Prince Harry chose an entry from BrainyQuote.com as the epigraph for his memoir, Spare: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.†“When I discovered that quotation not long ago on BrainyQuote.com, I was thunderstruck,†the Duke of Sussex writes on page 13, quoting the Nobel Prize–winning American writer William Faulker to explain his own persistence of memory — the living recollections that enabled him to share stories of varying importance for 400 pages. “I thought, Who the fook is Faulkner? And how’s he related to us Windsors?†It’s unclear whether the prince ever realized who the fook Faulker was or that the closest the novelist got to being a Windsor was being a white man from Mississippi who joined the British Royal Airforce at the tail end of World War I before a peace deal was signed while he was still in ground school. What remains clear, though, is Harry’s commitment to a frank portrait of his early years and adulthood that offers more TMI moments than bombshell revelations.
Ahead of the book’s release, “Page Six†gave us a taste of Spare when it somehow obtained a copy and published more than two dozen articles with intimate details about Harry’s youth and upbringing, spats with his brother, and relationship with his wife, Meghan Markle. Viral screenshots of the many, many headlines looked like parody tweets (e.g., Prince Harry claims King Charles told him there wasn’t “enough money†for Meghan) but were in fact very real, to our fascination. When news of a memoir from Princess Diana’s second-born son first dropped, no one could have anticipated that its anecdotes would touch on Prince William’s receding hairline, Harry’s losing his virginity to a spanking older woman, and a frostbitten penis. Despite feeling like a “spare†his whole life, Harry does everything but spare us the details. Here are the stories that stood out to us for their spectacularly strange candor.
On His Youth and Time at War
He experimented with drugs as a teenager.
“Of course,†he was “doing cocaine around this time,†Harry admits, being first offered the drug “at someone’s country house, during a shooting weekend.†It made him “feel different†but not “particularly happy.†He also once hallucinated talking to a toilet after using mushrooms, per the Associated Press.
He says he lost his virginity at 17 in a field behind a pub to an older woman.Â
“She liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion,†Harry claims. “Quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me to grace.â€
“Among the many things about it that were wrong, it happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub,†he continues.
And blames William and Kate for his 2005 Nazi costume.Â
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,†Harry writes, adding their reaction after he tried it on: “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.â€
He feels at home in Africa.
On his gap-year trip to Botswana, where he met filmmaker friends Teej and Mike, along with his former girlfriend Chelsy Davy, he observed that he is spiritually connected to the continent. “I think your body was born in Britain, but your soul was born here in Africa,†Prince Harry remembers Teej saying one night. “Possibly the highest compliment I’d ever received.†Later, he says he and Prince William had a fight over which brother would “have†charitable activities there.
“One day, we almost came to blows in front of our childhood mates, the sons of Emilie and Hugh. One of the sons asked: Why can’t you both work on Africa?†he writes. “Willy had a fit, flew at this son for daring to make such a suggestion. Because rhinos, elephants, that’s mine!â€
“At the same time he also said that he’d stepped aside, gallantly, that he’d permitted me to go, indeed that he’d permitted all my work with wounded soldiers. I let you have veterans, why can’t you let me have African elephants and rhinos?â€
Magnesium gave him bowel issues at a mate’s wedding.
“In my research I came across many people recommending magnesium, which was said to have a calming effect,†he shares, explaining that he tried the supplement to alleviate panic attacks and anxiety after returning to Britain from his military post in 2013. “True, it did. But in large quantities it also had unpleasant side effects—loosens the bowels—which I learned the hard way at a mate’s wedding.â€
He claims he killed 25 Taliban militants.Â
During his time as an Apache helicopter co-pilot and gunner from 2012 to 2013, feeling neither remorse nor satisfaction. “Baddies eliminated before they could kill Goodies,†he writes of his perspective during battle, comparing combatants to a chessboard. Veterans have since criticized his claims, saying he’s putting himself at a security risk and making the British army look bad.
On His ‘Archnemesis’ Prince William
William told Harry not to propose to Meghan.
Giving the future king a poetic epithet — “beloved brother and archnemesis†— the Duke of Sussex claims William did not want to be a fearsome foursome (i.e., Will, Kate, Harry, and Meghan joining royal forces). The reason? Meghan’s an “American actress after all.â€
And then allegedly attacked Harry over their relationship.
Harry claims his brother called his wife “difficult,†“rude,†and “abrasive†— a “parrot[ing] of the press narrative†— before the altercation turned physical. “It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor,†Harry alleges. “I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.†He says the tussle left him with a visible back injury.
