In many respects, Prince Harry is a too-perfect example of the sorts of resultant ailments psychologists focusing on trauma and child and adolescent development have detailed for the past century.
Consider the prince: born into a large, but not emotionally forthcoming, family where his status as a secondary figure in the pecking order is an essential and undeniable factor of his existence. Sibling rivalry, and the impact of a perception of favouritism, can have long-reaching effects on one’s psyche, but it is rare for the sheer uselessness of one’s existence be made so clear. Not only that, but Harry was sent away: he is part of a long line of those brought up in the elite British schooling system, a class whose parenting norms have strongly shaped our understanding of developmental psychology and attachment. Take Donald Winnicott, of ‘good enough’ parent fame, who went to boarding school in Cambridge. After the death of a beloved parent in childhood, Harry’s ability to focus and confidence in school dwindles: unlike his more academic brother and father, he does not go to university, and finds himself drawn to the regimental orders of the army. Much of the modern understanding of PTSD, of course, originated from the experiences of the returning American soldiers from Vietnam War, rather than the displaced and brutalised Vietnamese populations.
It remains a big moment for trauma, culturally. This year saw a New Yorker as essay on the trauma plot, a profile (not glowing) of The Body Keeps the Score author Bessel van der Kolk in New York Magazine and increasing fan reception to Roman Kendall, Succession’s most likely character to storm the Capitol, being framed in terms of the adverse childhood experiences that are evident in the series.
The things that most surprised or interested me about Spare upon listening to the audiobook were not necessarily those parts that were heavily trailled in the press coverage at the time. So, for those of you unlikely to read what I think (bar the dreary army stuff) is the celeb memoir of the year, here are the things I’ve recounted to my friends:
Harry’s prep boarding school had a system of bathing where the house mistresses/matrons would shampoo the boys’ hair while they were sat in the bathtub. The oldest boys at the school would have been 12 or 13 so it’s no wonder receiving a head massage in front of an audience of your peers might have cause some…confusion for the young prince. It is unclear to me why those boys would have even needed shampooing assistance: I am assuming their uniform rules would have forbidden long hair.
Harry had a thing with Caroline Flack. It doesn’t sound like it was a serious relationship, but rather a casual fling, which was marked by a lack of convenience due to media snooping. That those two were in the same circles did surprise me a bit but Harry’s friendship with crypto-posh actor Tom Hardy? Less so.
He hits up Hardy to borrow a Mad Max outfit for a costume party he attends with Megan quite far into the book, which leads me to mention Harry, William and ‘Willy’s’ (I know…) new girlfriend had whittled down the infamous Nazi uniform costume from a whole host of possible contenders at a fancy-dress shop. In his review of the book, Times culture guy James Marriott suggests that ‘even in this hostile account [William and Kate] come across as sweet and well-meaning people’ but their young couple were at university when this happened. And while I know the university was St. Andrew’s and this was a different time ago, it is a rather menacing insight into their lack of fear around that type of imagery, particularly from a would-be king whose great-uncle had to abdicate due to Nazi sympathising, bordering on collusion.
Apparently, Harry didn’t know that the p-word is a slur when he said it during his military stint in relation to a colleague. He claims it was used neutrally enough each time he’d previously heard it before and so had no clue. Now, the ghostwriter for this project is an American, so I appreciate that he might not have totally grasped the nuances of British race relations, but Harry was born in a decade where that term was suffixed by the word ‘bashing’ to describe hate crimes and street violence. Even if the people the young prince spent time with – including that very lost-sounding soldier who was fine with the nickname – did use it casually, it remains astonishing to me that he really had no clue as to how it was understood in broader society.
Indeed, I wonder if the Americanness of the ghostwriter, JR Moehringer, means that all the stuff on Africa went other his head. Or whether he simply kept in some revealing things that the protagonist still doesn’t understand are deeply telling.
Harry has a white Zimbabwean girlfriend, Chelsy, who, despite English boarding school and a stint at Leeds University which to my mind makes her more Pandora Sykes than my cousin, and he speaks fondly of her family and the close parental bonds he evidently, and understandably, envies. The facts of Davy existence are presented with a blandness that is patently absurd to anyone who has seen a news item about Zimbabwe in the last thirty years. Chelsy’s dad owns a game reserve (how). It’s massive, apparently (HOW?).
While camping with two other southern Africans (ethnicities not provided in the text, but I made my assumptions), the woman who becomes a maternal figure for Harry, to the extent he starts calling her ‘mum’ tells him that he might have been born in England, but he has the heart of an African.
I stopped dead in my tracks hearing this. Belated apologies to anyone who was trying to walk behind me near Tottenham Court Road station that evening. How many people let that line in? Did he not feel embarrassed in the recording studio, at least? There’s some mild history on the Koh-I-Noor and the Empress of India stuff but you can tell Harry doesn’t know much about all of that. He just doesn’t get why his family can’t see that his talented, beautiful, entrepreneurial wife for the incredible PR asset she truly could have been for the firm.Harry is hopelessly naïve when it comes to women and is family also display some weird attitudes, which does not come as that much of a surprise. Charles, just like his mother, likes it when women wear their (long) hair down and so Harry gives Megan a heads up on this, along with their favouring minimal makeup, ahead of the initial instances she meets his family. No advice or guidance on curtseying though, which I do think set the American divorcee up.
