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.

The cover of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare. While he has been criticised for acknowledging he killed 25 “enemy combatants”, his openness about military operations in Afghanistan is revealing. Harry served two periods in Afghanistan, in both cases terminated when his presence made him a Taliban target. Spare also offers important insight into the workings of the modern military. 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. Moehringer, an established author who had already worked with Andre Agassi and George Clooney, who reportedly introduced him to Harry.īetween 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. Yet Spare manages to add more to the story than I had expected. We have all heard the arguments about Meghan Markle, who seems more naïve and less manipulative than most media reporting suggests.

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.

Spare review