Prince Harry’s Memoir Might “Overshadow” the Queen's Jubilee

While the announcement last year that Prince Harry would write a memoir was highly buzzed about, not everyone seems excited to read his account of the family’s history. We’ve previously reported that some closed to the family viewed the fact that Harry was writing a memoir at all “disrespectful” to the Queen, but apparently now it’s the timing of the book’s publication that’s causing a stir.

According to a press release for the book from Penguin Random House, the memoir promises to be “an honest and captivating personal portrait.” In the same release, Harry himself is quoted as calling his account “accurate and wholly truthful” to his experiences growing up royal.

And while the memoir’s release date is currently slated for “late 2022,” the Express quoted at least one insider who has some misgivings about picking that year in particular. Grant Harrold was the royal butler from 2004 to 2011, and called the release date, which looks to coincide with the Queen’s much-anticipated Platinum Jubilee, “not the best timing.”

Harrold added, “I’m sure we all knew this celebration was coming up...So it does seem really strange timing and I would have thought that maybe they would have delayed it personally.”

For one thing, there’s concern that the book’s contents are going to be damaging to the royal family, or somehow hurt the Queen’s image (though no one knows yet what the book will contain). For another, Harrold said, its release threatens to “overshadow” the Queen’s celebrations:

“I'm hoping that it's going to be a nice memoir, but if it's not, one of the biggest problems is that it could overshadow it, because, even if you don't read it and a lot of people say they won't read it, there will be a lot of people who will read it...It'll be covered in the press, bits pulled out...it’ll be discussed and it could potentially be all about the same time.”

Only time will tell what kind of damage the book might actually cause, if any at all. But we can’t wait to read it when it becomes available.