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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Catherine Bennett

Meghan a threat to the royals? That’s one way to sell a book of tawdry gossip

Prince Harry and  Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.
Prince Harry, complete in ‘ill-fitting suit’, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Photograph: Joe Pugliese/AP

The respected biographer, Tom Bower, has been giving some extraordinary interviews about his new study of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. His book, the calmly entitled Revenge, is not merely, we learn, a comprehensively negative assessment of the couple: Bower would like it actively to damage them. “This book may hasten a downward trend at which I wouldn’t be sad at all,” he told an enchanted Piers Morgan, “because they pose a real threat to the royal family.”

The public should not, you gather, be reassured by the Sussexes’ departure, some time back, for California. Nor deceived by their very minor role at a jubilee widely considered a triumph for the royal family. Nor taken in by the couple’s replacement occupation, now they are non-working royals, of supplying bland, homiletic content to US clients. It is not enough that every display of Sussex sanctimony is already made safe by Bower’s tireless allies in the UK media, with an answering volley from royal experts and body language professionals. Harry’s recent address to the UN was, for instance, immediately brought down with blasts of Sarah Vine and, still struggling to get over Meghan’s ghosting, Piers Morgan.

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