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Factbox: Highlights from Prince Harry“s memoir “Spare“

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2023-01-05T17:42:36Z

Britain’s Prince Harry’s book “Spare” is seen in a bookstore, before its official release date, in Barcelona, Spain January 5, 2023. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

A Spanish-language version of Prince Harry’s memoir “Spare” was being sold in book stores in Spain on Thursday ahead of its official launch date.

The book reveals details about Harry´s relationship with his family that have never previously been published. Perhaps Harry’s most explosive claim is that his brother Prince William pushed him to the floor in an argument over Harry’s wife Meghan.

Following are some of the key details outlined in the book:

Harry says that he and Prince William had asked their father not to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles, who is now Britain’s queen consort. Nonetheless, he writes that both he and William ended up wishing their father a happy marriage and had some sympathy for their relationship.

“Despite the fact that Willy and I asked him not to do it, my father went ahead. Despite the bitterness and sadness we felt in closing another loop in the history of our mother, we understood this was irrelevant.”
DRESSING AS A NAZI

Harry says he was encouraged by Prince William and Princess Catherine to go dressed as a Nazi to a fancy dress party in 2005, in what he has described elsewhere as “one of the biggest mistakes of my life”. Harry says he visited a costume shop and found several options for the party. He called William and Kate for advice and said they immediately suggested the Nazi uniform.

Harry refers to media rumours that he was the result of an affair between Major James Hewitt and his mother Princess Diana and suggestions that his father King Charles often joked about not knowing who Harry’s real father was. Harry says the idea is absurd, given that his mother did not meet Hewitt until long after he was born.

Harry claims the royal household dragged its feet over the date and venue for his wedding with Meghan. He said that when he consulted William about the possibility of marrying in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s Cathedral, William said he could not marry in either of those because they had been venues for the weddings of Charles and Diana and William and Kate respectively. Instead, William suggested Tetbury, a village chapel near Highgrove House in the Cotswolds.

Harry says that when he was 17 he was offered a line of cocaine at someone´s house and consumed the drug on several other occasions, although he insists media reports suggesting he was a drug addict were false and that he did not enjoy it.

“It wasn’t much fun and it did not make me feel especially happy as it seemed to do to everyone else, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. I was a 17-year-old boy ready to try anything that altered the pre-established order, he writes.

Harry also recounts how, as a student at the exclusive private school Eton, he used to smoke cannabis in a bathroom at his house while the Thames Valley police served as his bodyguards, patrolling the exterior of the building.

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