Joanna Williams Joanna Williams

The myth of a ‘privacy loving’ Harry and Meghan

Is there anything we do not know about Harry and Meghan? They might have ‘stepped back’ as senior royals in order to avoid the media spotlight. They might have a habit of suing newspapers and photographers for breaching their privacy and a fondness for elaborate screens and fences around their various homes. But with the publication of Finding Freedom, there is surely no intimate detail of this apparently privacy-loving couple’s life that has not been made public.

We now know, word for word, the advice big brother William offered Harry when his relationship with Meghan first seemed to be getting serious – and, of course, we know exactly what Harry thought of this ‘snobby’ intervention. We know about their first date: ‘it was as if Harry was in a trance’; we know that Meghan performed a ‘perfect’ yoga pose after discussing marriage with Harry; that she FaceTimed a friend from her bath to discuss her father; we know the exact meal Harry ate with the Queen before their final meeting at Windsor. On and on it goes. No detail is too personal or simply too trivial to be left unshared.

Despite revealing details that presumably only people who were in the room when it happened could ever conceivably know, we are expected to believe that Carolyn Durand and Omid Scobie wrote Finding Freedom without input from the Sussexes. But Harry and Meghan’s silence speaks volumes. There are no threats of lawsuits against Durand and Scobie. We can only conclude that the Duke and Duchess very much approve.

And why shouldn’t they? In Finding Freedom our intrepid heroes bravely triumph over the snobby brother, the unfriendly sister-in-law and pompous palace officials. Their personal journey towards freedom and validation in a cruel world generates acres of sympathetic publicity.

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