The book will be titled “Spare” — in a possible reference to Harry’s role growing up as third in line to the throne, behind his father, Charles, now King Charles III, and older brother, William, now Prince of Wales.
On social media, observers immediately zeroed in on the title. “The power and the pathos of one word,” said Peter Hunt, the BBC’s former royal correspondent.
In making the announcement on Thursday, publisher Penguin Random House billed the book as a “landmark publication” written with “raw, unflinching honesty.” It’s been described as a “tell-all.”
But in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, and a signs of a possible rapprochement between Harry and the royal family following their dramatic split in 2020 and his subsequent move to the United States, questions have emerged about how revelatory the book’s contents will truly be.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment through a spokesperson when contacted by The Washington Post.
In a promotional website launched Thursday, the publishing house said the book will come out in 15 languages, including French, Polish and Chinese, in addition to English. It will also be released as an audiobook, read by Harry himself.
The announcement is sure to elicit mixed reactions in the United Kingdom, where Harry, once a well-regarded senior member of the royal family, has attracted the ire of parts of the British public for his high-profile break with Buckingham Palace and the stunning allegations he and Meghan have levied against the royal family, particularly those contained in an interview last year with Oprah Winfrey.
Among them: that when Meghan was pregnant with her first child — a son she and Harry later named Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor — a family member prompted “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Since then, both Harry and Meghan have signed lucrative deals with media powerhouses like Netflix and Spotify from their home base in Santa Barbara, Calif., revealing more — but, many suspect, not all — about their time as working royals and about Harry’s childhood.
Of all those projects, Harry’s memoir has attracted the most fevered speculation. It was announced in July 2021, with an anticipated publishing date of “late 2022.” At the time, Harry said in a news release that he looked forward to sharing “a firsthand account of my life that’s accurate and wholly truthful” — a possible dig at British tabloids, with whom he and Meghan engaged in a years-long legal battle over claims of privacy violations, among other things.
But the release date was pushed back to next year after Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died at the age of 96 in September. Some speculated that Harry was growing uncomfortable with the possible ramifications of the book on the royal family.
At the queen’s funeral, he and Meghan projected a united front with other members of the royal family. According to the Telegraph, royal commentator Tina Brown said earlier this month that she thought the book wouldn’t “see the light of day.”
It’s clear the book will go ahead, but the announcement of its title and release date are sure to fuel speculation as to its contents — possibly to its publisher’s delight.
William Booth contributed to this report.