William attack claim, Taliban ‘kills’ and Meghan’s ‘baby brain’ comment detailed in reports on Harry’s new book
By Angus Watson, Max Foster and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN
Prince Harry has accused his brother of physically attacking him in his new memoir, which reveals a wide range of private conversations between him and other senior British royals and details his split from the family, according to media outlets who said they had obtained early copies of the book.
Perhaps the most dramatic revelation to emerge was the accusation from the Duke of Sussex of an altercation with Prince William during an argument over his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2019, first reported by The Guardian.
That’s just one of a series of grievances and accusations Harry appears to make in the autobiography. Other sensational disclosures include divulging the number of Taliban fighters he killed while serving in Afghanistan, opening up about his final moments with the late Queen Elizabeth II, taking drugs as a teen and speaking to a woman with “powers” about his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
CNN has not seen a copy of the book but has requested an advance copy of the book from publisher Penguin Random House before its release on January 10. Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and a spokesperson for the Sussexes declined CNN’s request for comment on the alleged altercation.
Meanwhile, new tease trailers continue to be released ahead of several sit-down interviews Harry has conducted with various television networks. In a new clip from British network ITV on Friday, the duke elaborated on his alleged altercation with his brother, recalling seeing a “red mist” take hold of William.
“What was different here was the level of frustration, and I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him,” he said, adding, “He wanted me to hit him back, but I chose not to.”
Here are the top lines of what is being reported so far:
Harry says William pushed him to the floor
The Guardian claims to have seen an advance copy of Harry’s highly anticipated memoir, “Spare,” in which the duke reportedly alleges William, the Prince of Wales, knocked him to the floor during the altercation.
The alleged scuffle took place after a conversation between the two brothers, during which William, the heir to the British throne, called Meghan “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive,” according to The Guardian.
The confrontation escalated until William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor,” the newspaper reported.
The article focuses on the alleged physical altercation between the brothers but describes the entirety of the book as a “remarkable volume.”
The story reports Harry’s version of events, in which William arrives at Harry and Meghan’s then-home, Nottingham Cottage on Kensington Palace grounds in London, to allegedly discuss “‘the whole rolling catastrophe’ of their relationship and struggles with the press.”
Harry alleges that William attacked him after he gave his elder brother water and attempted to cool the heated verbal exchange, according to The Guardian.
The article quotes Harry: “He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”
The article says Harry states in the book that William urged him to hit back, but he refused to do so. William left but later returned “looking regretful” and apologized, according to the Guardian article, quoting the book.
Harry recalls Charles’ plea
Elsewhere in the Guardian report, the 38-year-old recalls returning to the UK for the first time since stepping back as a senior royal in April 2021 for the funeral of the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip.
The somber occasion was the first time the duke was reunited with his father, now King Charles III, and William since he and Meghan had spoken to Oprah Winfrey for their bombshell interview.
Harry’s retelling suggests tensions with William remained high and quotes Charles pleading to his sons not to “make my final years a misery,” according to the Guardian article.
The article also revealed the brothers refer to each other as “Willy” and “Harold” respectively.
Other UK tabloid newspapers are also now claiming to have obtained a Spanish-language copy of “Spare,” after it was mistakenly made available in some bookstores in Spain on Thursday ahead of its scheduled release next week. In Spain, the book is called “En La Sombra,” which translates to “In the Shadow.”
Concern over Camilla
According to additional reports from the Mail Online and The Sun, another anecdote from the book recounts how Harry reportedly “begged” his father not to marry Camilla, who is now Queen Consort, and feared that she would be a “wicked stepmother.”
The Mail Online and The Sun reports say Harry recalled that he and William said they would welcome Camilla into the family, but asked their father not to marry her, calling Camilla the “other woman.”
Quoting from the copy of the book, the Mail Online reported that Harry writes, “I remember wondering… if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the evil stepmothers in the stories,” adding, “Willy had been suspicious of the Other Woman for a long time, which confused and tormented him; When those suspicions were confirmed, he felt agonizing remorse for not having done or said anything before.”
He also compares meeting her for the first time to getting an injection, writing in the book, “close your eyes and you won’t even feel it,” according to the two outlets.
The two UK tabloids reported that the book also claims King Charles tried to “win over the kids” before asking the British public to accept his marriage to Camilla and that she held a private audience with Harry in which she appeared “bored.”
Prince Harry also writes that he was too young to suspect his father’s affair, but notes that his brother “harbored suspicions” for a long time, according to The Sun report. “It would confuse him and torment him… When they were confirmed he felt awful remorse for not having said or done anything sooner,” Prince Harry says, according to The Sun. The royal adds in the book that as a child he felt “the lack of stability, absence of love and affection in our home.”
The stories reported by the Mail Online and The Sun are based on the tabloids’ own translations of the Spanish-language version of the book.
The highly anticipated memoir also reportedly begins with the dedication, “For Meg, Archie and Lili… and, of course, my mother,” according to the Mail Online and the Sun.
