Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
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Even Prince Harry’s critics must concede that his memoir Spare has been an enormous success. The book is the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever: 400,000 copies flew off the shelves on its first day. The Duke of Sussex’s recent blitzkrieg of high-profile publicity opportunities, on both sides of the Atlantic, leaves little doubt that he
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The epigraph for Spare, Prince Harry’s frenziedly awaited memoir, is from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun. It states simply ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ As a gesture of authorial intent, it’s a bold one. It suggests from the outset that this is not going to be some backwards-gazing book, but instead that it is going to be fully engaged with the
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It’s fair to say that last night’s ITV interview – imaginatively entitled Harry: The Interview – between Prince Harry and his long-standing friend, the journalist Tom Bradby, has been overshadowed by the chaotic leak of Harry’s autobiography Spare. Given the sheer wealth of revelations in the book, what should have been a revelatory teaser for its publication tomorrow has now become almost anti-climatic. Nonetheless, ITV has
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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 (out tomorrow with Bantam), is included in this number remains to be seen. On the plus side, the Prince has the
The new film about the novel that touched off a fury is both uncontroversial and worth seeing
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It was inevitable, with a book as highly anticipated as Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, that there would be a leak of its contents ahead of its release next week. Given the Duke of Sussex’s antipathy towards his family, it is fitting that the newspaper that landed this exclusive is the republican-leaning Guardian. Nonetheless, it is
Hopefully the new year will see several stars burn brightly in the literary firmament
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A new year, a new grudge. Or, at least, a new expression of an old one, which is pretty much all that we’ve heard from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex over the past few years. Yet after the interminable six hours of score-settling that Netflix punished us with last month in the form of
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For the first King’s speech since 1951, the King might have been forgiven for striking a downbeat note in his inaugural address to the nation. After all, this year has seen the death of his mother, his continuing estrangement from his publicity-hungry younger son, and, for good measure, the fulfilment of his long-held desire to
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster have failed to merge
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It ended, as many things do these days, with a poll. Apparently on a whim, Elon Musk, while attending the World Cup final in Qatar on 18 December, tweeted: ‘Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.’ Seventeen-and-a-half million people voted, and nearly sixty per cent
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Not for the first time, it was Jeremy Clarkson’s fault. The weekend news, which began with a forensic dissection of the fallout from the six unrelenting hours of the Netflix series Harry and Meghan, was soon dominated by Clarkson’s extraordinary column in the Sun, in which he wrote of the Duchess of Sussex: ‘I hate
The movie’s trailer looks every bit as awful as might have been anticipated
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When you’re sitting on the sofa in the week ahead, stupefied into submission by food and alcohol and relatives and God knows what else, you’ll be tempted to watch something that will divert you from the gluttony. And, yes, the likes of Elf, It’s A Wonderful Life and Love Actually are all available, as they were last year. But
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At the end of the sixth episode of the interminable, grotesquely self-indulgent wallow in self-pity and score-settling that constitutes Netflix’s Harry and Meghan, a single thought dominates: we’ve been had. After all the months of hype and expectation, building up to a frenzy over the past few weeks – with every trailer for the show
Every producer knew that his work would always be peerless
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The first part of the Harry and Meghan show on Netflix was something of a let down. Over three tedious hours, there was a lot of sentiment and half-veiled digs at the Royal Family, as well as some philosophising about racism and Brexit, but millions of viewers got to the end of the third hour
Filmmaking has not been kind to those who have made their names through the three-or-four-minute song
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The opening scenes of the eagerly anticipated – or keenly dreaded – Netflix series Harry & Meghan set out the couple’s stall. ‘This is a first-hand account of Harry & Meghan’s story, and told with never before seen personal archive… all interviews were completed by August 2022.’ This hint – that nothing was affected by
She remained witty and wise about the industry that had rewarded her and then all but ditched her
