Spare by Prince Harry 2023 400pg

16/9/23

J. R. Moehringer is a journalist, memoirist, and novelist. was the ghostwriter of this book.  This book is different from the dozen's of books written about the Royals.  Also I have a relative in London who is helping Hugh Grant, Elton John and other celebrities as well as  Prince Harry to sue the tabloid press 

Even the royal family referred to the 2 princes as the heir and the spare. His name was Henry but he was always called Harry in the family. Faulkner " The past is never dead its not even past.

They were all at Balmoral Castle in Scotland when Dianne was killed and he describes that he never came out of the trauma of that . They boys knew that Dianes life was miserable in the Royal family. however both boys never objected to Charles taking on Camilla as they understood he needed a companion. He describes being at the boarding schools

His history teacher kept asking him questions that he could not answer and said he should know more about his family.

He described that Charles and William could not travel on the same plane as the were both heirs to the throne. After Diane's death he went with his father to South Africa and met Mandela. He was on the sight of the Battle of Islandwana and learned its history and they is not much to be proud of the British defeating so many natives and the largest number of Victorian crosses were handed out for this.

 The book starts at Frogmore in the gardens where his mother is buried and where he and Megan Fled in Jan 2020. He contemplates his mother Diane and that his grandfather Prince Phillip was the loudest advocate and actually brokered Charles's marriage to her. After Edward VIII abdicated he and Wallace were obsessed with being buried at Frogmore . Before he went to fight in Afghanistan he had to declare where he wanted to be buried and Harry chose Frogmore.

1984  Harry was born. Balmoral to him was always a Disneyland that he loved visiting. Balmoral has 50 bedrooms. He mentions that Queen Victoria was shot at 8 times in 8 different occasions by 7 different subjects. William was born the heir and he the Spare born 2 years after him. He was Plan B , the shadow the support, a back up distraction, a spare part, kidney, bone marrow perhaps.

1997  August Diane died almost exactly a year after the divorce was finalized. Sarah Ferguson had clipped 2 locks of the dead Diane hair and given one to each boy. At Ludgrove  in Berkshire boarding school everyone knew who was circumcised and he was part of the Roundheads versus the Cavaliers who were not.

1997 Nov. He went with his father to meet Mandela and the Spice Girls to get positive publicity, for Charles. The Spice Girls compared their campaign against sexism to Mandela's against apartheid. In Kwa Zula he heard the historian David Rattray about the story of the battle of Rorkes Drift where 11 British soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross the greatest number ever in one battle.

Charles and William could never be on the same flight in royal travel , the 2 heirs had to be on separate flights  but with him it made no difference who he accompanied. There were rumor's that  red haired Major Hewitt was his father and not Charles. William never liked that Diane dressed the 2 boys in the same outfits. like Alice in Wonderland twins. 

1999 he spent time in Okavango. 2002 the press were full of stories that were lies, his own father and Camilla had given them, they were hoping to get good publicity for  themselves, a public sacrifice of the Spare. He says he and Margaret should have been good friends as  they had much in common but he only realized that very late, both Spares. 

2002 The Queen Golden Jubilee The Queen was moving her feet in time to the music but had ear plugs in her ears not to suffer the noise.

2002 At the funeral of the Queen mother , placed on top of her coffin was the crown that had the Koh-i-Noor  the largest diamond seen by human eyes, it was cursed for men so only women wore it. She was 102 years old and survived her husband George VI  by 59 years.

Eton was founded by Henry VI. Eighteen British Prime Ministers had been there and 37 winners of the Victoria Cross.   At school he took every cigarette offered and graduated to weed. He agreed for the boys to give him a haircut but they shaved his head and the press called him Harry the skinhead. His school reports were public domain. He had to take part in a play and discovered being Royal was not that far from being on stage. He completed his Eton education in 2003 with help of special tutors his father paid for.

In a gap year he went to friend's of Diane's lived in the Australian outback at  the Tooloombila cattle station in Southern Queensland. He worked as a jackeroo, was a good rider for chasing cattle learned that a fat is a  plump cow ready for slaughter , a steer was a bull that should be castrated, a weaner was a calf newly split from his mother. Even there an intruder came looking for him and the local police nabbed him.

2004 he spent a few months in Lesotho at a time when  it was the epicenter of AIDS and was one vast orphanage pandemic. The average life expectancy there was 42.  A quarter of Lesotho adults were HIV positive. He was taken by Prince Seelso  on ponies to see schools at remote villages Samakong at an altitude of 7000 feet. Later staying in Cape Town he called a girl that he met at the Berkshire polo club who was totally immune from the common affliction called the throne syndrome. Chelsy became his girlfriend. He met her parents and they got on very well. She was his girlfriend while in the army and they were on the phone together all the time. 

