Prince Harry will publish his titled memoir on January 10 Sparewhich can have the meaning of “substitute”, four months after the death of Elizabeth II after which the Windsors displayed a fleeting unity and three years after the departure of the couple he forms with Meghan.
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“We are delighted to announce the remarkable and emotionally charged personal story of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex,” New York-based publisher Penguin Random House tweeted early Thursday, confirming a information from New York Times.
The book is described by the publisher, on a site specially dedicated to him, as an insight into the ordeals Harry went through and first of all the death of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was a child.
“With his raw and unflinching honesty, Spare is a work of reference full of information, revelations, introspection and hard-earned wisdom on the eternal power of love over pain and sorrow.
Leaving with a bang
Harry, 38, and his American wife Meghan Markle, 41, stunned the monarchy when they quit the royal family with a bang in early 2020 and moved to Santa Barbara, north of Los Angeles (California) with their children Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor.
During a sensational interview in March 2021 on CBS by American TV star Oprah Winfrey, the couple accused the royal family of insensitivity and racism.
This had heightened tensions with his older brother William, direct heir to the British throne, and their father, who has since become King Charles III.
On the death of Elizabeth II on September 8 and until the funeral on September 19, the British monarchy had worked to display its unity: by including Andrew, sidelined following a sex scandal, and Harry and Meghan.
But Charles III had quickly closed the parenthesis and seemed to rule out a return from his son Harry, specifying that he and his wife “continued to build his life abroad”.
“Mistakes” and “lessons”
Prince Harry, moreover, had announced in July 2021 that he was working on his memory and assured that he would come back to his “mistakes” and the “lessons” he learned from them.
“I write this not as the prince I have been since my birth, but as the man I have become,” he confided at the time.
“I’ve worn many hats over the years, literally and figuratively, and I hope that by telling my story — the ups and downs, the mistakes, the lessons learned — I can help show that, whatever our origins, we have more in common than we think”, he had still written.
He had further said he was “thrilled that people are reading a first-hand account of (his) life that is accurate and fully faithful to reality.”
Spare will be published in the United Kingdom as well as in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa and in total in 16 languages including French at Fayard, according to the publisher.
Part of their proceeds will be donated to UK charities.
According to the BBC, the title Spare which has not yet been officially translated into French, could be a reference to the proverb that “monarchies need an heir and a successor”.
Before his brother William had children, Harry was next in line.