Prince Harry and his wife Meghan speak during the Global Citizen festival in New York last year. Photo / AP
Prince Harry and his wife Meghan speak during the Global Citizen festival in New York last year. Photo / AP
OPINION:
If you’re fretting about what to get those hard-to-buy-for family members and loved ones this Christmas then look no further. That pernickety uncle who likes to lecture you about the correct way to tie a half-Windsor? It would have to be Men, Machines and Sacred Cows, the 1984 essay collection by Prince Philip, which covers such important topics as why polo umpires are imbeciles.
Have a recently divorced cousin liable to start hitting the prosecco at 10.30am on Christmas Day? Sarah, Duchess of York’s 1996 autobiography or the follow-up Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself are just the ticket.
And that aunt who has far too many thoughts on crystals and has some, ah, interesting thoughts on homoeopathy? Just buy King Charles’ 2010 number, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, which gets into among many random things: Sufism, the “grammar and geometry” of nature, the Large Hadron Collider and Thomas Aquinas.
But, when it comes to the sibling who constantly rails against the family, sulks at the drop of a lukewarm cocktail sausage roll and can pout at a competitive level? Well, they are going to have to wait until 2023, with the New York Times finally revealing that Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex’s autobiography will only be coming out on January 10 next year.
Not only that, the Times has reported that the father-of-two has “gotten cold feet” and that “the project has been shrouded in rumours, delays and secrecy”.
Up until now, it had been widely reported that publisher Penguin Random House wanted Harry’s book to be released in time for the Christmas sales rush. (Nothing like the schadenfreude of reading about another family’s dysfunction to get cash registers ringing!) However, after the death of Queen Elizabeth in September came claims that the duke wanted to rework the title and it might not be out until 2023.
But what no one had considered thus far was that Harry’s book would be released in the strange retail deadzone that accompanies a new year and new credit card bills.
From left, Prince William, Prince of Wales, Kate, Princess of Wales, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex wave to members of the public at Windsor Castle. Photo / AP
Early January (coming a day after Kate, Princess of Wales’ birthday) is an odd choice.
Consider the release dates of similar high-profile celebrity literary offerings of late. Michelle Obama’s Becoming came out in November 2018 (17 million copies sold and counting) with her next title set to hit in the coming months while Barack Obama’s A Promised Land came out in November 2020. Other big-name celebrity autobiographies of the last 12 months included The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (October 2021), Going There by Katie Couric (October 2021) and Will by Will Smith (November 2021). See a pattern?
Only one of 2021′s New York Times nonfiction bestseller list came out in January but you could argue that was an anomaly given the subject (actress Cicely Tyson) died a few days after its release, thereby spiking public interest in her.
It’s not as if cold, dark months of a northern hemisphere winter naturally lend themselves to readers wanting to hunker down with a prince’s story of woe while they do the mental arithmetic to see if they can afford to turn the heating on.
So what could this mean?
Could the timing of Harry’s book coming out be a ploy to ensure that it gets to number one on the bestseller lists given the possible lack of competition? Could it be that the finished manuscript is far less explosive than anyone might have thought?
(Penguin Random House is, after all, paying Harry a reported $35m advance for a multi-book deal and has confirmed that Harry will be “donating his profits to charity” but as the Times points out, “It was unclear if they were referring to his sizeable advance, or to potential royalties he would earn if the books sell well enough to earn out that advance”.)
One would think if the publisher had a sure-fire, blow-them-out-of-the-water hit on their hands they would be doing everything in their power – adios three-martini lunches – to have it on shelves in time for the holidays, no?
If the book might turn out to be a bit of a dud, that would be quite the turn-up for the books (yeah, yeah, I know, an average pun at best) given that the speculation about the memoir has focused on just how devastatingly the duke might unleash on his father and his stepmother, Queen Camilla. For months now there have been reports that courtiers are getting the vapours at the prospect of the Duke dishing dirt with gusto. (My suggestion? Mix equal parts Rescue Remedy and Courvoisier for a cocktail I’d call the Equerry’s Little Helper)
King Charles III and Prince Harry arrive for the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II held at St George's Chapel in Windsor. Photo / AP
There are other clues in Thursday’s Times story that could suggest that Harry’s Big Book of Truth might be a bit of a damp squib. According to the paper of record, things are not exactly going smashingly for first-time author Harry, a situation that (I’m guessing) is not helped by the fact that this is the longest he has probably had to sit at a desk since getting a B in art and a D in geography for his final exams.
(In 2005 a former art teacher at Eton accused him of cheating on his A-levels, the British equivalent of the HSC. While an exam board later cleared the prince of wrongdoing, the teacher won her case for wrongful dismissal and the employment tribunal “accepted the prince had received help in preparing” an art project, according to the Guardian.)
Thursday’s Times report states that “book industry executives with knowledge of the process” have revealed that the 38-year-old self-exiled royal “has gotten cold feet about the memoir’s contents at various points”.
This follows reports late last month that the duke had wanted to make “refinements” to his book after his grandmother’s death and father’s accession, with the Mail on Sunday reporting that “There may be things in the book which might not look so good if they come out so soon after these events … He desperately wants to make changes.”
Elsewhere the Sun previously reported that his publishers felt the first draft that he turned it “was disappointing” and “too emotional” and that the final draft took “a lot of money and energy”.
It would be perfectly understandable if Harry has been having second, third or 17th thoughts about this autobiography. If he is going to tell all in the most literal sense, it could very likely represent the final torching of whatever rickety bridges remain between himself and his family.
No matter the hurts, the Oprah interview, or the suffering that he and Meghan experienced at the hands of the monarchy, would – or even could – he ever be truly ready to sever what tenuous ties still bind? For better or worse, they are the closest family he has.
The Duke clearly does not want to turn his back on his homeland. This year it was confirmed that the Sussexes had extended the lease on their Windsor estate property, Frogmore Cottage, and in February his barrister Shaheed Fatima KC said that Britain “is and always will be his home” during the pick’n’mix grab bag of lawsuits he has on the go.
Would it really be that much of a surprise if it turned out that, after being lured by a whopping cheque and the chance to tell all about Camilla, Harry might be reconsidering this project? (Maybe she smokes in bed? Lets the dogs eat out of Queen Victoria’s wedding china? Once bollocked a footman for mixing up her collection of first edition Jilly Cooper novels?)
Only last month Harry and Meghan spent the longest stretch of time in Blighty since Megxit, after Queen Elizabeth died while they were in the UK for a series of charity events. Sure, it has not been reported that Harry spent any time at all with his father or with his brother behind the scenes, but surely such a profound and sad moment would be a natural moment for reflection and getting one’s priorities straight.
Could it also have been a moment that made Harry think about what sort of relationship he might want to have with his family at some point in the future and therefore what exactly he is willing to share with the world about the House of Windsor? (Really, by this point there can be very few adults on Planet Earth who are not aware that the royal family are pretty rubbish at parenting and have an unusually high degree of tolerance for dogs, childish jokes, and German Christmas traditions.)
However, if Harry is faltering on releasing his book, then he could be in quite the bind. (I know, I have a problem.) As the Times pointed out on Thursday, this book puts Harry “into an impossible situation”. He either possibly hurts his family, a path that could have irreversible consequences or if he decided to stay schtum, it would make it “more difficult for his publisher to recoup its considerable costs — and could erode Harry’s self-made image as the rebellious, truth-telling prince”.
To co-opt the academic aphorism, he has to publish or perish here.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