In Botswana he was with Mike and Teej doing research on the fauna and flora. Teej's grandfather was Robert Ardrey (1908 to 1980 )who wrote the books African Genesis and wrote movie scripts.

2005 April  death of Pope John Paul II .Camilla and Charles had to postpone their wedding a few times as the pope died leaving a bad karma if the married just after his funeral. After Harry turned 18 he asked to see photos of Princess Diane death. He was shown shots by paparazzi as their camera's were confiscated by the Paris police.

By being in the military he avoided the prying eyes of the press. He had to write exams to get into Sandhurst.  Boot Camp is a benign name for what happens when you are pushed to the limits of your physically , mentally and spiritually. They were taken to the Brookwood Military Cemetery where the poem They shall not grow old by Laurence Binyon 1914.  Harry  was Second  lieutenant  Wales of the Blues and Royals and at the passing out ceremony in 2006, in front of the Queen she hadn't taken part in this type of ceremony for decades.

One photo of Harry fetched $30,000, for the paparazzi. Once when he left a pub from the back door he got into the car's boot to avoid the paps, something his mother used to do. The tenth anniversary of Dian's death a concert was put on in aid of AIDs sufferers at Wembley stadium. He would go to Botswana to meet up with Chelsy.

2007 Britain had 7000 troops in Afghanistan. Having a prince in the army is a big PR for the military.  He managed to get sent to the war and flew into Kandahar airport. he met up with British, Dutch, French and American troops. He felt very comfortable in the company of Gurkhas who had been recruited from Nepal and had fought in every  British war for the last 2 centuries. When they weren't escorting him fattened him up on goat curry and called him Saab. Some pilots were women. During action they wounded a boy on a motorcycle patched him up and returned his vehicle, some felt he had been a pawn in a Taliban feint. You get details on the Afghanistan war but then a small Australian magazine outed him and then it went on the media about Harry in Helmand province. He would have been a target and the army did not want other to die because of his presents.

2007 The Rugby world cup finals were in England  and South Africa won. The semi final took place in Paris and Harry asked to see the tunnel where his mother died and found it to be a short straight tunnel.

In Cape Town the press always knew where Chelsy was and Harry's security guard explained to her brother how to remove the tracking device under the car.  Harry later was trained to be a helicopter pilot and describes that landing it is not easy as you have "hover monkeys" the propeller wind that blows down, rushes up again when it hits the ground and you can loose control. He was trained to fly Apaches and qualified. He was asked and said since the age of 12 when his mother died he was not afraid of dying. 2010 The passing out ceremony he was given his wings by his father.

Harry was now 25 years old considered a watershed age and the queen had become monarch at the age. Back in Botswana he was aware of Climate Change, poaching, drought, fire and asked to be a global megaphone on this,.

2010 William and Kate married in Westminster Abbey where more than 3000 poets, scientists and saints are buried underneath including Dickens, Chaucer 13 kings and 18 queens. His girlfriend Chelsy was at this  wedding but not near him for fear of the press.

Harry went with a group of army veterans to the North Pole but returned for the wedding, he got frost nipped ears cheeks and the tip of his penis. On later trips to the South pole he put on an insulating pad there. Apparently it is nipped  worse if you are not circumcised.

 Rebecka Brooks was finally disgraced for the Hacking Scandal in News of the World yet continues to be a powerful ally of Rupert Murdock. Hacking peoples phone is blatant criminality.  This was to do with the Milly Dowler Murder and her phone being hacked. This newspaper was closed as advertises were talking of fleeing and readers of boycotting it . In ran from 1843 and was closed in 2011. After his relationship with Chelsy ended he had other girlfriend but were all exposed by the paparazzi and not prepared to put up with that.   

2013  He returned to Afghanistan as a Captain and was flying Apaches, till the Taliban heard about his presents on the base. On the Apache they would  follow a Taliban pair on motor bike and they had to kill them when they were not near civilians. Every kill was on video. Motorbikes were the chosen vehicle of the paps all over the world. harry was on 6 missions that ended in taking human life and were all deemed justifiable. He was able to show accountability and had killed 25 Taliban. 

 He toured Angola areas poisoned by land mines a thing that had been his mother passion. At this stage he seemed to be a confirmed bachelor, an outsider even a non person in the family.

He went for a march to the South Pole with wounded veterans which is an altitude of almost 10,000 feet enough to give altitude sickness. There is a tradition to drink booze from prosthetic legs when you achieve your goal. Later he went to a wedding of a friend in the States and visited Graceland's Elvis Presley's home which he had actually for  bought for Elvis's mother.  At the wedding they all wore blue sued shoes in honor of Elvis.

