Prince Harry Spare: Why I can't blame Prince Harry for his hatred of the press, even as a journalist - Victoria Finan

My copy of Spare by Prince Harry arrived at midnight on release day on my Kindle, and I finished it in two quick days. I - and the 400,000 odd others who have also bought and read the book - now know more about Harry than I thought I would. And, to be honest, in the case of long chapters about an experience with frostbite… more than I ever hoped I would.

As a reporter who has written significantly on the royal family - including on the royal rota - for the Yorkshire Post, I suspect I would be persona non grata to Prince Harry if he ever knew who I was.

Make no mistake: this is a man with a visceral hatred for the British press that has made and broken him. You might expect me, therefore, to want to put up a defence of myself and the industry I work for.

Where it comes to his more wounding accusations, I can’t. I think it is absolutely true that the actions of the British press contributed in no small way to the death of his beloved mother, Diana. The trauma the young Harry felt, and clearly still grapples with, is harrowing. He writes so movingly, about how it took him more than a decade to even accept she was dead. That fear and mistrust of the press formed a groove in his brain at a vulnerable age that he has never been able to shake off.

Why should he? I also think it is absolutely true that the press’s treatment of his wife has been at times shocking. That’s never been more clear than in Jeremy Clarkson’s comments in recent weeks, which I won’t repeat here. From Meghan being the devil incarnate for enjoying avocados to making a petty dispute over bridesmaids’ dresses sound like an episode of The Sopranos, the narrative which has sold papers for the best part of five years by the press has been resolutely anti Duchess of Sussex. In the book, Harry makes it very clear it was the key reason they chose to upsticks. Again, I feel like I can’t blame him.

And yet. Page after page. Revelations about private text messages between Kate and Meghan (the same Meghan who, as is her right, took out a lawsuit against a paper for publishing a private letter.) Revealing the words he whispered to the body of the Queen as she was laid out on her deathbed at Balmoral. Telling the whole world that his father begged him not to make his final years a misery. Discussing the ins and outs of a relationship with Caroline Flack, who is now dead and cannot give her own side.

As any journalist who has studied media law will tell you, everyone is entitled to respect for their private and family life, home, physical and mental health, and correspondence, including digital communications.

I can’t help but feel Harry has invaded not only his own privacy but that of his closest family members in a way no journalist worth the name would dare.

Reading Spare, I did learn a little more about Harry the man. The chapters on his life in the Army are illuminating and he talks about his “kill number” in a far more nuanced and thought-provoking way than the original leaks would have you believe. His exploration of mental health and trauma recovery too, could be seen as inspiring, were it the main takeaway a reader would have on finishing the book.

But it’s not. As a journalist, I like gossip as much as the next person. More, if truth be told. And yet, I came away from Spare feeling not sated with a decade’s worth of salubrious accusations about the royals, but complicit.

And, as a journalist, while it’s given me pause for thought (how many stories presented as fact by reputable royal correspondents he manages to debunk) about how I both consume and write stories about the royals, in the end I feel so exasperated that what could have been a wake-up call for many of us just ends up reading like a trashy gossip magazine.

In revealing so much of his private life, and that of his family’s, Harry makes his crusade against the press seem at best hollow, at worst, utterly hypocritical.