Prince Harry faces growing criticism over memoir leaks

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Prince Harry faces growing criticism over memoir leaks

London: Prince Harry has faced backlash over his ‘Spare’ memoir, with criticism from the media, commentators, army veterans and even the Taliban, while Buckingham Palace has remained largely silent on its content disclosed.

Days before the official release on Tuesday, revelations from the book dominated headlines and airwaves after a Spanish-language version of the memoir was mistakenly put up for sale in Spain.

The revelations, including an alleged physical attack on him by heir to the throne Prince William, how he lost his virginity, took drugs and killed 25 people in Afghanistan, drew both condemnation and derision .

Writer AN Wilson called the ghost-written tome – the greatest royal book since Harry’s mother Princess Diana collaborated with Andrew Morton on a 1992 biography – “calculated and despicable” and a work of “maliciousness”.

Describing his decision to go public “stupid”, Wilson said the book had simply succeeded in getting the public to sympathize with the royal family, “not with him”.

‘Silly’

The book is the latest brothel for 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 officially known, have since benefited from their royal connections with several lucrative deals for tell-all books and programs.

The Spanish version of the book was hastily pulled from shelves after Thursday’s blunder, but not before it was bought by the media, breaking a strict global publishers’ embargo.

The Sun tabloid said public sympathy for Harry over the loss of his mother as a child could not ‘justify the destructive and vengeful path he chose, throwing his own family under a bus for millions of dollars”.

In an op-ed, she pointed to “countless discrepancies” in his claims and advised him to listen to friends who urged him to “stop for his own good”.

Guardians Gaby Hinsliff said the book went beyond “awkward public interest” issues into “washing dirty laundry” in public.

The US edition of the left-leaning newspaper was the first to publish a leaked excerpt from the book this week, in which Harry described his physical altercation with William.

“The details of the brothers allegedly beaten in a palace cottage are both almost ridiculously insignificant and heartbreakingly sad,” she wrote.

‘Crushed’

Harrys claims to have killed 25 people in Afghanistan and likening his actions to removing “chess pieces” from a chessboard, was seen as boastful and inappropriate, and enraged some veterans.

Retired Colonel Tim Collins, who led a British battalion in Iraq in 2003, condemned a “tragic profit-making scam”, adding: “That’s not how you behave in the army. it’s not how we think.

“Harry has now turned on the other family, the military, who once embraced him, after trashing his biological family,” he added.

Another high-ranking veteran who served in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, said his remarks would “fuel militant propaganda”.

Senior Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted: “Mr. Harry! Those you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families waiting for them to return.”

Jealousy claims

The Sun quoted sources close to his father, King Charles III, as saying he was saddened by the book.

But there has been no official comment from the palace.

In new claims in memoirs reported by The Daily Telegraph on Friday night, Harry alleges his father wanted to avoid supporting him and Meghan financially because he was jealous of her.

The Duke writes that he realized Charles feared ‘a new and resplendent’ royal who would ‘dominate’ the limelight after the current king grew concerned that the monarchy was supporting the couple financially after their marriage in 2018.

“He had been through this before and he had no interest in letting it happen to him again,” Harry wrote, referring to Diana, the Telegraph said.

Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at the University of Bangor, North Wales, said the “scale” and “ferocity” of the current royal divide was unprecedented, but the royal family “were would probably come out of it.”

But any move to remove Harry and Meghan’s royal titles would require political intervention and new legislation.

The Royal Family would likely view this as “pouring oil on the fire” at a time when they wanted to focus on Charles’ imminent coronation on May 6, he said.

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