Prince Harry

Prince Harry is a British royal, military veteran, and author whose memoir Spare offers a candid and controversial account of his life within and eventual departure from the British royal family.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, is the younger son of King Charles III and the late Princess Diana. Before Spare (2023), written with ghost-writer J.R. Moehringer, he was known publicly as a decorated British Army officer who served two tours in Afghanistan, a mental health advocate, and one half of the Sussexes’ highly publicised departure from senior royal duties in 2020. Spare — the title refers to the royal family’s expression “the heir and the spare” — is his account of his life from childhood through the period leading up to his and Meghan Markle’s decision to step back from royal duties and relocate to California.

The memoir is significant primarily for its candour, which is of a kind rarely seen from anyone so close to the British royal family. Harry writes openly about his grief following his mother’s death in 1997, his struggles with mental health and drug use in his twenties, and his experiences of racism and institutional cruelty within the royal household and the British press. Many of the specific incidents he recounts — including an alleged physical altercation with his brother Prince William and characterisations of other family members — generated intense media debate about accuracy and motivation.

The literary quality is uneven, as is typical of celebrity memoirs produced in collaboration with a ghostwriter, but J.R. Moehringer (who also wrote Shoe Dog with Phil Knight) brings a narrative sensibility that elevates the material above standard royal biography. Whether readers find Spare sympathetic, self-serving, or both will depend substantially on prior attitudes toward the Sussex story. As a document of the psychological costs of royal life and the failures of an institution to protect one of its members, it is worth reading even by those who approach it sceptically.