When Prince Harry releases his memoir Spare this week, he won’t be the first royal to offer up personal history for public consumption. As far back as the 19th century, Harry’s forebears have shared carefully curated dispatches from behind palace doors – prompting varying degrees of controversy as they did so.
It began with Queen Victoria, who published innocuous, calculatedly relatable insights into life as a royal widow in 1868’s Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands. Hardly bombshell stuff, but the follow-up book raised eyebrows for being dedicated to servant John Brown, hailed by the Queen as “my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend”. For Victoria’s subjects, this was pretty spicy – her eldest son, the future Edward VII, called the book’s publication “insanity”.
