Book Review: Spare …Prince Harry

Posted 2 months ago by radiosarahc17 Comments on Book Review: Spare …Prince Harry 52 Books Blog

Oh, what a circus!

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the past few months, you’ll have seen some of the furore around Harry and Meghan. 

It’s a furore I’ve never understood, it absolutely blows my mind how much energy people expend on hating these two.

It’s unhinged. There’s been many a time I’ve sat there thinking, ‘how can you be this arsed about someone you’ve never even met? Someone who isn’t even aware of your existence?’. 

Seriously, get a hobby, or better yet, a therapist

Anyway, I’m going to hedge my bets and say you don’t need a recap on Prince Harry and how exactly this book has come about.

After a week of interviews – and backlash to those interviews – a week of seeing various twitter hashtags, jokes and opinions, I’ve finally finished reading the damn thing and here’s my two penneth, for what it’s worth….

Being a Royal sounds absolutely shit. 

I’m not surprised he’s taken his family and legged it. 

I’d come to the conclusion that’s what I’d do fairly early on. 

I was high tailing it out of there way before Harry started talking about the battering and hounding Meghan got from the British press (something I’ll come back to later). 

First up were the descriptions of how bloody formal everything is. I mean can you imagine being at Balmoral with all the fam and having to arse about getting formally dressed up to eat every night? Sod that, I’ll order a takeaway and watch Netflix in my room please.

Secondly, can you imagine having absolutely no agency as an adult? Having dreams or career aspirations and being told no, it’s not protocol? Or your dad essentially being your boss and therefore deciding how much you get to live on and controlling that. Or what about having to ask permission before doing anything? No thank you, then again, I’ve never been one to follow the rules.

And thirdly, because I can see that there are privileges to being royal, what’s the bloody point in having all that money and all that privilege and not having the freedom to do what you want when you want? Why would you want to spend your entire life living in a cage?

I may not be flush but there is no way in hell I’d swap places.

Posh people are weird

By that I mean weirder than I’d given them credit for.

His recollections of school are a bit….out there. 

I find it odd that you’d just dump your kid in what sounds like an institute for weeks at a time. It’s completely passing the buck for raising the little darlings, then again, I don’t have children so have no real reference for how annoying they can be.

Yet the weirdest school story, was about bath time. With no hint of irony, he mentions how matrons at Ludgrove would help them bathe and wash their hair at 12 years old! 

THAT’S WEIRD!

These posh kids might end up with cracking education, be able to recite Latin and name every king and queen that ever lived but they’ll have fuck all life skills….like the ability to wash their own hair.

They’ll also be emotionally repressed, partly down to the abandonment, partly down to the fact that they rarely get hugged. All the way through this book, Prince Harry, is a lonely child, unable to cry over the death of his mother, who’s in need of a hug or any kind of affection.

Context is everything….

If you’ve been anywhere near social media or heard any commentators talk about this book, then you’ll have heard selected paragraphs.

You may have even formed your own opinions based on what you’ve heard, it’s easily done. We live in a world where nuance has disappeared, it’s been beaten out of existence by social media, it’s very easy to get whipped up into a frenzy and join the millions of others shouting into the abyss online. 

Should he have openly talked about how many people he killed in Afghanistan? No. But is he as blasé about it as we’d been led to believe? No, not at all.

I’d urge you read Spare simply to get the context around the snippets you’ve already read and formed an opinion on, none of it is as straight forward as you think. Having said that, not sure why there was so much in there about his penis and Elizabeth Arden cream.

Parts of the British tabloid press are horrific….

The press does not come out of this well and rightly so.

I’m being very specific on this point. It’s too lazy to tar all journalists with same brush. 

I speak as a journalist, though I’d like to think I deal in actual news rather than bull shit gossip about celebrities and the royal family, its just not interesting and in the grand scheme things NOT IMPORTANT.

We don’t all make our money by harassing people and writing disgusting headlines for click bait or newspaper sales. I did thoroughly enjoy his descriptions and thoughts on Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks….they give us all a bad name.

Anyway, professional rant over with, back to the main point. The vitriol and harassment Harry and Meghan received at the hands of the tabloids from early on was horrendous, I think I missed a lot of it at the time, as much as I don’t report on inane bullshit, I don’t read it either, I have no time for the Daily Racist (Mail) or the like.

The articles and column inches about Meghan were steeped in racism and misogyny, the pair of them didn’t stand a bloody chance. Something he recognised himself from being a child, he was aware that the press was desperate to do a DNA test to prove the James Hewitt rumour, he was cast in the role of ‘the naughty one’ from quite an early age, a role he didn’t want.

He’s not a traitor…

Another mental hashtag that’s been trending over the past few weeks.

Prince Harry is not a traitor to this country, he loves this country, it’s his home, he doesn’t like how he’s been treated by certain elements of it and that’s fair, calling out things you don’t like and being able to be critical of things does not make you fucking traitor.

Also, we aren’t living in medieval times, this narrative of ‘traitors’ is just odd, I can guarantee there’s probably already be a hashtag calling for him to be locked in the tower or something.

I’d say people have done far worse than what Harry has and have not received half as much anger.

He’s not a traitor to his family….

I could go on social media and in about 1.3 seconds find a post about how Harry’s betrayed his family.

9 times out of 10, the blame will be laid squarely at Meghan’s door like she’s some dastardly Lady Macbeth.

From some of the reaction, you’d think he’d said all sorts about the Queen….he hasn’t.

From the reaction, you’d think these people had never had problems with their own families and bitched to their mates about them; granted they probably haven’t done multiple interviews and written a book about it but still. 

What I can’t stand and what I see over and over is the “blood’s thicker than water” narrative, family trumps everything else; that’s not the case for everyone. Blind loyalty because you share the same DNA is not healthy. Sometimes, you’ve got to step away for your own sanity, that’s what Harry’s done.

He loves his family, it’s evident that he has a great deal of affection for them, he just doesn’t always get along with them or entirely agree with their actions and isn’t a fan of the institution. We can all relate to that.

Overall conclusion…..

It’s decent.

It gets a bit repetitive in places, to be honest there’s only so many times I can read about someone heading to Botswana to find peace and comfort without thinking ‘again?’ and feeling a little bit jealous.

I get why he’s done it, moving away hasn’t stopped the press printing whatever they want, he wants to put his version of events out there on his own terms, I don’t think anyone can begrudge him that really. 

No one can tell him how to feel about what he’s been through, no one can tell him he’s wrong. People might not agree with what he’s doing and how he’s going about things, but, and here is a novel idea….they don’t have to read it or even pay attention to it.

As far as memoir’s or autobiographies – whichever term we’re settling on these days – go, I have read better, I’ve read far more interesting life stories but what I will say is that this is eye opening.

It’s worth reading, even if you just want to see what the fuss is all about. I do suspect there’ll be a follow up, I can’t see there being a reconciliation at any point. Family feuds aren’t resolved when one party has been so vocal; it looks as though the circus is sticking around for a while yet.

Oh, I almost forgot, he takes aim at William’s hairline…

Maybe it’s a little mean and a cheap shot but in his defence….William is alarming bald.

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Journalist, writer, traveller, music lover, collector of hats, news addict, bookworm