Prince Harry’s long-awaited memoir, ‘Spare,’ set for January release
By Rob Picheta, Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Max Foster and Lauren Kent, CNN
Prince Harry’s highly anticipated memoir will be entitled “Spare” and is set for a January 10 release, its publisher revealed on Thursday.
The 416-page book will include Harry’s recollection of Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, when the 12-year-old prince walked behind his mother’s coffin, Penguin Random House said in a press release.
Its title appears to nod towards Harry’s perceived role within the royal family, from which he and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex stepped back as working royals in early 2020.
Since then, the couple have relocated to the US, and worked to make themselves financially independent by signing a number of media deals. They have also revealed some tensions with Harry’s siblings and his father, King Charles III.
“For Harry, this is his story at last,” Penguin Random House said. “With its raw, unflinching honesty, SPARE is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.”
Harry announced the book in June 2021 and it was originally due to be published in late 2022, but the release was pushed back.
The prince reunited with his family following Queen Elizabeth II’s death last month, attending a number of memorial events including her state funeral in London. It is unclear whether Harry updated the book to reference the late monarch’s death and the mourning period that followed.
Harry will donate proceeds from the book’s sales to “several charities,” the publisher said. It added he has already donated $1,500,000 to Sentebale, a group that supports children affected by HIV/AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana, following his support for a cause to which his mother, Diana, was closely connected.
He has also pledged £300,000 ($347,000) British charity WellChild, which supports children with serious illnesses.
It is unclear whether the content of the book will calm or exacerbate Harry’s complex relationships with the rest of the royal family.
In a podcast interview last year, Harry said he was caught in a cycle of “pain and suffering” in the clan and hinted that he is heavily critical of the way his father, Charles, raised him.
“When it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I’m going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on,” Harry told Dax Shepard, actor and host of the “Armchair Expert” podcast.
A Netflix documentary series featuring Harry and his wife, Meghan, is also expected to release soon, though a release date has yet to be formally announced. Britain’s Telegraph newspaper cited friends of the Sussexes as insisting it would still be going out in December, as per the original plan.
It follows a multi-year production deal that the couple signed with the streaming giant in 2020.
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