Prince Harry has accused Queen Consort Camilla for leaking a private conversation and the Royal family for "planting and leaking" information to the media.
Prince Harry’s explosive memoir Spare will be officially released around the world this week following no less than four television interviews expected to air some of the bombshell allegations his book makes about the royal family - and his own indiscretions including losing his virginity and drug taking.
The first - an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby - screens in the UK today.
The interview starts at 10am, Monday, New Zealand time - follow live updates in this NZ Herald story. (Please keep refreshing your browser for the latest details).
As the interview commences, Prince Harry acknowledges his family will likely be watching and tells Bradby: “I love my family, I love the monarchy. I just wish at the second darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me.”
He goes on to say: “I’m really grateful I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.
He goes on to reveal the immense grief of his mother’s death and how it haunts him still.
And confesses to how he really felt about Camilla, begging his father not to marry her.
He also details what it was like growing up with William and how his big brother and wife Kate reacted to Harry’s own choice to wed Meghan Markle.
My life’s story has been told by everyone else
Bradby asks the Prince why he chose to tell his story in such unsparing detail.
“38 years, 38 years of having my story told by so many different people, with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to own my story and be able to tell it for myself,” he replied.
”I don’t think that if I was still part of the institution that I would have been given this chance to. So, I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.”
The prince is asked about losing his virginity but quickly moves onto a discussion about his drug taking.
Bradby notes the prince’s memoir details much about his drug use. Harry replies that he felt it was “...important to acknowledge.”
Asked if he accepted the fact that he was taking class A drugs is of public interest for the press he shared, “My life in itself has been put through a blender as such so I think the lines have been blurred so much.
“No institution is immune to accountability or taking responsibility. So you can’t be immune to criticisms either.
”And you talk about, you know, scrutiny and, you know, my wife and I were scrutinised more than, probably, anybody else. I see a lack of scrutiny to my family towards a lot of the things that have happened in the last year.”
Duke of Sussex recalls moment his mother died
Prince Harry moves onto the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
He recalls the moment he was told by his father, King Charles of her death at Balmoral Castle, while still a child.
He tells Bradby: “I began silently pleading with Pa, or God, or both, “No, no, no.”
His father looks down before explaining: “There were complications. Mummy was quite badly injured and taken to hospital, darling boy.
“He always called me darling boy, but he was saying it quite a lot now.
“His voice was soft. He was in shock, it seemed. ‘Oh, hospital?’ “Yes, with a head injury.”
He remembers his father telling him: “They tried, darling boy. I’m afraid she didn’t make it.”
He admits he has compassion for his father having to sit with the knowledge that Diana had died and having to figure out how he was going to tell his two young sons.
Bradby asks, “Did he mention paparazzi? Did he say she’d been chased?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t swear to it but probably not,” Harry replies.
He goes on to recall “Those men who chased her, they never stopped shooting her as she lay between the seats unconscious. Not one of them were checking on her, comforting her, they were just shooting, shooting, shooting.”
Prince Harry has detailed his ongoing grief over the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Photo / AP
Bradby explains how in his memoir, Spare, Prince Harry recalls seeing his mother in his dreams and saying “Mummy, Mummy, is that you?”
Prince Harry tells the interviewer: “I refer to it as post-traumatic stress injury because I’m not a person with a disorder. I know I’m not.”
He says “it still hurts” when he thinks about the photographers who chased her.
I lost many memories before my mother’s death, says Prince Harry
Prince Harry explains how his memoir begins by detailing the death of his mother.
”I never want to be in that position, part of the reason why we are here now, I never ever want to be in that position. I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad,” he tells Bradby.
”And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father.”
He adds: “I lost a lot of memories. on the other side of this mental wall, which I think is so relatable for so many people who’ve experienced loss, especially as a youngster, that inability to be able to like drag the memories back over. I think a lot of it was a defence mechanism.”
“At least we know the way” - “very strange” days after his mother’s death
The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William, Earl Spencer, Prince Harry and the Prince of Wales follow the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales in September 1997. (Photo by Anwar Hussein/WireImage)
Prince Harry says how it was “very strange” for him and his brother, William, 12 and 14 at the time, going on walkabouts outside Kensington Palace where crowds of mourners flooded the streets after his mother’s death.
”Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum. And the two closest people to her, the two most-loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment,” he tells Bradby.
Discussing the moment the brothers followed behind Princess Diana’s coffin as the world watched on, the Duke of Sussex says:
“There’s absolutely no way that I would let him do that by himself. And there’s absolutely no way that he would let me do that by myself. It was, if it was role reversal.”
He adds: “Just recently I was, we, my brother and I were walking the same route, and we sort of joked to each other and said, ‘at least we know the way’.”
In a scene from the interview’s shocking trailer, Prince Harry revealed the experiences on the day of his mother’s funeral.
“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling.”
He adds that he and William noticed people’s hands were wet with tears.
“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.” he said.
‘Heartbreaking’ - brothers’ secret Diana code
The Duke of Sussex said it was “heartbreaking” that he “simply didn’t believe” his brother when he told him he wanted Harry to be happy.
But at their grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, William employed an old “secret code” used between the brothers to cement his wishes: “On mummy’s life”.
In his book Spare, Harry describes the phrase as a “universal password” or a “secret code” they had used for 25 years “for when one of us needed to be heard”.
”It is heartbreaking. This whole thing is completely, not just unnecessary, it’s incredibly sad.
”But there’s a – there’s a way through it, there’s a way out of it. And that’s what I’m focused on now. But yes, it’s heartbreaking.”
