Xtreme Vogue London Desk: Sarah Marshal
Prince Harry has continued his seemingly neverending wave of allegations and revelations about the royal family in his new autobiography.
Leaked before the official release, Spare covers a wide range of subjects from his fractious relationship with brother William to the struggles after his mother Diana’s death in 1997.
His sex life, drug use and time served in the army are also covered in a memoir that appears to go into uncomfortable levels of detail.
The palace has so far declined to comment about any of the contents of the book, copies of which went on sale early in Spain.
With excerpts from the Duke of Sussex’s tell-all book leaked in the run-up to its publication, here are the claims and revelations so far.
Harry claims William physically attacked him
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.”
Prince Harry has spoken of the “red mist” that came over his brother during this altercation.
Harry tells ITV’s Tom Bradby: “What was different here was the level of frustration, and I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him.”
The Duke claims William urged him to hit back, citing fights they had as children, but Harry refused and his brother left before returning, looking regretful and apologising.
William’s harsh words for Meghan
The alleged altercation took place at Harry’s then home in Nottingham Cottage, when William is said to have called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
Harry told him he was parroting the press narrative about his wife.
The duke claims William told him he did not need to tell Meghan about the confrontation.
Harry says that he told his therapist first and his wife later after she noticed the scrapes and bruises on his back. “She was terribly sad,” he said.
Brothers’ nicknames revealed
William and Harry’s nicknames for each other are revealed in the Duke’s account of the alleged altercation.
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.
William told him “I didn’t attack you, Harold.”
Charles’ plea to his feuding sons
The princes’ father is said to have urged them to stop fighting at Windsor after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.
In a tense meeting, a grieving Charles told his sons: “Please, boys. Don’t make my final years a misery,” Harry claims.
Harry claims William and Kate encouraged him to wear Nazi uniform
Harry sparked outrage in 2005 when he wore a Nazi uniform complete with swastika armband to a fancy dress party.
But in the book he claims he phoned William and Kate to ask them whether he should choose a pilot’s uniform or a Nazi one for the fancy dress party.
He says the couple urged him to wear the latter, and both howled with laughter when he went home and tried it on for them.
The title of the book refers to the idea of an ‘heir and a spare’ – one sibling in line for the throne, with the other a ‘back up’.
Harry claims that, after he was born, his father told the Princess of Wales his arrival was wonderful but now she had given him an heir and a spare ‘his work was done’.
Meghan upset Kate over ‘baby brain’ comment
Harry claims that Meghan upset Kate, who had recently given birth, by telling her that she must have “baby brain” during a phone call in the run up to the Sussexes’ wedding in 2018.
Harry says his wife apologised but claims William “pointed a finger” at her, saying: “Well, it’s rude, Meghan. These things are not done here.”
The American actress is said to have replied: “If you don’t mind, keep your finger out of my face.”
Harry reveals moment he learned of Diana’s death
The prince covers the tragic loss of his mother in a car crash in Paris in 1997, including the moment he found out when he was just 12 years-old.
Harry says that Charles sat on the end of his bed at Balmoral Castle and told him: “My dear son, mum has had a car accident.”
The duke claims his father did not hug him and he later “felt like a politician” as he greeted members of the public in the wake of her death.
Harry says he killed 25 people in Afghanistan
The duke has faced backlash after writing about his time in Afghanistan in his memoir.
Harry wrote that flying six missions during his second tour of duty on the front line in 2012 to 2013 resulted in “the taking of human lives”, of which he was neither proud nor ashamed.
“So, my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he wrote.
The Duke of Sussex said the killings were like “chess pieces removed from the board,” penning that “bad people” were “eliminated before they could kill Good people.”
Servicemen and critics have claimed that the comments have risked his security and made him a target.
Harry admits illegal drug use
Prince Harry admits to taking cocaine in the book, writing that “at someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more.
“It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different.”
He also said he smoked weed and took magic mushrooms.
Woman ‘passed on message’ from Princess Diana
The Prince also tells of visiting a woman “with powers” to reach his late mother, Princess Diana. Whilst Harry recognised the “high-percentage chance of humbuggery”, he ultimately decided to meet the woman because she was recommended by friends.
“You’re living the life she couldn’t,” Harry says he was told. “You’re living the life she wanted for you.”
Harry wanted further investigation into mother’s death
The brothers were dissuaded from requesting that the investigation into their mother’s death be reopened, Harry says.
“Especially the summary conclusion, that our mother’s driver was drunk and, as a result, that was the only cause of the accident,” the Duke of Sussex writes. “It was simplistic and absurd.
“Even if the man had been drinking, even if he had been drunk, he wouldn’t have had any problem driving through such a short tunnel. Unless paparazzi were following him and dazzled him.”
His last words to the Queen on her deathbed
The Duke of Sussex has revealed the words he said to the Queen on her deathbed at Balmoral last year.
Harry describes how he whispered to her that he “hoped she was happy” and would be reunited with her husband Philip, who died in April 2021.
The prince flew up to Scotland on September 8 after Buckingham Palace announced that she was gravely ill but he reached Balmoral after she died aged 96.
Breaking silence rumours about his ‘real’ father
Harry finally addresses a longstanding rumour that a man who had an affair with his mother is his real father.
“The rumour going around at the time that my real father was one of my mother’s ex-lovers: Major James Hewitt”, Prince Harry writes. “One cause of the rumour was Major Hewitt’s red hair, but another was sadism.
“Tabloid readers loved the idea that Prince Charles’s youngest son was not Prince Charles’s son. They never got tired of that ‘joke’, for some reason”, he remarks, feeling that the rumour was used to humiliate him.”
Googling Meghan’s sex scenes
Though he admits to looking up his now-wife Meghan Markle’s sex scenes in Suits during the early days of their relationship, Prince Harry said this was a “mistake.”
“I’d witnessed her and a castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room,” he writes. “I didn’t need to see such things live.”
Chaffeur drove Harry through the Paris tunnel
The Duke of Sussex says he asked his chaffeur to drive him through the tunnel in Paris where his mother was killed.
He was attending the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi-final at the time.
“The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…” he writes.
“I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large. The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I told him. Yes, yes. He knew it.”
Harry says he was “probably a bigot” before meeting Meghan
In a teaser for his CBS interview due to air on Sunday, Harry has admitted that he was “probably a bigot” before he met his wife.
Questioned by host Anderson Cooper, he responded “Put it this way, I didn’t see what I now see.”
“I went into this incredibly naive. I had no idea the British press were so bigoted. Hell, I was probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan”, he added.
