Back in January and February, Robert Hardman was promoting his royal book, Charles III: New King, New Court, The Inside Story. Hardman clearly had authorized sources in Charles’s camp, and Hardman was tasked with abusing the Sussexes. One of the big storylines was that QEII was incandescent with rage over Harry and Meghan naming their daughter Lilibet. The story landed so badly and the palace’s lies were so obvious, Hardman quickly had to come out and refute his own book. Even funnier is the fact that Hardman was also tasked with taking Prince William down a few pegs, but Hardman made William sound like an illiterate moron AND an atheist. Anyway, Hardman recently attended the Hay Festival and he had a lot of new tea, straight from his Buckingham Palace sources. This always kills me – Charles authorizes all of these hatchetmen to write all of these biographies, and then every book ends up focused on the Sussexes and how badly Charles has bungled one of the most significant moments of his reign. As it turns out, that’s mostly what Hardman’s Hay Festival appearance was about too.
Speaking at Hay Festival, Robert Hardman suggested that Prince Harry’s explosive memoir Spare is still casting a long shadow over family relations. “The problem that exists is, at the moment, there is still a trust issue. People are still very wounded, particularly Prince William, that these intimate private childhood family moments all spilled out in Harry’s book. It’s not what Harry said, it’s the fact that he said it, and he gave away so many secrets. And he was, effectively, at the time of the Queen’s death, you know, he was taking notes.”
Hardman also suggested that Harry hadn’t told the full story – but there might be a cynical reason for that. “If you do read that book, and as I said it’s amazing, but if you get to the bit about his wedding to Meghan, it boils down really to about four or five pages. Now, as an author, that says to me one thing and one thing only: part two might be on its way.”
Asked how the row was affecting King Charles as a parent, Hardman said that “he definitely finds it unsettling, it makes him unhappy. There he is, he’s got two sons, one he hardly sees, and two grandchildren he’s barely ever seen, and yes, I think he would like some sort of modus vivendi. Clearly they can’t come back to royal life, I don’t think they want to. And, after all that’s happened, it wouldn’t work,” the biographer said.
Hardman, who has authored numerous royal books, including 2022’s bestselling Queen of Our Times, said the first step to repairing the relationship would be “normalising” it.
“I thought it was telling that when the cancer diagnosis came through back in February, Prince Harry came straight over. People said why didn’t he stay longer, why didn’t he talk to his father? I mean, there is so much to be worked through, but this was absolutely not the moment to have some sort of summit with Harry about all of Harry’s grievances. But I think the fact he came was important, the fact he was received was important, I think what encouraged people at the palace and encouraged the king was the fact that afterwards, we didn’t then read about it or hear about it. It remained private.”
The author suggested a first step to “normalising” things would be if Harry could “come over with Meghan, with the children, privately, for a few days maybe in the summer. Once that happens it’s not such big news when it happens again. Then you start to get somewhere.”
A few things. First of all, I genuinely hope that Harry does write a second memoir and God knows that enough sh-t has gone down in the past two years to make it a must-read. He can call it And Another Thing. As for “he was, effectively, at the time of the Queen’s death, you know, he was taking notes,” Harry was not taking notes – he was being abused by his family on the global stage. He had already wrapped up on Spare, but following QEII’s death, Harry basically just added a chapter at the end. “It’s not what Harry said, it’s the fact that he said it, and he gave away so many secrets.” Ah, yes, how dare Harry reveal the Very Important Secrets of “being neglected after his mother’s death” and “being assaulted by his psycho brother.” Doesn’t Harry know that the biggest Windsor crime is publicly revealing how horribly they treat each other?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.