Deaths in Afghanistan
British newspaper The Telegraph reports that Prince Harry claims to have killed 25 people while serving with the British army in Afghanistan, saying that in the heat of combat he viewed his targets as “chess pieces” rather than people.
The Telegraph also said it obtained a copy of the Spanish version of the book ahead of its official release.
The prince completed two tours of Afghanistan, one spanning 2007 to 2008 and the other from 2012 to 2013.
Advancements of technology “in the era of Apaches and laptops,” allowed Harry to say “with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed,” adding that, “it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number.”
“So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me,” he says, according to the Telegraph.
Harry also says he used to watch back footage of each “kill” after returning to base, from the nose mounted camera on his Apache helicopter, the Telegraph reported, and that in the “din and confusion of combat” he viewed those he killed as the “baddies eliminated before they could kill goodies.”
In response to the duke’s reported remarks, a senior Taliban official said Friday that the people who Harry claims to have killed while serving in Afghanistan “were not chess pieces, they were humans.”
“Mr. Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return,” said Anas Haqqani, who works as an acting advisor to the minister of interior and is the son of the founder of the Haqqani network, Jalaluddin Haqqani.
“Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes,” he added.
Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi also tweeted about Prince Harry’s comments.
“The recent confession by a prince of Britain named Harry, who brutally killed 25 of our countrymen during his mission in Afghanistan, shows that such crimes are not limited to Harry, but every occupying country has a history of such crimes in our country,” said Karimi.
Saying goodbye to the Queen
The memoirs see the duke reveal his final words to the Queen hours after she died on September 8 last year. He “hoped she was happy and she was with Grandfather now,” according to the Mail Online.
The Mail Online says Harry describes how he learned of his grandmother’s death after checking the BBC News website.
According to the excerpt, Harry says that upon arriving at Balmoral, the Scottish home of the royal family, he was greeted by Princess Anne who took him upstairs to where the Queen was lying.
“I advanced with uncertainty and saw her,” he writes in the book, according to Mail Online. “I stayed still, watching her carefully for a good while.
“I whispered that I hoped she was happy and that she was with Grandfather now. I said that I admired her for having carried out her duties until the end. The [Platinum] Jubilee, the welcoming of the new Prime Minister.”
Meghan’s comment about Kate’s ‘baby brain’
In another part of the memoir, it’s revealed that the Duchess of Sussex allegedly upset the Princess of Wales by saying she must have “baby brain because of her hormones” after she had given birth and during the run up to the royal wedding in 2018, the Mail Online reported.
In an excerpt, Harry reportedly describes a 2018 meeting with William and Kate at their residence — which, according to the duke, was an attempt to clear the air between both couples.
The tabloid newspaper went on to claim that in Harry’s recollection the Prince of Wales called Meghan “rude” and pointed his finger, saying “These things are not done here,” to which Meghan reportedly replied “If you don’t mind, keep your finger out of my face.”
Prince Harry also reportedly claims in his book that Kate demanded an apology from Meghan for offending her, the Mail Online wrote.
Kate allegedly told Meghan that “we are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones,” according to the Mail Online, quoting from Harry’s book.
Harry went on to say that Meghan said she spoke to all her friends that way, before his brother Prince William pointed his finger at Meghan and accused her of being rude.
The Duchess of Sussex is then said to have declared that she had not wanted to offend Kate.
According to the Mail Online, Harry writes in defense of his wife: “Meg said that she had never intentionally done anything to offend Kate.”
Teenage drug use and losing his virginity
Harry, who now resides in California with Meghan and their two children, also admits taking cocaine at age 17, according to Sky News.
According to the UK media outlet, which is also now claiming to have obtained a leaked copy, Harry writes: “Of course I had been taking cocaine at that time. At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more,” Sky News reported.
“It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different,” Prince Harry adds, according to Sky. “I was a seventeen-year-old willing to try almost anything that would alter the pre-established order… At least, that’s what I was trying to convince myself of.”
Prince Harry has previously admitted to drug use in his youth. In 2002, when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy, he faced accusations of underage drinking and cannabis use, CNN previously reported. A confession of heavy drinking and marijuana use when he was 16 prompted his father to send him to the drug rehab center, Phoenix House UK, for a day.
Elsewhere in the autobiography Harry describes losing his virginity in what he calls “a humiliating episode,” according to Sky.
The UK media outlet quotes Harry as saying the encounter was with “an older lady” who loved horses.
While he does not reveal the woman’s identity, Sky News reports that he adds: “One of my mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a busy pub.”
“No doubt someone had seen us,” Harry continues, according to Sky.
Looking for closure over his mother’s death
Harry also reveals in his memoir that he recreated the journey his late mother took through the Paris tunnel where she and two others were involved in a fatal car crash, according to an excerpt published by People magazine.
Diana died in 1997, when Harry was 12.
In the excerpt, Harry is quoted as saying he rode past the Ritz where his mother had dinner that fateful night, and then through the tunnel, along the Seine River at the Pont de l’Alma bridge, where the car carrying Diana crashed in August 1997. He was 23 at the time of recreating the route and was visiting Paris for the 2007 Rugby World Cup semifinal, according to the excerpt.
