Good morning. For most of us, our youthful indiscretions – taking drugs, being spanked in a field behind a pub by an older woman who loved horses, killing 25 members of the Taliban from a helicopter, genital frostbite – tend to stay under wraps. Prince Harry has chosen a different path. At the same time as laying his own life bare, he has made extraordinary allegations about the behaviour of his family. But he says that he still hopes they can reconcile.
After gobsmacking details from his forthcoming autobiography, Spare, leaked last week, the broadcast of two interviews in the UK and US last night offered the why: new layers of revelation, justification, trauma, and beard controversy. First Edition stayed up so you didn’t have to. First, here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Brazil | Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brasília after hardcore supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court. The stunning security breach was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.
NHS | Rishi Sunak has opened the door to a pay deal for striking nurses in talks on Monday, after signalling for the first time a willingness to address demands for more help with the cost of living. The Guardian understands ministers are prepared to look at a “one-off” payment to health workers.
Plastics | Single-use items such as plastic cutlery, plates and trays are to be banned in England in a bid to reduce pollution, the government has confirmed. Figures suggest that every year England uses about 1.1bn single-use plates and 4.25bn pieces of such cutlery, only 10% of which are recycled after use.
Ukraine | Russia and Belarus have expanded their joint military training exercises in Belarus, the country’s defence TV channel said on Sunday, as concern grows that Moscow is pressuring its closest ally to join the war in Ukraine.
Politics | A study has found that Tory MPs have received more than £15.2m from second jobs since 2019. Former prime minister, Theresa May, was the biggest recipient, taking home £2.5m on top of her parliamentary salary.
In depth: ‘Family members have decided to get into bed with the devil’
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Why he wrote the book
Prince Harry framed the decision to write an autobiography as a last resort, driven by the failure of the royal family to hear his concerns, in particular over alleged briefings to the tabloid press. And he suggested that it was a reclamation of his life story.
“38 years of having my story told by so many different people with an intentional spin and distortion – it felt like a good time to own my story,” he told ITV’s Tom Bradby. “I have … [been] doing everything that I can privately to get through to my family. And the thing that is the saddest about this, Tom, is it never needed to be this way. It never needed to get to this point.”
He told CBS’s Anderson Cooper that “none of anything that I’ve written … is ever intended to hurt my family” but it should squash “this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers”. And he said on ITV that criticism of his decision to write the book were misplaced: “I’m not sure how honesty is burning bridges. Silence only allows the abuser to abuse.”
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The death of Diana
The gut-wrenching discussion of the trauma of his mother’s death, and its very long aftermath, started with a passage from the book: his father sitting on his bed, putting his hand on his knee, and calling him “darling boy” as he broke the news. Harry told Bradby that he had very few memories from before that day: “I lost a lot of memories on the other side of this mental wall, which I think is so relatable for so many people who’ve experienced loss … that inability to be able to drag the memories back over.”
He told CBS that he didn’t believe Diana was dead “for a long time”, and talked about his continued belief that the role of the paparazzi in causing the accident has not been fully acknowledged. “Everybody got away with it,” he said.
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His relationship with Charles and William
“I love my father. I love my brother. I love my family,” Harry told ITV. “I always do.” Nonetheless, his criticisms of their handling of the rift in the family were stringent. “Going back to the relationship between certain members of the family and the tabloid press, those certain members have decided to get into bed with the devil, to rehabilitate their image,” he said.
It was hard not to link those lines to other allegations that, for example, there had been a refusal to correct claims that Meghan had made Kate cry ahead of Meghan and Harry’s wedding when “they were more than happy to put out statements for less volatile things”.
Harry also said on CBS that when the Queen was dying, he had not been invited on a private flight taking other family members to her bedside at Balmoral. By the time he arrived separately, she was dead.
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His controversial beard
Easily the weirdest feature of the ITV interview was an in-depth discussion of the politics surrounding his wish to keep his beard for his wedding to Meghan (above) – either telling evidence of the monarchy’s obsessive desire to control even the smallest details of his life, or of a disproportionate grudge over a deeply trivial matter, depending on your sympathies.
He prevailed in the end. “Writing this, I remembered that William had a beard himself, and granny [the Queen] and other people were the ones to tell him that you have to shave it off,” he said. The difference in his case, he said, was that his beard was representative of “the new Harry – almost like a shield to my anxiety … and I think William found it hard.” He added: “Hopefully those beard people out there will go, yeah no, I fully get that.”
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Therapy
Therapy’s influence on Harry’s thinking came through again and again. When reflecting on his claims of being physically attacked by his brother, he told ITV: “I can pretty much guarantee today that if I wasn’t doing therapy sessions … I would have fought back 100%. But I didn’t, because I was in a more comfortable place with my own anger.”
In another apparent reference to the value of a process he started seven years ago, he said: “I have put in a lot of work and effort into resolving my own trauma from many, many years ago, and I will continue to work on that. And I think other people within my family could do with that support as well.” He said on CBS that the therapeutic use of psychedelics had helped “clear the windscreen … the misery of loss”. He told Bradby, “I’m very happy, I’m very at peace. I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been … I’m in such a good headspace now.”
