Spare

The memoir is arguably the most insightful royal book in a generation, yet still leaves readers with many questions about the monarchy unanswered.

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At once emotional and embittered, the royal memoir is mired in a paradox: drawing endless attention in an effort to renounce fame.

He seems both driven mad by “the buzz,” as the royals’ inexhaustible chronicler [Tina Brown](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/books/review-palace-papers-house-of-windsor-tina-brown.html) would call it, and constitutionally unable to stop drumming it up. The prince claims to have a spotty memory — “a defense mechanism, most likely” — but doesn’t appear to have forgotten a single line ever printed about him and his wife, and the last section of his tell-all degenerates into a tiresome back-and-forth about who’s leaking what and why. And yet when his father advises of the unrelenting and often racist press coverage of Harry’s union to Meghan — “Don’t read it, darling boy” — it’s difficult not to agree. Harry is frank and funny when his penis gets frostbitten after a trip to the North Pole — “my South Pole was on the fritz” — leaving him a “eunuch” just before William marries Kate Middleton. [Oprah](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/world/europe/recap-of-harry-meghan-oprah-interview.html) and [Anderson Cooper](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/books/prince-harry-itv-60-minutes-interviews.html). I devoured early episodes of “ [The Crown](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/arts/television/the-crown-season-5-monarchy.html)” but Season 5, with its focus on Charles and Diana’s marital troubles, left me delicately yawning. [Edward ](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24401859M/A_king%27s_story)and [Wallis](https://www.librarything.com/work/1286634) and the dynamically dysfunctional Princess Margaret, who “could kill a houseplant with one scowl,” Harry writes. Harry’s distinctly English voice (he doesn’t like kilts, for example, because of “that worrisome knife in your sock and that breeze up your arse”) at times does weird battle with the staccato patois of a tough-talking private eye doing voice-over in a film noir. (More mildly he tries magnesium supplements, and I’m not sure anyone needs to know that this loosened his bowels at a friend’s wedding.) “I let you have veterans, why can’t you let me have African elephants and rhinos?” Reading “Spare,” though, one kind of wants to snatch the remote control from his hands and press into them a copy of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” Not because of Harry’s military endeavors (unlike Yossarian, he seems to have felt sane only in active combat) but because of the seemingly inescapable paradox of his situation. With “Harry & Meghan,” the gauzy Netflix series preceding this book, he and the Duchess now [might well be overexposed](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/books/prince-harry-book-royal-family.html).

Following the publication of Prince Harry's autobiography Spare, we would like to hear readers' views on whether the book – and the publicity around it – has ...

We will only use the data you provide us for the purpose of the feature. Has it strengthened the way you felt – positively or negatively – about the royals? Has it changed your view of Prince Harry and other members of the royal family?

The controversial tell-all sold 400000 copies in Britain the day it was officially released, more than any other nonfiction title, according to the book's ...

[mistakenly put on shelves](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2023/01/05/these-are-the-six-most-shocking-leaks-from-prince-harrys-upcoming-memoir/?sh=6c66c29e13c6) on Thursday in Spain, leading some of the memoir’s most shocking inclusions to leak days before the book’s official publication date. Harry defended himself in an interview with Good Morning America last week, saying his family leaked stories about Harry and Meghan first. [These Are The Six Most Shocking Leaks From Prince Harry’s Upcoming Memoir](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2023/01/05/these-are-the-six-most-shocking-leaks-from-prince-harrys-upcoming-memoir/?sh=6c66c29e13c6) (Forbes) [Prince Harry Defends Netflix Doc And Media Appearances: ‘Silence Is Betrayal’](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/01/02/prince-harry-defends-netflix-doc-and-media-appearances-silence-is-betrayal/?sh=27bab6531168) (Forbes) [28 million households](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/12/13/harry--meghan-was-netflixs-largest-documentary-premiere-ever/?sh=3e6c6aca7e40) during the first week of streaming, the platform’s largest documentary premiere ever. In December, the pair released their Netflix series Harry & Meghan, which brought in views from To promote Spare, Harry has done interviews with both British and American media outlets, causing controversy among critics who have accused him of selling out his family.

The memoir, which includes claims Prince William attacked him, records figures of 400000 on its first day.

she would be heartbroken.” “I think she would be sad … “Not stopping us going back, but making it unsurvivable.”

Prince Harry's book, with sex, drugs and monarchy, reaches parts never seen before in a royal memoir.

He's back and forth to Africa like he was going a few stops on the Northern Line. Charles is seen padding around in his slippers, listening to his audio-books, obsessed with Shakespeare, wearing Dior scent and falling asleep at his desk. As a schoolboy, smoking cannabis with his friends, he watches the police outside there to guard him. Charles leaves notes for him trying to say nice things - but Harry questions why he couldn't say them in person. What's missing from the book is any sense of awareness of any wider context of the rest of the world outside. Harry says he watches the TV show Friends on a loop, identifying with the funny guy character of Chandler. Plenty of the book will get people irritated too, particularly its self-absorption. It's a long way from the commentary for Trooping the Colour. It's as if he has been blinded by the paparazzi flashlights. It's disarmingly frank and intimate - showing the sheer weirdness of his often isolated life. When he's in there one day he overhears shoppers debating whether he's gay. This royal appendage gets more lines than many of his relatives.