He asked to drive at 65 miles per hour (104.6 kilometers per hour) — “the exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash,” the excerpt continues.
“I’d always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel,” Harry says, before adding that there was “no reason anyone should ever die inside it.”
Harry also writes that he asked his driver to go through the tunnel a second time, according to People.
“It had been a very bad idea. I’d had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I’d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn’t really. Deep down, I’d hoped to feel in that tunnel what I’d felt when JLP [Jamie Lowther Pinkerton, former private secretary to Harry and Prince William] gave me the police files—disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away,” Harry says, according to People.
“I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead, it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux,” he continues.
Separately, Harry also shares his attempt to contact Diana through a woman who claimed to have “powers,” according to the advance copy of his book seen by The Guardian.
In an article published Thursday, the British newspaper recounts a passage in which Harry says the woman offered him a message from Diana.
“You’re living the life she couldn’t… You’re living the life she wanted for you,” the woman told Harry in a message she said was from Diana, according to The Guardian.
Harry does not refer to the woman who delivered the message as a “medium” or a “psychic,” according to the Guardian, but recognized the “high-percentage chance of humbuggery.”
In the book, Harry describes feeling emotional when the woman told him “Your mother is with you,” according to The Guardian.
The article reads: “The woman told Harry his mother knew he was ‘looking for clarity’ and ‘feels your confusion,’ and knew he had ‘so many questions,’ and said answers would come in time.”
PR blitz ahead
Prince Harry is expected to reveal even more detail about his ongoing rift with the royal family after sitting down for multiple television interviews set to broadcast in the coming days.
Teasing a one-on-one with the royal due to air in full on Monday, “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan revealed Harry describes William in the book as his “arch-nemesis.”
In a snippet from the upcoming interview, Strahan asks: “There’s a quote in this book where your refer to your brother as your ‘beloved brother and arch-nemesis.’ Strong words. What did you mean by that?”
Harry can be seen nodding before responding, “There’s always been this competition between us, weirdly. I think it really plays into or always played by the heir/spare.”
Strahan later told his “Good Morning America” co-anchors that he read Prince Harry’s whole book, adding that readers will be “amazed at how open he is” and that it will “drop a lot of jaws.”
Separately, the duke has also conducted interviews with Anderson Cooper for CBS’ “60 Minutes” and Tom Bradby from British network ITV, both of which will be broadcast on Sunday.
Multiple one-on-ones set to air
The networks have been releasing teaser clips from the interviews throughout the week, with the latest preview from CBS revealing Harry had “no idea” the UK media were “so bigoted” and that he was “incredibly naïve” about how the British press would treat Meghan. He is also due to appear on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night.
“What Meghan had to go through was similar in some part to what [Princess] Kate and what [Queen Consort] Camilla went through — very different circumstances,” Harry tells Anderson Cooper.
“But then you add in the race element, which was what the press, British press jumped on straight away. I went into this incredibly naïve.”
Harry adds that he was “probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan.”
In the latest preview clip of the ITV sit-down released Thursday, Harry says he “still believe[s] in the monarchy” but when asked if he anticipates playing a part in its future, he replies, “I don’t know.”
Harry also wouldn’t be drawn on whether his family will return to the UK in May for his father’s coronation.
“There’s a lot that can happen between now and then,” Harry says in the short clip. “But, the door is always open. The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they’re willing to sit down and talk about it.”
Elsewhere in the one-minute promo clip, Harry again makes the suggestion that Buckingham Palace planted negative media reports.
Responding to Bradby’s suggestion some people will accuse him of invading the family’s privacy without permission, Harry says, “That would be the accusation from the people that don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.
“I don’t know how staying silent is ever going to make things better,” Prince Harry says.
Since their wedding in 2018, Harry and Meghan’s relationship has been under intense media scrutiny, with particular focus placed on the Duchess of Sussex.
In a recent Netflix documentary, Harry blamed the media for placing undue stress on Meghan, leading to her having a miscarriage and suffering suicidal thoughts.
The couple said the unrelenting media coverage ultimately led them to quit working as members of the Royal family.
Harry admitted in the six-part documentary that he didn’t deal with Meghan’s deteriorating mental health “particularly well” at first.
“I knew she was struggling; we were both struggling, but I never thought it would get to that stage. The fact it got to that stage I felt angry and ashamed,” Harry recounted, adding: “I dealt with it as institutional Harry as opposed to husband Harry.”
Meghan said she wanted to go somewhere for help but claimed she wasn’t allowed to because of concerns about how it would look for the institution, without specifying who she believes stopped her. She made similar comments in her explosive 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to connect with a trained counselor. The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide also provide contact information for crisis centers around the world.
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CNN’s Ehsan Popalzai, Radina Gigova, Zahid Mahmood, Niamh Kennedy, Allegra Goodwin, Lauren Kent and Arnaud Siad also contributed to this story.
