Prince Harry: Biggest revelations from his new book Spare

There are no shortage of revelations in Prince Harry’s memoir, which is due to be released on 10 January, but has already been seen after a bungle in Spain saw it put on bookshelves early.

The Duke of Sussex has used the 550-plus pages of Spare to detail fallouts with his family, the nicknames he and William use for each other – Willy and Harold – and what happened in the wake of Princess Diana’s death.

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Here’s a round-up of the biggest bombshells.

Duke admits to using cocaine

Prince Harry admits for the first time that he has taken cocaine, smoked weed and tried magic mushrooms.

He writes of his experiences as a teenager: “Of course I had been taking cocaine at that time. At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more.

“It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different.”

He revealed he took magic mushrooms at a party at actress Courtney Cox’s house, washing them down with tequila.

He lost his virginity to an older woman

Harry writes about how he lost his virginity to an “older lady” who “loved horses very much”.

He describes the moment as “a humiliating episode” and says it took place “in a field”.

The excerpt reads: “I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and held me back… one of my mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a busy pub.

“No doubt someone had seen us.”

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He killed 25 Taliban fighters

The Duke of Sussex spent 10 years in the Army, including two frontline tours to Afghanistan – during which he killed 25 people, he writes in Spare.

He explains that thanks to record-keeping he could “always tell exactly how many enemy combatants I had killed”.

“So my number: twenty-five. It was not something that filled me with satisfaction, but I was not ashamed either.

“Naturally, I would have preferred not to have that figure on my military resume, or in my head, but I would also have preferred to live in a world without the Taliban, a world without war.”

Princes asked Charles not to marry Camilla

Harry and William asked their father not to marry Camilla following the death of their mother.

Speaking about when his father married his second wife, Prince Harry writes: “That’s why when the question came, Willy and I promised our father that we would welcome Camilla to the family.

“The only thing we asked for in return was that he didn’t marry her.

“‘You don’t need to get married again,’ we asked him.”

King Charles was married to his first wife, Princess Diana, for 15 years before the pair separated in 1992. She was killed in a car crash in August 1997. He married Camilla in April 2005.

Kate made Meghan cry

In Spare, Harry elaborates on Meghan’s revelation in their Oprah interview that Kate had made her cry in the run-up to the wedding.

Harry says he came home shortly before the wedding to find Meghan on the floor crying after an argument with her future sister-in-law.

He says they had got into a disagreement over Princess Charlotte’s flower girl dress being too big – an issue Kate wanted Meghan to sort out while she was dealing with the fallout of her father announcing he would not be at the wedding.

Harry confirms what Meghan previously told Oprah, that the following day Kate came over with flowers and an apology card.

Read more:
The moment Harry visited site of Princess Diana’s fatal crash
Prince Harry cuts a sad, self-indulgent and naive figure
Now we know just how deep brothers’ rift runs

The Nazi costume

Harry puts some of the blame on William and Kate for the Nazi costume he was pictured wearing in 2005.

He says he called the couple for advice on what to wear to a party, from a shortlist of two – and they told him to go for the Nazi outfit, complete with swastika armband.

He claims they “howled” with laughter when they saw the costume and while he flew under the radar at the party, shortly after someone sold photos to the press.

Meghan not invited to Balmoral

The Queen was staying at her Scottish estate when she died last September.

Harry claims he found out his grandmother had died during the plane journey to Balmoral – a trip Charles had warned him Meghan should not go on.

Harry said his father phoned him: “He told me I was welcome at Balmoral, but… without her. He started to explain his reasons, but they didn’t make any sense at all, and it was disrespectful as well. I did not tolerate it from him.

“Don’t even think about talking about my wife like that.

“Repentant, he said, stammering, that he simply didn’t want the place to be full of people. Nobody’s wife was going to go, not even Kate, he told me, so Meg shouldn’t either.”

Harry recreated Diana’s final journey

Prince Harry says he asked a driver to replicate his mother’s final journey in Paris – travelling through the tunnel where the fatal crash took place at 105kph (65mph).

He describes being in Paris at the age of 23 and asking a driver to take him through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel at the same speed as the car carrying his mother when it crashed in August 1997.

He writes there was “no reason anyone should ever die inside the tunnel”, adding the drive was a “terrible idea”.

“I told myself I was only doing it to close that chapter, but it was not true.”

Claims brother attacked him

Harry alleges the Prince of Wales grabbed his brother and ripped his necklace before knocking him to the floor.

He says “Willy” called his wife Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrupt”.

“Everything happened so fast. Really, really fast. He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor.

“I fell on top of the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces of it cutting into me. I lay on the ground for a few seconds, dazed, then got up and told him to leave.”

The incident allegedly took place at Nottingham Cottage when Harry was living there in 2019.

Push for investigation into Diana’s death

The duke called the report into his mother’s death an “insult”, saying the conclusion that the crash was due to the driver being drunk was “simplistic and absurd”.

“Even if the man had been drinking, even if he had been drunk, he wouldn’t have had any problem driving through such a short tunnel. Unless paparazzi were following him and dazzled him,” he writes.

“Why had those paparazzi got off lightly? Why weren’t they in prison? Who had sent them? And why weren’t those people in jail either? What other reason could there be apart from corruption and cover-ups being the order of the day?”

He says he and his brother agreed on those questions and planned to issue a statement asking for the investigation to be reopened.

“Those who decided dissuaded us,” he wrote.