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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Stephen Bates

After losing to the Mail, Prince Harry seems doomed to a sad life in California. And he did it to himself

The Duke of Sussex leaves Chatham House, London, 7 July.
The Duke of Sussex leaves Chatham House, London, 7 July. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

It really hasn’t been a very good week for Harry. The fifth in line to the throne will retire to Montecito, his gated California fastness – not, as seemed at least possible a week ago, having visited his mother country to public sympathy and applause, mending a few broken fences and seeing his old dad again. Now instead it will be a retreat in confusion, not having stayed in a palace, or seeing his busy pater, and worst of all, bested at huge cost by the Daily Mail, the bete noire of all bete noires.

The prince might reflect that he has brought many of his troubles on himself. He will leave with the rightwing press chortling that, for a crusader for personal privacy, he has outed himself much more comprehensively than they ever managed with his rancorous TV interviews about how horrible his family has been to him, his glutinous Netflix series and, most of all, his memoir Spare, with its revelation, among much else, about his frostbitten penis.

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