Oh, brother. Harry’s full story of trauma, feuds, and dysfunction

MEMOIR
Spare
Prince Harry
Bantam, $55

There are at least two ways one might read Spare. There is a fascination in reading a story we already know, about characters whose every move is chronicled by a greedy press. Rather as if the Grimm brothers were to retell the life of the Kardashians, Spare gives us a remarkable insight into the sheer pettiness of royal family life.

One might also read Spare for what it tells us about the institution of monarchy, and the ways in which the Royals resemble pampered pets, spoilt lavishly but also constrained from any form of spontaneity. From early childhood, Harry was raised to be “the spare”, constantly reminded that he ranked below his older brother.

Prince Harry makes his early morning pre-flight checks during one of his two tours of duty in Afghanistan. His openness about military operations in his book is revealing.Credit:

He is not the first “spare” to rebel: there are parallels to his great aunt Margaret, which he briefly acknowledges, and his uncle Andrew, where he maintains a tactful silence. But like his mother, Harry has gone public with his frustrations, building a multi-million-dollar business out of whingeing about his lot.

The further one reads into Spare the more familiar the stories become; we have heard them in the interview with Oprah, watched them in the interminable Netflix series. We have all heard the arguments about Meghan Markle, who seems more naïve and less manipulative than most media reporting suggests.

Yet Spare manages to add more to the story than I had expected. The book was written with J.R. Moehringer, an established author who had already worked with Andre Agassi and George Clooney, who reportedly introduced him to Harry.

Between them, they have created some genuinely moving moments, most notably in describing Harry’s many visits to southern Africa and his encounters with wild animals. For his first 30 years Harry seemed perpetually to be travelling, often to test himself against the rigours of climate, as in his treks to both Poles.

Spare also offers important insight into the workings of the modern military. Harry served two periods in Afghanistan, in both cases terminated when his presence made him a Taliban target. While he has been criticised for acknowledging he killed 25 “enemy combatants”, his openness about military operations in Afghanistan is revealing.

There is little evidence in Spare that either brother can bend sufficiently to repair their rift. Credit:AP

Harry acknowledges that there was opposition to the war, that thousands of lives were lost, but it never seems to have occurred to him to imagine how the war looked to Afghans, or to understand why there was support for the Taliban. Enough, it seems, to argue that: “These were bad people doing bad things to our guys. Doing bad things to the world.”

The trauma of Diana’s death haunts the book, and for years Harry tried to persuade himself that she had not died but had only disappeared to escape the omnipresent paparazzi. One of the most honest moments in Spare comes when he reflects that his urge to mow down Taliban insurgents might reflect his desire to take revenge on the media who hounded Diana to her death.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, look at the floral tributes for the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Windsor Castle.Credit:AP

Despite his self-imposed exile, Harry still believes in the monarchy, although recognising that “no one wants to hear a prince arguing for its existence”. As he neared 30 he felt under increasing pressure to marry; as he writes: “The whole underpinning of the monarchy was based on marriage.” The Royals have reluctantly adjusted to marriage with divorcees and commoners; the next test might be a same-sex marriage.

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Harry clearly felt reverence for his grandmother, the Queen, though less so for succeeding generations of royals. In his account of the current family the least likeable is not, as we might expect, Camilla, but William, and tensions between the brothers run through the book like an open sore.

Sibling rivalry is common, but there is little evidence that either brother can bend sufficiently to repair the rift. Harry might bring himself to bow before his father, but it is unlikely he will ever bow before William. Like his great great uncle, Edward VIII, his exile is likely to be permanent. (At one point Camilla, with an ironic sense of history, suggested Harry might be appointed Governor General of Bermuda.)

There is a third way to read Spare, and that is the one closest to Harry’s intentions. His loathing of media intrusion dates back to boyhood and was fuelled by the paparazzi’s ghoulishness at the death of his mother. It is difficult to dismiss Harry’s denunciations of the “dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists along Fleet Street”, or his cold anger towards Rupert Murdoch.

The racist abuse to which Meghan was subjected was shameful, and far exceeds anything that “freedom of the press” should allow. The failure of the Palace to make clear from the outset that this was unacceptable, and to publicly show support for Meghan, is the most damaging legacy of this story. Spare appears only a few months before the coronation of Harry’s father.

Charles will also be crowned King of Australia, although nothing in Harry’s book suggests that the Royals think of themselves as other than British. The squabbles and divisions within the Royal family will hardly bolster support for the monarchy here, or in the other 14 countries that still maintain the King as head of state.

Dennis Altman’s most recent book, God Save the Queen: The Strange Persistence of Monarchies, is published by Scribe.

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