Please don’t marry Camilla
Prince Harry has alleged he begged his father not to marry Camilla. Photo / Getty Images
The Duke of Sussex says his brother Prince William and he told his father on the question of Camilla, the Queen Consort:
He shared while he and his brother William “... wanted our father to be happy and he seemed to be very, very happy with her ...” they implored their father not to go ahead and marry Camilla, the woman who had cast a shadow over their parents’ entire relationship.
“We asked him not to get married. He chose to and that’s his decision. But the two of them were and remain very happy together,” he says.
He adds that now he is genuinely at peace with their marriage.
How William and Kate reacted to Meghan
Harry said his relationship with Meghan faced scrutiny from Prince William and Kate but his brother “never tried to dissuade” him from marrying her.
He confessed William did hold “some concerns” from early on, warning his little brother that “this was going to be very hard”.
Harry told Bradby he didn’t fully comprehend what William was saying but speculated that William might have been foreshadowing the intense media reaction.
He said there was “a lot of stereotyping that was happening” about Meghan from William and Kate, admitting he was guilty of that as well, at the beginning.”
Harry explained the stereotype as “American actress”.
“Some of the things that my brother and sister-in-law – some of the way that they were acting or behaving definitely felt to me as though unfortunately that stereotyping was causing a bit of a barrier to them really sort of, you know, introducing or welcoming her in.”
The Queen’s death: a ‘horrible reaction’ from the royal family
The Duke of Sussex has claimed there was a “horrible reaction” from his family members when the Queen died.
He told Bradby: “The day that she died was just a really, really horrible reaction from my family members.
”And then by all accounts, well certainly from what I saw and what other people probably experienced, was they were on the back foot and then the briefings and the leaking and the planting.
”I was like ‘we’re here to celebrate the life of Granny and to mourn her loss, can we come together as a family?’ but I don’t know how we collectively – how we change that.”
The Duke of Sussex said he had “written letters and sent emails” to his relatives but had been told he was “imagining it”.
”I want reconciliation, but first there needs to be some accountability. You can’t just continue to say to me that I’m delusional and paranoid when all the evidence is stacked up.
”I was genuinely terrified about what’s gonna happen to me. And then we have a 12-month transition period, and everyone doubles down. My wife shares her experience. And instead of backing off, both the institution and the tabloid media in the UK doubled-down.”
Harry and Meghan began airing grievances about the royal family in their Netflix docuseries. Photo / Netflix
Growing up with big brother William
Harry has revealed his hurt at William’s move to shun him when he joined his older brother at Eton, saying his experience as a parent of two children with a similar age gap has taught him that a younger sibling can be annoying and he now realises his brother needed space.
Bradby puts it to Prince Harry that his account of his brother, the Prince of Wales, begins with deep love.
”Love but also separation. Which I think will really surprise people, the fact that we grew up – I mean our mother was dressing us in the same clothes to start with, William didn’t like that, I think I seem to remember I found it quite funny, but the older, younger sort of sibling rivalry as such, now is only really becoming, I guess real to me.”
William’s alleged attack over Meghan Markle
The Duke of Sussex says if it weren’t for his time in therapy he would have fought back when William allegedly ripped his necklace off and threw him to the ground in a furious attack sparked by issues with the Duchess of Sussex in 2019.
Harry described how he and William used to “fight all the time like a lot of siblings”.He added:
“I can pretty much guarantee today that if I wasn’t doing therapy sessions like I was and being able to process that anger and frustration that I would’ve fought back, one hundred per cent.”
In an excerpt read from his autobiography, the duke alleged that William urged him to fight back, saying:
Bradby says of the recount in the book: “I won’t, uh, spoil it, ‘cause there’s a lot, there’s an awful lot of, um, material in there. You know, there’s you losing your virginity. I think, you know…?”
To which Bradby replies: “No, that’s, that’s, let’s not do that um, er, let’s not go there.”
Will his family read his memoir?
The Duke of Sussex says he does not believe his father or brother would read his book - but he holds out hope that they might.
”I really hope they do, but I don’t think they will,” he said.
”And with regard to this interview I don’t know whether they’ll be watching this or not, but what they have to say to me and what I have to say to them will be in private, and I hope it can stay that way.”
But he went on to launch an extraordinary broadside at his family, referencing “abuse” as he defended speaking out.
“I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse. Right? So I don’t know how staying silent is ever gonna make things better. That’s genuinely what I believe.”
He said the Royal Family was “complicit” in the “pain and suffering” that he and Meghan faced.
But he reiterated, despite what his latest, very public conversations and book may suggest, he is not trying to harm his family.
He said his family has been “briefing the press for well over a decade”, including stories about him and his wife and apologised if “owning his story” causes upset, saying “none of this is to intentionally harm anyone in my family”.
Is Prince Harry just ‘stuck in the past’?
Given the retrospective nature of everything Prince Harry has put out in recent months and his pending memoir, interviewer Tom Bradby asked the duke if perhaps he was “looking back too much”?
But Harry defended their necessity and significance, especially for his children.
“We always knew that these two projects, both the Netflix documentary and the book – one being our story and one very much being my story – they were look-back projects.
”They were necessary, they were essential for historical fact and significance.
”I don’t want my kids or other people of that age growing up thinking ‘Oh wow, this is what happens’, like no that’s not what happened. This is what happened.
”There are two sides to every story, so it’s been – it’s been a painful process – cathartic at times, but going back over old ground to be able to get these projects right has taken a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of relief now that both these projects have been complete.
”Now we can focus on looking forward and I’m excited about that. So no, I’m not stuck in the past and I will never be stuck in the past.”
