likely to increase concern about his personal safety.
Harry says he sought a woman who "claimed to have powers" to speak with his late mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
The book claims the unnamed woman told him his mother was with him "right now". It was at this point that his neck grew warm and his eyes watered, he writes.
Harry does not describe the unnamed woman as a psychic or medium, writing that he met her after trusted friends recommended her, saying he "felt an energy around her".
She is alleged to have told the prince: "You’re living the life she wanted for you."
Writing about his mother’s death, he said he was woken up by his father who "sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on my knee".
According to Harry, Charles said: "My dear son, mum has had a car accident."
Harry claims that the Prince and Princess of Wales encouraged him to wear a Nazi uniform to a party in 2005, it has been reported.
The Duke says the Prince and Princess “howled with laughter” when they saw him in the costume, according to Page Six magazine.
Harry reportedly writes that it was a decision between two costumes: a pilot uniform or a Nazi uniform.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” he wrote, according to Page Six. “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
Prince Harry writes that his argument with William took place in 2019 after his brother called Meghan "difficult", "rude" and "abrasive".
Harry writes that William had wanted to discuss "the whole rolling catastrophe" of their relationship and struggles with the press, but was already "piping hot" when he arrived at the cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.
Harry writes: "(William) called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.
"I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."
William then challenged his younger brother to hit back, but Harry refused. William later returned to the scene "looking regretful, and apologised", Harry writes, with his brother asking him not to tell Meghan that he had "attacked" him.
Harry writes that he gave his brother a glass of water and said: "Willy, I can’t speak to you when you’re like this."
Harry reveals that the King previously joked about whether he was really his father.
"Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father?" Harry writes, according to The New York Post, which also managed to get hold of excerpts.
"He’d laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumour circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt."
Princess Diana had a five-year affair with Mr Hewitt, an ex-cavalry officer, which gave rise to persistent speculation that he could be Harry’s father.
Noting that Mr Hewitt has similar "flaming ginger hair", Harry lambasts the claim as driven by tabloid "sadism".
"My mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born," he notes.
The Princess of Wales demanded an apology from the Duchess of Sussex after she suggested Kate had "baby brain", the book states.
Harry claims Kate told Meghan: "You talked about my hormones. We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones" when the two couples met for a reconciliatory tea at Kensington Palace in June 2018.
He suggests that the "offended" Princess of Wales was holding onto the upholstered side of her chair so hard that her fingers went white.
The altercation allegedly took place over the phone when the two women had discussed the timing of wedding day rehearsals just weeks earlier.
Long before they met Meghan, the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge knew exactly who she was because they were huge fans of her legal drama, Suits.
Prince Harry writes that when he told them he had a new woman in his life and that she was an actress in the TV show, Prince William’s mouth fell open and he said "**** off!", then explained that he and Kate were "religious" viewers of the US series.
Harry also touches on his strained relationship with his father and how he and William pleaded with him not to marry Camilla Parker Bowles.
"Willy and I promised our father that we would welcome Camilla to the family. The only thing we asked for in return was that he didn’t marry her. ‘You don’t need to get married again’ we asked him," he writes.
"Despite the bitterness and sadness we felt in closing another loop in the history of our mother, we understood this was irrelevant."
The prince reveals that his step-mother converted his old bedroom at Clarence House into a dressing room after he moved out of his father’s London residence. He says that he tried not to care, but "especially the first time I saw it, I cared".
The King himself is still hoping for a reconciliation with his son, unnamed sources told newspapers this week.
In its leaked extracts, the Guardian says the King had stood between his two sons during a difficult meeting at Windsor Castle following the April 2021 funeral for their grandfather Prince Philip, the late Queen Elizabeth’s husband.
"Please, boys," Harry quoted his father as saying. "Don’t make my final years a misery."
Prince Harry reveals the final words he whispered to his grandmother upon arriving at her deathbed hours after her passing last September.
Harry says he told his late grandmother in a whisper that he "hoped she would be happy" and that she would be with his grandfather, Prince Philip, who had died a year prior at age 99.
Harry also writes in the book that he told her he "admired her for having fulfilled her duties until the very end", referencing her attendance at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations that summer.