Harry correlates his brother’s fading hairline to a fading resemblance to Diana.
Harry noticed this for the first time at Prince Philip’s funeral in 2021. “I looked at Willy, really looked at him, perhaps for the first time since we were little,†Harry writes, before later calling William’s hair loss “alarming†and “more advanced than mine,†despite their two-year age gap.
On the Rift Between Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle
Kate allegedly did not want her gloss on Meghan’s raw lips.
Basically, it’s an “American thing†to share lip gloss, so when Meghan left hers at home, she asked to borrow Kate’s during a post-wedding appearance at the Wales’ Royal Foundation Forum in 2018. “Kate, taken aback, went into her handbag and reluctantly pulled out a small tube,†Harry remembers. “Meg squeezed some onto her finger and applied it to her lips. Kate grimaced.†Apparently, he thought she “should’ve been able to laugh about†the whole thing, but he “sensed†it was going to mushroom into “something bigger.†At the time, he thought Kate would be on “edge†because she was “going to be compared to, and forced to compete with, Meg.†Cue the dramatic music.
On His Dad, King Charles
When Harry was little, his pa would do headstands in his skivvies.
“Open the wrong door and you might burst in on Pa while his valet was helping him dress,†he writes. “Worse, you might blunder in as he was doing his headstands. Prescribed by his physio, these exercises were the only effective remedy for the constant pain in Pa’s neck and back.â€
He says stepmom Camilla took his old room.
“I used to live here at Clarence House, from when I was nineteen until I was about twenty-eight. After I moved out, Camilla turned my bedroom into her dressing room. I tried not to care. But, especially the first time I saw it, I cared.â€
King Charles allegedly said the royals were too broke to support Meghan.
Writing that the whole deal with being a royal is that he and his brother “agreed to serve the monarch†and live “inside the gilded cage at all times†in exchange for financial support. “Pa might have dreaded the rising cost of maintaining us, but what he really couldn’t stomach was someone new dominating the monarchy, grabbing the limelight, someone shiny and new coming in and overshadowing him,†Harry alleges.
Harry claims his dad has been calling him a “spare†child since birth.
“‘Now you’ve given me an heir and a spare — my work is done,’†Harry claims Charles told Diana. The current king would also joke about whether or not the Duke of Sussex was an illegitimate child. “Pa liked telling stories, and this was one of the best in his repertoire. He’d always end with a burst of philosophizing … Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father?â€
“He’d laugh and laugh, though it was a remarkably unfunny joke, given the rumor circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt. One cause of this rumor was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism.â€
On His Mom, the Late Princess Diana
Meghan Markle went to the princess’s grave to ask for guidance.
“When I returned, she was on her knees with her eyes closed and her palms flat against the stone,†Harry recounts, saying Meghan asked her for “clarity and guidance†after giving her a private moment with his mother.
Harry once thought his mother faked her own death.Â
The Princess Diana conspiracy theories are coming from inside the house. In Spare, he reveals both he and William retraced their mother’s final steps at Pont de l’Alma, trying to pinpoint what exactly led to her death. Eventually, Harry began to theorize about the possibilities. “With nothing to do but roam the castle and talk to myself, a suspicion took hold, which then became a firm belief. This was all a trick,†he writes. “And for once the trick wasn’t being played by the people around me, or the press, but by Mummy. Her life’s been miserable, she’s been hounded, harassed, lied about, lied to. So she staged an accident as a diversion and run away.†School “matrons†encouraged him to write a “final†letter to his mother, but he decided to leave his suspicions out of it. According to Harry, he reviewed secret police files on his mother’s death years later.
“There were lights around her, auras, almost halos,†he writes. “As I realized their true origin, my stomach clenched. Flashes. They were [paparazzi photo] flashes.†Angry with the paparazzi, he adds, “I hadn’t been aware, before this moment, that the last thing Mummy saw on this earth was a flashbulb.â€
On His Penis
He says it was once frostbitten.
After a 200-mile Arctic charity walk, Harry says he had to go to William’s wedding with a frostbitten “todger.†“Pa was very interested, and sympathetic about the discomfort of my frost nipped ears and cheeks,†he writes. “While the ears and cheeks were already healing, the todger wasn’t. It was becoming more of an issue by the day.â€
And is circumcised.
“My penis was a matter of public record, and indeed some public curiosity,†he continues. “The press had written about it extensively. There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised,†he says. “Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.â€