Alexander Larman

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 Harry and Meghan, the forthcoming publication of Prince Harry’s hugely anticipated (in some circles, anyway) memoir Spare is being promoted with two major interviews, one in Britain and one in the United States. Based on the previews that have been released, they promise to be every bit as attention-grabbing – or attention-seeking – as everything else that Harry has been involved with recently.

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 expel the not-so-grand old Duke of York from public life. Yet the speech – which was recorded on 13 December from the Quire of St George’s Chapel in Windsor, conveniently between the two instalments of the Netflix series in which Harry and Meghan did their best to humiliate the Royal Family – was far from the miserable or score-settling homily that many might have expected.

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 her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level.’ He went on to suggest that: ‘At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!” and throw lumps of excrement at her.

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 being scrutinised as if it was going to reveal some dark secret – the final judgement on this deeply unimpressive, prurient series has to be that it is nothing more than a cynical exercise in presenting a deeply partisan account of two obviously troubled and unhappy people’s lives: their truth, if you will.

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 and sighed as one: ‘Is that it?’  Expectations were not high that the second instalment, coming to Netflix this Thursday, was going to live up to the advance hype. But it appears a nasty surprise is in store, at least for the Royal Family. Much of the explosive material that has been teased to viewers for months is now, finally, going to be let out into the open. It looks every bit as dramatic as watchers of this particular saga might have wished for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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 the Queen’s death – is then compounded by the next statement. ‘Members of the Royal Family declined to comment on the content within this series.’ The promise is clear; this is going to be explosive. Well, it isn’t. Not so far, anyway. Instead, over a near-interminable first three hours, the viewer endures a mixture of the same biographical material that we’ve all seen a thousand times before.

When the incendiary story about Lady Susan Hussey’s ill-judged remarks broke this week, a detail that many were quick to spot was that Lady Hussey had been the person responsible for giving the Duchess of Sussex ‘protocol lessons’ when she first became part of the Royal Family. Defenders of Meghan Markle (who do exist, if not in any great quantity in Britain) seized upon this information. They have been trumpeting, ‘Of course, this is what that poor woman had to put up with! If people are as ignorant and rude as Lady Hussey, no wonder she accused the Royal Family and its members of racism! She called them out!