A minute before 11.30am on Wednesday, the rescheduled start time for the latest episode of his battle against sections of the British press, Prince Harry slipped into the rear of court 76 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, flanked by his security detail. Then he took a seat at the back, armed with a bottle of water and a grievance built over decades.
He has been here before, of course. This is the third major newspaper publisher that the Duke of Sussex has pursued at this court over alleged illegal information gathering, but the prince seemed especially eager to have his say against Associated Newspapers, the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
A brief false alarm over the arrival in court of Mr Justice Nicklin saw the assembled lawyers, journalists and members of the public briefly bob to their feet and back down again, amid giggles. Harry alone stayed on his feet, standing silently above the rows of lawyers for several minutes, until the judge finally made his entrance.
It is a year almost to the day since News Group Newspapers (NGN), publishers of the Sun, gave the prince “a full and unequivocal apology” and £10m to settle Harry’s case against them for phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information. A year earlier, he had won substantial damages against Mirror Group Newspapers over phone hacking at the Daily Mirror.
But the long journey to court over the current case, which Harry is bringing alongside a group of other plaintiffs, including Sir Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered teenager Stephen, has been altogether punchier. Associated vehemently rejects the prince’s claim that its journalists routinely used illegal methods to report on him between 2001, when he was 16, and 2013, and neither party has yet shown any appetite for compromise.
It was, then, an emotional and prickly prince who took the stand, swatting back testily as he was cross examined by Antony White KC, acting for the newspapers. No, he was not “a friend” of the Daily Mail journalist Katie Nicholl, author of a number of the 14 articles Harry has referenced in his case, as the barrister had asked him. “She was not part of my social circle. Yes at times she turned up at certain social events, but everybody knew who she was and what her capabilities were.”
No, he had not used a Facebook profile under the name “Mr Mischief” to contact a Mail on Sunday journalist. “I have never used the name Mr Mischief.” No, Harry had not met another Mail Group journalist at a house party in Ibiza in 2011. “I don’t think that can be right. I don’t believe I have ever been to Ibiza other than with my now wife.”
More than once, the prince turned to the judge to add “context” on what he had described in his witness statement as “an endless pursuit, a campaign, an obsession of having every aspect of my life under surveillance” so the papers “could get the run on their competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me and probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their papers”.
More than once, too, the judge interrupted the prince’s tetchy responses to the barrister to point out that, in challenging aspects of his evidence, the lawyer was only doing his job. “You don’t have to bear the burden of arguing the case today,” the judge said. “Your role is simply to answer the questions as best you can.”
It was just because he had had “a bad experience with Mr Green”, Harry told the court, referring to Andrew Green KC, who had grilled him on the stand while acting for MGN in the earlier case. “I am intent on you not having a bad experience with me,” said White, “but it is my job to ask you these questions.” Where Harry now believes some of the stories about his social and dating life in his teens and 20s can only have been gathered illegally, the newspapers’ defence is that their reporters gleaned stories and confirmation by befriending his outer social circle and from other tips and anonymous sources.
“My social circles were not leaky,” said the prince. Nonetheless, taken as a whole – the nightclub visits where reporters circulated among his friends, the doubts raised over friends who had known details of his life that later emerged in print, the relationships with women that swiftly foundered as their details were published – it built to a miserable picture of privilege and paranoia, exposing a deep wound.
Harry left the listener in no doubt that it remained very raw. He ran through a litany of grievances: “Having my life commercialised in this way since I was a teenager, delving into every aspect of my private life, listening to my calls, blagging flights so they can find out where I was going … And having to sit here and go through this over again, and have them claim in their defence that I don’t have any right to any privacy … it’s disgusting.”
And how did he feel now “about what Associated did to you”, the prince was asked by his own barrister, David Sherborne. “Through the course of this litigation, it’s only got worse, not better. I think it’s fundamentally wrong to have to put all of us through this again when all we required is an apology and some accountability. The worst of it, by standing up here and taking a stand against them, they continue to come after me.”
It had been an emotional day, but it was still a shock when the prince’s voice broke as he apparently fought tears. “They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery, my lord.” Nicklin swiftly released him and, red-faced and sniffing, the prince immediately left the court.
