As Prince Harry takes aim at both his brother William and his father King Charles, royal biographer Emily Andrews asks, why is Harry so desperate to tell ‘his truth’?
ROYAL EXCLUSIVE
Not a day goes by, it seems, without Prince Harry suing another newspaper (or, indeed, the UK government). He’s currently embroiled in legal action against three of the biggest media companies in the UK, as well as an outstanding libel case.
And there’s also the small matter of not one, but two legal cases that he has brought against the Home Office.
He filed his first action over the government’s decision in 2020 to remove his taxpayer-funded police protection, which he says makes it unsafe for him to come to Britain with his wife Meghan and their children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
The second case focuses on a decision in 2020 by the Royalty and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC), which concluded that private individuals should not be allowed to pay for police to protect them.
Harry, 38, says he wants to be able to pay for the elite Metropolitan Police protection officers when he is in the UK.
It was during Harry and Meghan’s visit to South Africa in October 2019 that they launched their broadside against the press.
The Duke of Sussex’s claim related to alleged phone-hacking dating back to between January 1994 and December 2016, with Harry claiming damages of over £200,000. These claims have been denied.
I was on that African tour with Harry and Meghan and remember being completely stunned. They’d had such good publicity up until that point – the press pack (of which I was a part) had given them glowing reports and praised their every move.
Angry statements
Harry had given the late Queen little warning of what they were about to do – and the detonation of that bomb meant the tour (which had been undertaken on behalf of the UK government) was completely overshadowed by the furore and Harry’s angry accompanying statements.
Why is Harry doing this?
Well, while promoting his autobiography, Spare, earlier this year, he told ITV’s Tom Bradby that ‘changing the media landscape within the UK’ was to become his ‘life’s work’. He wants to save the UK (ie, all of us) from the media.
His latest witness statement lays bare his fury and the reasons he wants his day (or many days) in court.
Even more than in his book, his bitterness at being the ‘spare’ shines through, and he cannot accept any responsibility for his own actions – it is always someone else’s fault.
He says, ‘It is no secret that I have had, and continue to have, a