One of my friends said, upon reading the book, that should we hate to be spoken about by a partner the way that Harry is rapturous about Megan. I agree: it is a pedestal upon which no fallible person can stand on for very long in a relationship without disappointing him, and in turn disappointing yourself for having somehow lost his adoration. And if the tiara doesn’t slip off, it likely means that you are in a relationship with someone who has a rather childlike view of a romantic partner. In Harry’s case, Megan sits in the pantheon of angelic women, of which his mother rules supreme, while Camilla is evidently villainous. I have some, maybe even, much, sympathy for his beef with his stepmother, given he believes she and her staff fed the press negative and exaggerated stories about his teenage drugtaking to boost her standing with the public, but he has such a binary view of the main women in his life that it is rather pitiful for all involved.
Harry is wowed by Megan from their first meeting, for which he is late. She is staying at the Dean Street Townhouse, an original Soho House location and far more public a location than he would prefer. Meg is not willing to go on a first date with guy straight to his place – and so a private back room at the central London members’ club is their compromise. They are introduced to one another after Harry spots her on Instagram, in one of his friend’s stories – with both girls adorned with the dog filter. A right royal DM slide – an almost unbelievable meetcute. Post-date, Harry’s mate shows up at his pad and the two men smoke some weed. Harry then calls Megan (bit keen, mate…). She then calls him back, except it’s a video call and he’s impressed to see that she’s taken off her makeup! Harry, lad, I rather think the point of video calling you was to prove to you that’s she’s totally not a high maintenance chick.
But so unfamiliar with the ways of women is Harry, and so low is his regard for the mortal non-mummy ones, he still suspects Megan will be a heavy packer for their trip to Africa. I am calling it Africa because the specifics of the location doesn’t seem that important to him; it’s a chance to go back to his happy place/continent. He is impressed that she has not packed straighteners or heels for a desert camping trip. Foolish Harry: who needs three makeup bags full of topical lotions and treatments when you can opt for longer-term solutions like Botox, filler and keratin treatments which feel like occupational requirements for actresses on network tv shows these days. It doesn’t matter whether or not Megan is ‘high maintenance’ but it annoys me that he’s yet another man who needs whoever he is dating to be impossibly beautiful and impressive but for this to be effortless.And there’s that pedestal again. Harry was under the impression that he had an immortal mother. For years after she died, well into his teens, he was convinced she had just gone to ground and would reappear to her beloved boys when it was safe to do so; when the press had settled down. I feel for William who must’ve been struck dumb by his younger brother’s aggressive naiveté, which might have served as a reminder of how boring and ageing it can be, being an older sibling. It’s not uncommon for older children to be treated as adult confidantes by parents, particularly during breakups and divorce, and Diana’s life did seem particularly lonely and devoid of age-appropriate friendships. I can imagine the heir, while feeling possibly protective of his younger brother upon discovering Harry’s denial, also thinking: god, what a bloody luxury. To be allowed to pretend to yourself like that, and for so long. It is at once evidence of Harry’s claims of being overlooked, because the fiction of Diana’s faked death might not have embedded itself so strongly in his formative mind, but also demonstrates how much less scrutiny he would have faced.
Why am I devoting so many words to a book that someone told me, in my own house, when I mentioned my listening to the audiobook that they wouldn’t be reading it ‘on principle’? I have no interest in soft focus, soft ball Netflix documentaries, nor indeed a generic-sounding uplifting celeb podcast fronted by Markle. But Spare was the fastest-selling non-fiction book in British history and the attention Harry is getting is for precisely the sort of work (young) women and people who aren’t white get told off for giving away too cheaply. He is telling the world of his traumas and tribulations, including the fact his best friend died in a car crash when they were 18, the summer after they left school. And while I might think some of the details were unwise to put in a book, including his weird, repetitive and unbridled glee that William is balder than he is, no one can suggest Harry is a defenceless little slip of a thing exploited by Big Publishing.
That said, he isn’t very smart. Don’t get me wrong: Harry has done the work. And if he saw me say that, he’d probably be keen to clarify that he is still trying to do the work and that it is an ongoing ever-present thing. Which is grand, but to my mind it is clear that the healing Harry has had to do – necessarily, owing to the aquarium tank in which he grew up – has been too private, and too inwards. The British critical response to Spare has been hostile because they are journalists who think he has been overly hostile about the press, but mainly his biggest crime is that he’s gone a bit…California. He is rather incurious about his beliefs, and about the thoughts and feelings of others, and in that regard is similar to the lead female characters in Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts and Monica Ali’s rather disappointing Love Marriage.
Spare is a very interesting book about the life and times of the sort of person you ordinarily only learn about after the national archives have been unsealed. It is the tale of how one man therapised himself to interiority but not yet to holding empathy for those around him. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why Kate Middleton would’ve been upset her sister-in-law’s response to her apology for forgetting something was to excuse it as being ‘down to the baby hormones.’ But Harry truly seems not to understand how slighting and minimising that could be, particularly if your troubles with debilitating pregnancy in sickness is well-documented. Even worse, and legit funny to me, is that Harry includes the story presumably thinking it would paint Megan in a good light. As I say, the dude just don’t get women.