No stranger to being written about, Prince Harry will soon set the record straight in his own words.
On January 10, his long-awaited memoirs Spare will be released. His provocative title alone indicates that the Duke of Sussex has not held back.
So what do we know about what he wrote? Well, publisher Penguin Random House promises that the “landmark publication” will contain “raw, unflinching honesty…insight, revelation, self-examination and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over pain.”
Too few copies have been pre-authorized to understand exactly how this translates into stories, but there’s one man who knows more than most: Prince Harry’s ghostwriter, former journalist-turned-novelist JR Moeringer. He is an American writer who also wrote Andre Agassi’s award-winning autobiography Open.
Andrew Crofts, who has written more than 80 books for other people, including celebrity bestsellers, thinks casting an “outsider” in England is a smart move.
Image: Meghan opens up about her miscarriage in Harry and Meghan’s recent Netflix documentary Image: Netflix
“It’s pretty good to have a ghost American in this book because he comes in with less background knowledge,” he says.
“So they’ll actually ask questions that I, as an Englishman, probably wouldn’t bother asking because it’s taken as red. So if you’re appealing to a global market, as Harry is, it’s good to have someone who’s a little off.”
Could Moeringer be a kindred spirit? His own memoir was the subject of the Ben Affleck film The Tender Bar, due out in early 2022.
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When Sky News caught up with Affleck, he described the story, which centers on a boy’s search for surrogates to replace his absent father, as a “celebration of single mothers”.
“It’s also a testament to how important fathers are in their children’s lives and how meaningful that is… it’s about the importance of loving and seeing someone and validating them,” Affleck said.
But Crofts is not convinced that Moeringer’s background will mean a focus on the prince’s father, King Charles.
“Maybe, if that’s his interest, he’d ask more questions about the father-son relationship and make certain assumptions based on his own experience, but he really shouldn’t. I mean, he’s being a professional.”
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In this capacity, says Crofts, it is unlikely that the prince was challenged on any of the views he expresses in the book, as a good ghost must be “totally non-confrontational, totally uncritical”.
“A ghostwriter should never argue with them, even if they radically disagree with what they’re saying. That’s not the job. Whatever the subject, the ghostwriter goes along with it, as does I would become a lawyer.
“For the ghost, often the difficulty is balancing the needs of the editor with the author because you’re kind of straddling. The editor, I imagine, wants as much controversy as possible, they want to irritate the royal family and the media of communication to get a lot of headlines and the author may not want to do that.
“Maybe you know, like the ghost, that if they do, they’re going to have a horrible time with their family. And so sometimes you have to balance that… where it’s still a really good read, it gives the readers everything they want from the story, but it doesn’t really let the author down, so to speak.”
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While the royal family might be willing to draw a line under the drama, given that Prince Harry has been paid around £30m for a four-book deal, it’s impossible for Buckingham Palace to read what he says next.
In Harry and Meghan’s recent Netflix docu-series, he spoke candidly about the breakdown of his relationship with brother William and blamed the media for Meghan’s miscarriage. Just weeks later, broadcaster and royal expert Jennie Bond says it’s hard to imagine she has much left to share.
“I have a lot of sympathy for them,” insists Bond, “they didn’t like the life they were in.
“But I can’t imagine there’s anything more to say unless they have more points to target their own family.”
In the coming weeks, memoirs are expected to dominate the bestseller lists. Through advance sales alone, it’s already #1 on Amazon’s popular new books.
And the Duke of Sussex does not intend to keep all the profits. He is donating £1.2m ($1.5m) of the proceeds to his charity Sentebale, which supports vulnerable children and young people in Lesotho and Botswana affected by HIV/AIDS, and £300,000 to WellChild, from which was royal patron for 15 years.
The replacement will be released on January 10th.