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The press and royal briefings
Harry cast his ongoing legal battles with parts of the press over alleged phone hacking and other invasions of his privacy as a patriotic crusade. “If I can’t continue to serve my country while based in the UK … then I will continue to serve my country from abroad,” he said. “Changing the media … [that’s how] I am going to try to make a difference.”
He came back repeatedly to the idea that his family and the press have a toxic, and symbiotic, relationship. “My family have tried to control it for years, and they still try to control it … But it’s something they don’t want to change because it benefits them.” He told ITV: “What people are starting to understand now is that a royal source is not an unknown person. It is the palace specifically briefing the press, but covering their tracks by being unnamed.”
Later on CBS, Harry spoke of Buckingham Palace’s failure to condemn a column by Jeremy Clarkson in the Sun about Meghan, in which Clarkson said he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain”: “There comes a point where silence is betrayal,” he said.
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Reconciliation
Despite his book’s many incendiary revelations and allegations, Harry insisted that his primary goal was reconciliation with his family. “I want reconciliation,” he told Bradby. “But first, there needs to be some accountability.” He told CBS, he was “trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand”.
He said he “100%” believed reconciliation was still possible, but that “they feel as though it’s better to keep us somehow as the villains”. Such an outcome could have a remarkable impact, he said: “I genuinely believe, and I hope, that reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect across the entire world.”
What else we’ve been reading
In Saturday magazine, Simon Hattenstone’s interview with anti-poverty campaigner and food writer Jack Monroe (above) is a riveting account of a very complicated life. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way,” she says, “and I’m trying to put that right.” Archie
Evening classes give many people the chance to pursue passions and hobbies without any pressure. Michael Segalov talks to six people who have taken up a course in their spare time about how it changed their life. Nimo
Pretty hard to resist a piece which includes the line “Everything you think you know about truffles is a lie”, and this feature on Taste Atlas is fascinating about why the truffle industry is in large parts a scam. Archie
Whether it’s the baby fat in your cheeks or the tilt of your eyebrow, young people are suffering more than ever with body image issues. Why? “I don’t think tackling our self-loathing is a matter for individual resilience or self-belief. It’s essentially a function of capitalism”, writes Zoe Williams. “Anything innate to humans that you can make into a problem will create a market for the solution”. Nimo
On his Substack, Hanif Kureshi describes an accident that has left him unable to move his arms or legs with a dreamlike sort of calm that renders the events as surreal as they are dreadful, and serves as a reminder of his gifts. Archie
Sport
FA Cup | Stevenage (above) secured a stunning 2-1 FA Cup upset against Aston Villa with two late goals to win a place in the fifth round. Meanwhile, Manchester City routed Chelsea 4-0 and Leeds broke the hearts of championship side Cardiff by fighting back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 and force a replay.
Snooker | Shaun Murphy held off a spirited fightback from Neil Robertson to dump the defending champion out of the Masters in the first round. Murphy will play either Kyren Wilson or Stuart Bingham in the quarter-finals.
Tennis | Novak Djokovic saved a championship point and beat American Sebastian Korda, winning the Adelaide International title. The victory secured Djokovic his 92nd tour-level trophy of his career.
The front pages
The Guardian headlines “PM looks at one-off cash offer to end nurses’ strike”. The Mirror reports that there are hopes for a settlement in the nurses dispute as ministers meet unions, while revealing a “Quarter of adults go to A&E as they can’t get GP appointment”. The Mirror leads with “One rule for the Rishi”, saying the prime minister has been told to “come clean” on whether he has a private GP.
The Times looks at Prince Harry’s interview with ITV, saying: “Royals were complicit in Meghan’s pain, says duke”. The Mail has a similar line with, “Harry: My family helped drive out Meghan”. The Telegraph leads with “William and Kate stereotyped Meghan, claims Prince Harry”, while the Sun says “Harry’s bizarre TV claim: We never called Royals racist”.
Finally the Financial Times looks ahead to a key security summit this week, reporting “US bolsters military ties with Japan to counter Pacific threat from China”.
Today in Focus
Mouldy flats and bidding wars: how did the UK rental crisis get so bad?
Ygerne’s housemate was on the toilet when the roof collapsed. Months after they had complained to their letting agent that the ceiling was leaking, the room filled with damp plasterboard and debris. How did the rental crisis in the UK get so bad? Hannah Moore speaks to reporter Elle Hunt and the communications director of the rental website SpareRoom, Matt Hutchinson, about how we got here and what the government needs to do to fix it.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Until recently, parents with babies who had spina bifida – a condition that means the spine does not close fully during development, leaving the spinal cord exposed – had to wait until the baby was born for corrective surgery. Research has shown, however, that waiting that long could exacerbate nerve damage – and now, parents have the option of choosing to operate during the second trimester via a groundbreaking new surgery that is transforming outcomes for infants. Emily Ellis and her husband Simon were given a spina bifida diagnosis during their 20-week scan and decided to go through with the surgery 27 weeks into her pregnancy. The procedure is not a cure for the condition but could be the difference between her child being able to walk or not.
Ellis’s baby Austin can now breathe by himself and is kicking his legs – a crucial early sign of mobility. “He’s here and he’s safe and we’re just taking every day as it comes,” Ellis says.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
