Prince Harry on the set of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Photo / Supplied
The ghostwriter behind Prince Harry’s Spare has spoken out about the difference between “memory and fact” amid accusations of errors in the book.
Taking to Twitter, JR Moehringer brushed off the “inadvertent mistakes” in the book, sharing a quote from The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr.
“The line between memory and fact is blurry, interpretation and fact,” the excerpt reads.
“There are inadvertent mistakes of those kinds out of the wazoo.”
It comes after the Duke of Sussex’s memoir hit shelves around the world and in New Zealand on Wednesday.
Harry did not hold back in the at times scathing tell-all, claiming his brother Prince William physically assaulted him in 2019.
But several readers have accused him of making “factual errors” in the book. For example, he claimed he was at boarding school at Eton when he heard of the Queen Mother’s death in March 2002.
But in fact, the teenage Prince Harry was on a ski trip in Switzerland at the time with William and his father King Charles.
Harry also wrote that King Henry VI was his “great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,” but many have pointed out that the monarch only had one son, who was killed in battle and left behind no children.
“Prince Harry cannot even fact-check his own family tree given that he remains under the impression he is descendant from King Henry VI, whose son died childless at 17,” one person wrote. “But sure, let’s all believe.”
Furthermore, Air New Zealand told the Herald that it had “never operated flights” between Mexico and the UK after Prince Harry wrote of buying a “first-class ticket” for Meghan Markle’s father Thomas Markle.
Harry himself is yet to address the errors, telling Stephen Colbert in an interview earlier this week that his book is “history [getting] it right”.
Several people responded to this statement on Twitter, with one writing: “The problem with his facts being off is that he is writing this for ‘history’,” while another called it “gaslighting”.
However, others have praised Moehringer for helping Harry to “speak his truth so clearly”.
Buckingham Palace told Page Six in a statement last week that it would not comment on any of the allegations in the book.
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