Princess Diana author shocked Prince Harry didn’t ask for secret recordings of her
Andrew Morton says Prince Harry didn’t contact him to listen to secret recordings of Princess Diana despite the Duke’s memoir being a ‘homage’ to his late mother.
Princess Diana author Andrew Morton has said he was shocked Prince Harry didn’t ask to listen to secret tapes of his mother for his memoir.
The author has spoken previously of how Diana’s friend, James Colthurst, would act as an intermediary, using Mr Morton’s questions to interview the princess, recording her answers and delivering the tapes to the author.
Diana revealed multiple suicide attempts, details of an eating disorder and the relationship between King Charles, then Prince of Wales, and his then mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles.
Reaction to the book was explosive, as members of the public previously believed Charles and Diana were enjoying a fairytale marriage.
The work’s emergence features in season five of The Crown, which dramatises a break-in at Mr Morton’s home and Diana suspecting her rooms were bugged.
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The veteran royal reporter and author compared his book about Diana with Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare – which was ghost-written by J.R. Moehringer – in an appearance on royal podcast Kinsey Schofield Unfiltered.
He said: “One of the things that struck me about [Spare] was neither Harry nor J.R. Moehringer contacted me to say, ‘Can I listen to my mother talking? Can I listen to the tapes?’
“I would have thought I would be the first port of call for Harry because his memoir is very much an affectionate homage to his mother, from page one to the last page.”
Mr Morton pointed to references to Diana in Spare, including Harry’s visit to a psychic, his drive through the Pont de L’Alma in Paris where his mother was involved in a car crash which led to her death in 1997 and the Duke’s revealing he doesn’t make decisions unless he has considered what his mother would say.
The author of Diana: Her True Story said its publication was a watershed moment for the monarchy, which he said was challenged to think hard about its purpose in the wake of the book hitting the shelves.
Asked if The Firm did learn lessons, he said: “I think they certainly pivoted after the Diana book came out… For the first time in a generation people asked themselves, what is the monarchy for?”
He added that the same question applies today after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry’s stepping down as a working royal and Prince Andrew cast out of the inner circle.
Pointing also to King Charles and Princess Kate’s cancer diagnoses, Mr Morton said: “It’s a transformative time.”
On Harry’s bestselling memoir, he commented: “I found the book quite a touching memoir. Obviously, we have the fisticuffs with William, but, quite frankly, if being pushed towards a dog bowl is the height of brotherly antipathy they have a lot more to learn.”
Harry claims in Spare that he fell onto a dog’s bowl after Prince William pushed him in a row over the Sussexes’ future. Kensington Palace has not responded to that allegation or any others levelled against the Waleses in Spare.
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Mr Morton said there were points in the book where he felt the ghost writer holding Harry back from criticising the press, which the prince has vowed to purge.
He added: “For me, it was the relationship with his mother that was the most striking aspect of [Spare] and how his mother’s death transformed his thinking, transformed his life and made him the man he is today.”
The writer added that when critics seek to blame Meghan Markle for how Harry has turned out, he disagrees. He told the podcast: “This is something that has been preying on his mind for many, many years.”
Asked what Princess Diana would have thought of Meghan, Mr Morton said she would have been impressed by the Duchess of Sussex’s public speaking abilities, given her ambition to be a good public speaker.
He added: “The irony is she was possibly on the cusp of going to the west coast of America herself. She loved America. She loved Americans. So I don’t think she would have been particularly critical of the route Harry and Meghan have taken.
“As for Meghan, she is someone who has made her second son very happy and who adores him, and vice versa. It’s a marriage that seems to work. That’s one of the main things any parent wants for their children – that the partner they have is someone who loves them, is kind and is thoughtful.”
