Prince Harry has revealed that he asked a chauffeur to recreate the night his mum died in hopes of ending the decade of "unrelenting pain" that followed her death.
In 2007 the Duke of Sussex asked his driver to take him through the Pont de L’Alma tunnel, where Princess Diana had sustained fatal injuries in 1997 — according to leaked passages of his upcoming book, Spare.
The then 23-year-old prince also requested that his chauffer drive at 65 miles per hour "to be precise" — the same speed that his mother's car had been driving when it crashed.
Harry, who had been in Paris attending the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup, then admitted to trying to fight his bodyguard, Billy the Rock, after drinking himself senseless to numb the pain following the incident.
Harry's memoir is set to be released in the UK on January 10 but excerpts of the highly-anticipated book have been leaked early after copies went on sale by accident in Spain.
Detailing the disturbing recreation in his new book, Harry said his bodyguard told the driver that if he ever told anyone what they had asked him to do they would "find him and there would be hell to pay".
Recalling the recreation, Harry revealed that they drove past the Ritz, where Diana had had her last meal with her boyfriend, before coming to the entrance of the tunnel.
He wrote: "We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel's entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy's Mercedes veering off course."
But he was surprised to find that they "barely felt" the lip despite previously imagining the tunnel as a "treacherous passageway" that was "inherently dangerous".
The prince revealed in his memoir that he asked the driver to go through the tunnel once more, before telling him "that's enough".
He admitted that it had been a "very bad idea" he had come up with after telling himself he wanted "closure".
He added: “I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux.”
In an excerpt of his memoir translated from Spanish, Harry goes on to detail a drunken fight with his bodyguard after the tunnel incident.
According to the excerpt, the driver had dropped Harry and Billy in a bar where the Prince began "looking for a fight".
After being kicked out he admits to shouting in Billy's face and slapping him on the head but said he "barely reacted" and that Billy and another bodyguard then took him to bed.
Harry went on recall telling William about the tunnel recreation after he woke up, claiming that he "wasn't at all surprised" as he had also driven through the tunnel.
