Spare

Books to look forward to in 2024

Ah, welcome back. In our previous look at some of the major books of the year, I highlighted titles that went on to be acclaimed bestsellers and the most talked-about volumes of the past twelve months, as well — inevitably — as a few that failed to live up to the high expectations that we’d placed upon them. It is interesting that, just as Prince Harry’s Spare was indeed the most discussed book of last year, another hotly tipped memoir is undoubtedly the major release of 2024.

Prince Harry’s hotel hideout

A lovely posh woman once told me that should things ever become too much in my life, there was a simple solution: “Just book yourself into a five-star hotel and forget about it. Works every time.” When Prince Harry arrived back in Britain last week to take on the British press in court, rumor has it that he did just that. Instead of spending the night at his previous home, Frogmore Cottage, or one of the many rooms at Buckingham Palace or Clarence House, he stayed at Soho House, the private members' club and hotel. It would not be surprising. Harry is accustomed to a luxurious life and some of these castles are getting far too shabby nowadays. There’s also the fact Meghan and Harry’s first ever date was at the Soho House on 76 Dean Street, London.

prince harry hotel

Meghan Markle’s comeback: welcome to the Meghanaissance

Maybe it was always going this way. After being a briefcase girl, an actress, a D-list celebrity and blowing it as a real-life royal, perhaps the only natural next step for Meghan Markle was to become an influencer. Look at Fergie, once married to Prince Andrew. Now the Duchess of York makes her living writing romance novels, selling jam and giving “exclusive” interviews to any tabloid that’ll buy her lunch.   The truth is that there is no glamor in being an ex-something. Look at the washed-up ex-wives and girlfriends of sports stars, selling herbal tea on Instagram for a few bucks and being paid to show up at crappy provincial nightclubs filled with teenagers. (It’s harder to be fussy when you need to pay the bills.

Meghan Markle Meghanaissance

Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez now works in retail

The Washington Post’s revolving door People are losing their jobs in all sorts of industries — but chances are the layoffs you’ve heard about most in recent weeks are in finance, tech or the media. Squeakiest wheel and all that. This week brought news that the Washington Post was cutting twenty newsroom jobs and shuttering its gaming vertical. Also out at the Post: Margaret Sullivan, who has left to sign as a columnist for the Guardian. It's not all departures at One Franklin Square though: executive editor Sally Buzbee has signed up a slew of names for the Opinion desk, including conservatives Jim Geraghty and Ramesh Ponnuru from National Review and disaffected liberal Ruy Teixeira.

felicia sonmez

The art of the royal memoir

By the time you read this piece, Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare will have been published in the United States. The question of whether it’s any good will be decided swiftly by the newspaper and online literary critics, but we in the monthly magazine trade have, alas, been denied the opportunity to see it before our publication deadlines. Under normal circumstances, this would bode very badly indeed. As with films that are not screened for critics beforehand — “because we want the audience to discover the magic for themselves” — books that have very tight publication schedules and are embargoed to the hilt are usually seen as flops-in-prospect.

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Did Prince Harry’s nasty older brother force him to wear a Nazi uniform?

Ahhh, Harry’s truth. This time, instead of optionally wearing a marginally funny Nazi outfit to a costume party in the 2000s, back when nobody really cared about poor taste, Prince Harry was dragged kicking and screaming by Wehrmacht William and Kristallnacht Kate to the naughty shop against his will. Not quite, but not far off. In extracts from Harry’s upcoming memoir, Spare, obtained by Page Six, Hapless Harry says: “I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said.” He claims he was originally deciding between a Nazi or pilot uniform, but his big-bad brother and Kate “howled” at the sight of him in the outfit, which won the impressionable prince over. Harry then calls his brother by a pet name, saying: “Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit!

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Harry and William’s royal rumble

Britain has spoken. After extracts from Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, were leaked to the Guardian, the overwhelming reaction to the book's explosive claims is "what kind of man wears a necklace?" Describing a confrontation at his London home in 2019, Harry says that his brother William called Meghan Markle “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive,” which Harry calls a “parroting of the press narrative” about his American wife. Or maybe those were just the first three adjectives that sprung to mind about moaning Meg. Harry goes on to describe how William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and... knocked me to the floor.” Heroic Haz then writes that he gave his brother a glass of water and said: “Willy, I can’t speak to you when you’re like this.

The books to watch out for in 2023

After a fair-to-middling 2022, it’s not unreasonable to hope that 2023 will see several stars burn brightly in the literary firmament. Whether what promises to be the most talked-about book of the year, Prince Harry’s Spare (Random House, January), is included in this number remains to be seen. On the plus side, the prince has the estimable J.R. Moehringer as his ghostwriter; on the negative side is the fact that his every public appearance over the past few years has been so combative that we might expect little more than a 416-page exercise in score-settling. More reliable pleasures await. Pamela Anderson’s memoir Love, Pamela (HarperCollins, January) should be a revelatory and fascinating dive beyond the usual bimbo clichés.

Prince on pre-order: Harry’s memoir release date announced

Cockburn has a few vacations coming up in 2023, so is on the hunt for some new light reading material. Thank God that Prince Harry has announced that his long-awaited memoir, Spare, will hit shelves globally on January 10. The cover features a close-up of the man fifth in line to the British throne, staring down the barrel of the camera, blue eyes glinting, beard tidily trimmed. His expression says, "this is my story." Publisher Penguin Random House said in a press release: “Spare takes readers immediately back to 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.

prince harry memoir spare