MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish-language version of “Spare”, the much-awaited memoir of Britain’s Prince Harry, went on sale in book stores in Spain on Thursday, days ahead of its official launch date.
The book reveals details about Harry’s relationship with his father, King Charles, his elder brother, Prince William, and other members of the British royal family that have never previously been published.
As is usual for the royal family, spokespeople for Charles and William have declined to comment.
Following are some of the key details outlined in the book:
BRAWL WITH BROTHER
Harry says his brother William, now heir to the British throne, knocked him to the floor during a 2019 argument at his London home over Harry’s American wife Meghan. William called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”, Harry writes.
He says William grabbed him by the collar and knocked him to the floor, where Harry says he landed on a dog’s bowl, cracking it. He says he refused William’s challenge to hit back and that his brother later apologised over the incident.
CAMILLA
Harry says 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 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 his wife Kate 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”.
MAJOR HEWITT RUMOURS
Harry dismisses media rumours that he was the result of an affair between Major James Hewitt and his mother Princess Diana and suggestions that his father had 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.
FIGHT OVER WEDDING VENUES
Harry claims the royal household dragged its feet over the date and venue for his wedding with Meghan. He says that when he consulted his brother about the possibility of marrying in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s Cathedral, William said he could not marry there because they had been venues for the weddings of Charles and Diana and of William and Kate respectively. Instead, William suggested a village chapel near Charles’ home at Highgrove House in southwest England. Harry and Meghan finally got married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in May 2018.
TAKING DRUGS
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 Eton College, 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.
SEEING A CLAIRVOYANT
Harry describes meeting a woman with “powers” who said she could feel Princess Diana’s spirit. He says the woman was recommended by friends and that, while he had his doubts about her, as soon as he sat down “I felt an energy around her”.
“Your mother says that you are living the life that she couldn’t live, the life she wanted for you,” Harry quotes the woman as telling him.
ARCTIC TRIP
Harry describes how during a trip to the North Pole he suffered from early stages of what appears to be frostbite, including to his penis. He recounts telling his father about his injuries at a dinner on the eve of William´s wedding.
“My father showed interest and sympathized with me when I mentioned that my ears and cheeks had burned due to the cold. I struggled to contain myself to not talk too much and tell him that my penis had also been affected…”
AFGHANISTAN
Harry says he killed 25 people when serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He says he participated in six missions, all of which involved deaths, but says he saw them as justifiable as Taliban insurgents wanted to kill his comrades.
“It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it leave me ashamed. When I found myself plunged in the heat and confusion of combat I didn’t think of those 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bad people eliminated before they could kill Good people.”
(Reporting by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Gareth Jones)
