“Woke Royals”

For all of the noise that Prince Harry has made over the past few days (weeks, months, and years) about his loathing of the British media, he knows – or has been made aware by his publishers – of the necessity of sitting down with journalists in order to promote his book. And so it is that, yielding to the entreaties of publicity, he has been interviewed by the estimable Bryony Gordon for the Telegraph. It’s an interesting feature, full of colour and anecdote, and demonstrates, as if it needed to, that the rebellious prince remains a source of endless fascination to everyone in his former home country.

Even Prince Harry’s critics must concede that his memoir Spare has been an enormous success. The book is the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever: 400,000 copies flew off the shelves on its first day. The Duke of Sussex’s recent blitzkrieg of high-profile publicity opportunities, on both sides of the Atlantic, leaves little doubt that he is, at least for now, the most famous man in the world. Not bad for a self-described ‘spare’. But there is one group of high-profile people whose thoughts are both eagerly sought and, for the time being, withheld: the Royal Family.

Spare is one of the most annoying books I have ever read.

This is the most annoying book I have read in a long time. Even the bio on the first page is annoying. The Duke of Sussex, it says, is ‘a husband, father, humanitarian, military veteran, mental-wellness advocate and environmentalist’. I’m surprised it didn’t add ‘He / him’. Environmentalist? Mother Nature might have something to say about that. The man who once flew in a private jet to a Google camp in Sicily to speak about climate change, and who snorted ‘No one is perfect’ when a hack had the temerity to point out that 60 per cent of the flights he takes are on private jets, is now putting ‘environmentalist’ in his actual bio? Now that’s chutzpah. Or gaslighting. One of those.

His self-righteous quest to rid us of ‘unconscious bias’ speaks to the elitism of woke ideology.

Since Prince Harry left the royal family he’s been casting about for a new role, a new calling, beyond talking mournfully about himself to the highest bidder. Going by his bombshell memoir, Spare, and the cascade of interviews surrounding it, an obvious vocation presents itself: diversity trainer.

“There’s TMI [too much information] and then there’s whatever is happening here,” winced The Cut, the liberal American women’s bible. “A shrooms trip at Courtney Cox’s house? Blaming William and Kate for his infamous Nazi Halloween costume? Frostbitten penis?!”

This is the outlet that put the Duchess of Sussex on a special magazine cover in August after being granted exclusive access to her Montecito mansion. But far from being a sympathetic ear, it epitomised much of the world media’s reaction to the duke’s revelations in his memoir.

Prince Harry’s family believes he’s been “kidnapped by a cult of psychotherapy” and his wife, Meghan Markle, according to a report.

Harry admitted in his memoir, “Spare,” that as far back as 2019, Prince William feared his brother “was being ‘brainwashed’” by therapy — sparking the final fight in their tense relationship.

Now a royal source has told the Independent that the family fears it has fully lost him to the cult-like beliefs it clearly blames on his California actress wife, Markle.

With his forthcoming memoir and surrounding publicity tours, the Duke of Sussex has passed the point of no return. He is haemorrhaging friends and goodwill on both sides of the Atlantic. In the past few days, with revelations from his memoir Spare leaking like a sieve, Harry has been denounced for his indiscreet discussion of his service in Afghanistan by everyone from UK military leaders to a former British Ambassador to America – and even the Taliban.

Royal interviews have a long pedigree, but not necessarily a good one. “When you look at history, any time that a senior royal has sat down for an interview, ultimately it has always backfired,” said Katie Nicholl, author of The New Royals, and Vanity Fair’s royal correspondent, who has been writing about the Windsors for nearly two decades.

ITV will expect huge ratings for its interview with the Duke of Sussex on Sunday night, but Harry may pay the price in the long run.

Prince Andrew’s “car-crash” Panorama interview with Emily Maitlis fuelled a lawsuit that led to a £12m out of court settlement last year, but before that were Harry’s parents: the then Prince of Wales admitted his infidelity in an interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, and Diana, Princess of Wales, cemented their divorce by detailing her unhappiness and Charles’s relationship with Camilla in a controversial interview with the BBC’s Martin Bashir.

Prince Harry has been written out of King Charles’ Coronation script, it was claimed today, as royal insiders said Prince William is ‘burning with anger’ amid the bombshell revelations in the Duke of Sussex’s memoirs.

In his new tell-all autobiography Spare, Harry made a series of sensational claims about his brother and father, describing the Prince of Wales as his ‘arch-nemisis’ and accusing the King of being worried he would be ‘overshadowed’ by Meghan’s Hollywood star power.

The Royal Family has thus far remained silent on the matter, refusing to respond to the Duke’s incendiary anecdotes, but the Sunday Times today said a royal source claimed Harry has been omitted from the proceedings of King Charles’ upcoming Coronation in May.

US news anchors denounced Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir as a “gauche” public airing of the Royal family’s “dirty laundry”, as media outlets in the Duke’s adopted home turned against him.

American journalists once sympathetic to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex questioned why Harry felt the need to put family arguments “out there for the whole world to see” in Spare.

“I just don’t understand why on earth he would want to put that out there. I know he’s selling a book but to me, it’s just not done,” said Don Lemon, a CNN anchor. “It’s gauche to me”.

Senior military figures have condemned the Duke of Sussex after he said in his memoir that he killed 25 people while serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.

A distinguished British army colonel accused Prince Harry of “betraying” the military, while a former assistant chief of the defence staff said his remarks broke “an unwritten code”.

The Taliban have expressed their fury after Prince Harry revealed he killed 25 enemy ‘chess pieces’ during his deployment in Afghanistan, in his tell-all memoir Spare.

Speaking to MailOnline, the militants taunted the Prince, saying they had the last laugh over the West and the ‘big mouth loser’ Duke of Sussex – who ‘fled to his grandmother’s palace’ – by recapturing the country in 2021.

Even Meghan’s Taliban friends have turned on Harry!