Factbox: Highlights from Prince Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’

MADRID, Jan 5 (Reuters) – A Spanish-language version of “Spare,” Britain’s Prince Harry’s long-awaited memoir, went on sale in bookstores in Spain on Thursday, days ahead of its official launch date.

The book reveals details about Harry’s relationship with his father King Charles, his older brother Prince William and other members of the British royal family that have never been published before.

As is usual for the royal family, spokespeople for Charles and William declined to comment.

Below are some of the key details described in the book:

RUNNING WITH THE BROTHER

Harry says his brother William, now heir to the British throne, knocked him to the floor during a 2019 argument at his London home about Harry’s American wife Meghan. William called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”, writes Harry.

He says William grabbed him by the collar and knocked him to the floor, where Harry says he landed in a dog bowl, cracking him. He says he refused William’s challenge to fight back and that his brother later apologized for the incident.

Kamil

Harry says he and Prince William asked their father not to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles, who is now Britain’s queen consort. However, he writes that he and William ended up wishing their father a happy marriage and had little sympathy for their relationship.

“Despite the bitterness and sadness we felt at closing another chapter in our mother’s story, we realized it was unimportant.” DRESSED AS NAZIS

Harry says he was encouraged by Prince William and his wife Kate to go dressed as a Nazi to a fancy dress party in 2005, in what he has described elsewhere as “one of the biggest mistakes of his life mine”.

HEWITT PRINCIPAL GOSSIP

Harry denies media rumors that he was the result of an affair between Major James Hewitt and his mother, Princess Diana, and suggestions that his father had often joked about not knowing who Harry’s real father was. Harry says the idea is absurd, considering his mother didn’t meet Hewitt until long after he was born.

WAR FOR WEDDING VENUES

Harry claims the royal family delayed the date and venue of his wedding to Meghan. He says that when he consulted his brother about the possibility of getting married at Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral, William said he could not marry there because they had been the wedding venues of Charles and Diana, William and Kate respectively. Instead, William suggested a country chapel near Charles’ home at Highgrove House in southwest England. Harry and Meghan finally married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, in May 2018.

DRUG TAKING

Harry says that when he was 17 he was offered a line of cocaine at someone’s house and took the drug on several other occasions, although he insists media reports suggesting he was on drugs were false and that he did not enjoy it .

“It wasn’t a lot of fun and it didn’t make me feel particularly happy as it seemed to everyone, but it made me feel different and that was my main objective. I was a 17-year-old boy ready to try anything that changed the order default”, he writes.

Harry also tells how, as a student at the exclusive Eton College, he smoked cannabis in a bathroom at his home while Thames Valley Police acted as his bodyguards, patrolling the outside of the building.

SEE A REVIEWER

Harry describes meeting a “powerful” woman who said she could feel Princess Diana’s spirit. He says the woman was recommended by friends and that, while he had doubts about her, as soon as he sat down “I felt an energy around her”.

“Your mother says you’re living the life she couldn’t, the one she wanted for you,” Harry is quoted as telling the woman.

ARCTIC TRIP

Harry describes how during a trip to the North Pole he suffered the early stages of what appears to be frostbite, including his penis. He recounts telling his father about his scars at a dinner party on the eve of William’s wedding.

“My father showed interest and sympathized with me when I mentioned that my ears and cheeks were burning from the cold. I tried to refrain from talking too much and told him that my penis was also affected…”

afghanistan

Harry says he killed 25 people while serving as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He says he took part in six missions, which involved death, but says he saw them as justifiable as Taliban insurgents wanted to kill his comrades.

“It was not a statistic that filled me with pride, but neither did it leave me ashamed. When I found myself immersed in the heat and confusion of battle, I did not think of the 25 as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, people bad guys are eliminated before they kill good people.”

Reporting by Charlie Devereux Editing by Gareth Jones

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