Prince Harry is currently facing a backlash Friday over his memoir ‘Spare’, with criticism from the media, commentators, army veterans, and even the Taliban, while Buckingham Palace kept silent on its widely leaked contents.
After a Spanish-language edition of the memoir accidentally went on sale in Spain, revelations from the book dominated headlines and airwaves days before its official publication on Tuesday.
The revelations, which include an alleged physical assault by the heir to the throne Prince William, how he lost his virginity, used drugs, and murdered 25 people in Afghanistan, have drawn criticism and mockery.
The largest royal book since Harry’s mother Princess Diana and Andrew Morton worked together on a biography in 1992 was dubbed “calculated and vile” and a “work of malice” by author A.N. Wilson.
Describing his decision to go public “idiotic”, Wilson said the book had merely succeeded in making the public sympathise with the royal family, “not with him”.
The book is the latest broadside from Harry and his American wife Meghan after they quit royal duties and moved to California in 2020.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as they are formally known, have since cashed in on their royal connections with several lucrative contracts for tell-all books and programmes.
The Spanish-language version of the book was hurriedly withdrawn from shelves after the blunder on Thursday but not before it had been purchased by media outlets, wrecking the publisher’s strict worldwide embargo.
The Sun tabloid said public sympathy for Harry over losing his mother as a child could not “justify the destructive, vengeful path he has chosen, throwing his own family under a bus for millions of dollars”.
In an editorial, it pointed to “countless discrepancies” in his claims and advised him to listen to friends who have urged him to “stop for his own good”.
The US edition of the left-leaning newspaper was the first to publish a leaked extract of the book this week, in which Harry described his physical altercation with William.