2014 July 1st  Dianne's birthday at the Tower of London the public were asked to come and spread  888,346 paper poppies on the grass  to commemorates that number of British and  Commonwealth soldiers that died in WW1. This was the day that the Battle of the Somme took place. On Flanders Fields where poppies blow the poem by John McCrae. Thus the poppy became the symbol of WW1 

Harry was involved in organizing Paralympics for soldiers from all over the world  at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park. This was the start of  the Invictus Games, he had met dozens of people with post traumatic stress and realized that he also had it. The press were now gunning for William as he refused to let them photograph his family and he had made a mildly anti Brexit speech.  

2015 Harry heard people reading the tabloid press discussing if Harry would ever marry and whether he was gay. He finally met a therapist that confirmed that he had post traumatic stress. He was encouraged to take up his passion and went on a 4 month trip,  to educate himself on the truth of the ivory war in Botswana, Namibia and S. Africa starting at the Kruger Park. Rhino number were diminishing and Chinese and Vietnamese syndicates were incentivizing the poaching.

2016 July A mutual friend suggested Megan Markle who happened to be in London. Harry looked  her up on Google and could not stop looking at her pictures so they met in a restaurant in a quiet room of Soho House. She had had several careers Lifestyle writer ,  travel writer, corporate spokesperson, entrepreneur , activist model, had been all over the world, worked for the US embassy in Argentina besides being on the telenovela Suits, and was fierce on women issues.  Later they both arrived separately and had a week in Botswana together.  In London met her again at Soho hotel by coming in the back door through the freight lift.

He took her to Royal Lodge to meet Fergie and the Queen happened  to be there and he had to teach her to curtsey before she entered. She hadn't Googled anything and did not know who Prince Andrew was. Megan hugged most strangers. Comment-    The Royal family does not have any difficulty breeding like Pandas do, are expensive to conserve, ill adapted to any modern environment but are interesting and nice to look at.

2016 Nov. The Palace announced officially that Megan was his girlfriend as the press was printing all sorts of rumors  already and hounding them and the racist slurs began and that she was a divorcee. Private investigator were being put onto Megan but the Palace did not want Harry to sue the press for lies. One headline read Harry's girl  on Pornhub, these were images taken illegibly from Suits. The press was onto her everywhere and her family and friends and their neighbors  had no peace. The press might so poison the public that Megan could be harmed. Later the Sun ran a small hidden correction for the Porn story. Charles in the past had been ridiculed for his warning on Global Warming.

As a grown man Harry had to ask his grandmother the Queen permission to marry. The 1772 Royal Marriage Act or the Succession to Crown Act of 2013. Love took a back seat to the law. His brother Willian tried dissuading him from marrying Megan. Neither William or Charles wanted someone new grabbing the limelight of the monarchy.   The Corgi's had belonged to Queen Victoria and were their offspring. On the death of the Queen they were taken by Sara and Prince Andrew who live  together on Royal Lodge, Winsor Castle even though they divorced in 1996.

Megan left Suits after 7 seasons, shut down her website, abandoned social media at the behest of the Palace. The press spread an article that Meg had shown support for #metoo but Kate not. This comparison upset Kate. 2018 The Queen formally approved their marriage. Suits married Meg off the show. Diane's situation had gone from bad t worse when she showed she was better in connecting with people and better being royal than she had a right to.

1918 May Harry and Megan married at Winsor Castle and were given  the hidden Frogmore Cottage near Frogmore house. This had belonged to Queen Charlotte the wife of George III. 2019 Feb. The  Guardian Headline had written "Tormenting Meghan Markle has become a national sport that shames us". They later went to France and stayed at the home of Alton John and his husband David and their 2 boys. Alton had been working on his memoir for years and it was published in 2019 Oct. The Mall had paid Alton 100,000 pounds for lies they published about him.

2019 Harry ,Megan and baby Archie (born 2019 May) toured S. Africa on the Queen's behalf. In England the Daily Mail said that Megan had gone from slavery to royal in 150 years  and that she was a "gold digger" There was a document that Harry sent his father that was released to the press, it is possible that people working at the palace exposed it for payment.

2020 Jan. A Statement put out that Harry and Magen would no longer represent the Queen. He was not given a choice on this,  apparently many in the Palace saw him as an existential threat. Now in  Canada the British Government cancelled his security staff and it would cost $6 million a year to hire. Megan had a miscarriage. Later  a daughter Lilibet was born in 2021 June. Today 2023 they live in Montecito California.