Steerpike Steerpike

Five times Harry invaded other people’s privacy

(Photo: Getty)

‘It never needed to be this way,’ sighs Prince Harry in the trailer for his forthcoming ITV interview: ‘the leaking and the planting… I want a family not an institution.’ The Duke has long-despised the meddling machinations of Fleet Street’s finest, telling Andrew Marr in 2016 that:

Everyone has a right to privacy. Sadly that line between public and private life is almost non-existent any more. We will continue to do our best to ensure that there is the line… Everyone has a right to their privacy, and a lot of the members of the public get it, but sadly in some areas there is this incessant need to find out every little bit of detail about what goes on behind the scenes. It’s unnecessary.

Now with the release of his long-awaited memoir, we can see the cause of his frustration. How dare the press leak, intrude and breach privacy – don’t they know that’s Harry’s job? The book’s launch proves that the royal recluse has learned a thing or two about the media’s tastes from three decades in the public eye, detailing everything from Jilly Cooper-esque romps in Windsor fields to Stallone-style killing sprees from Apache helicopters.

Indeed, the head of the press watchdog has already warned that Harry will find it harder in the future to defend his own right to privacy after revealing so much in his book. Lord Faulks KC, chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, told the BBC yesterday that it ‘most people don’t want anybody to know anything about their private life, but if they are prepared to discuss it then it is not unreasonable for the press to write about it.’ So much for finding freedom.

Below then are five examples of Prince Harry breaking confidences, breaching privacy and blurring that infamous line between public and private life – a distinction that he was once so keen to maintain…

King Charles

Unlike those devious denizens of Fleet Street, Harry seems to prefer breaching the privacy of those he actually knows, rather than just complete strangers.

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