Prince Harry suggested the royal family has tried to “undermine” his new memoir because people might find it “uncomfortable,” in the last of his interviews to promote ‘Spare’.
Appearing on the US programme The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Harry spoke for the first time about the global reaction to his tell-all autobiography. All the previous interviews were all recorded before the book was leaked last week.
Colbert asked Harry if he believed there was an “active campaign by the rest of your family, by the royal house...to undermine this book”.
The royal replied: “Of course, mainly by the British press.”
Colbert pushed the question again, this time adding if the UK media was “aided and abetted by the Palace”.
He said: “Yes, again, of course. This is the other side of the story, right?
“After 38 years, they have told their side of the story. This is the other side of the story, and there’s a lot in there that, perhaps, makes people feel uncomfortable and scared.”
Harry has claimed several times since leaving the royal family’s frontline that there is a symbiotic relationship between the press and the Palace.
Neither Buckingham Palace nor Kensington Palace have addressed any of his recent allegations.
Harry’s memoir takes particular aim at his father King Charles, stepmother Camilla, Queen Consort and his brother Prince William.
He alleged that Charles always had “trouble communicating”, Camilla – whom he describes as “dangerous – launched a “campaign” to marry the-then heir to the throne, and claims William once pushed him to the ground in a physical altercation.
The Duke of Sussex has suggested that he is not currently speaking to these three relatives throughout the promotion for this book.
Speaking to Colbert, Harry also took the chance to criticise the UK press for sharing leaks of his book before its release day and stripping “away all the context”.
He told Colbert that the “most dangerous lie that they have told is that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan”.
In Spare, Harry revealed for the first time in public that he killed 25 people while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan.
Speaking to Colbert, he said: “I made a choice to share it because having spent nearly two decades working with veterans all around the world, I think the most important thing is to be honest and to give space to others to be able to share their experiences without shame.”
He added: “And my whole goal, my attempt with sharing that detail, is to reduce the number of suicides.”
‘Spare’ is one of the fastest-selling non-fiction books ever, according to its publisher Transworld Penguin Random House, with more than 400,000 hardback, e-book, and audio format copies sold on its first day.