Some nice picks from Prince Harry's Spare:
- “With bagpipes it’s not the tune, it’s the tone.”
- “You've got to give something back.”
- “This was a full-scale public rupture, and it threatened to become irreparable.”
- “He assured me that people do stupid things, say stupid things, but it doesn’t need to be their intrinsic nature. I was showing my true nature, he said, by seeking to atone. Seeking absolution.”
- “Also, the notorious Wallis Simpson. Also, her doubly notorious husband Edward, the former King and my great-great-uncle. After Edward gave up his throne for Wallis, after they fled Britain, both of them fretted about their ultimate return – both obsessed about being buried right here. The Queen, my grandmother, granted their plea. But she placed them at a distance from everyone else, beneath a stooped plane tree. One last finger wag, perhaps.”
- “It wasn’t that she felt no emotions. On the contrary, I always thought that Granny experienced all the normal human emotions. She just knew better than the rest of us mortals how to control them.”
- “In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite. My beloved brother, my arch-nemesis, how had that happened?”
- “I wish I could recall specifically what we talked about. I wish I’d asked more questions, and jotted down her answers. She’d been the War Queen. She’d lived at Buckingham Palace while Hitler’s bombs rained from the skies. (Nine direct hits on the Palace.) She’d dined with Churchill, wartime Churchill. She’d once possessed a Churchillian eloquence of her own. She was famous for saying that, no matter how bad things got, she’d never, ever leave England, and people loved her for it. I loved her for it. I loved my country, and the idea of declaring you’d never leave struck me as wonderful.”
- “At suffering, that’s where. I didn’t want to go all Henry VIII on that goat mainly because I wasn’t skilled in the art, and if I missed or miscalculated the poor thing would suffer.”
- “But I also didn’t need to ask. Two years older than me, Willy was the Heir, whereas I was the Spare.”
Spare
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.
For Harry, this is that story at last.
Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight.
At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn’t find true love.