Alexander Larman is an author and books editor of Spectator World, our US-based edition
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a TikTok sensation.’ This is not – blessedly – how Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis begins. But almost exactly a century after his death, the Bohemian writer would be astonished to find that not only had his friend and literary executor
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are hardly averse to taking matters to court. From their privacy tussles with the Mail on Sunday to the recent revelation that the taxpayer has forked out £300,000 over Prince Harry’s High Court challenge to the Home Office about his security arrangements when visiting the UK (he wanted to
As the Princess of Wales draws plaudits for appearing at last night’s BAFTA awards in a subtly reused Alexander McQueen dress, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to keep the world guessing as to whether they will appear at the Coronation in less than three months, the younger members of the Royal Family
In December 1996, audiences lining up to see a teen horror picture starring Drew Barrymore, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, got the shock of their lives. Not only was Barrymore, the best-known actor in the film, murdered in the first 15 minutes, but the opening set-piece was arguably the most shocking moment
What a pity that memoirs don’t qualify for the Bad Sex in Literature prize. If they did, the description of how Prince Harry lost his virginity in Spare would surely qualify. That sordid tale has already passed into the annals of the least sexy writing about sex imaginable, with an older woman treating the young
Those of us unlucky enough to have suffered through the six interminable hours of the Netflix Harry and Meghan series might now be regarding further updates from the less-than-dynamic duo with the same excitement that a dental patient looks forward to a round of root canal. But because the Sussexes have signed a multi-year deal
The Tomb Raider franchise seems to have been a graveyard for oddly overqualified people. Angelina Jolie played the character of Lara Croft twice after winning an Oscar, and subsequently Alicia Vikander gave the English aristocrat-turned-global adventurer a go. Neither left much of a mark – which is why it is all the more surprising that Fleabag creator and star
Most men in their seventies, if they had to attend an arduous public event, would hope that their younger son’s presence would be the last thing they had to worry about. They might assume their offspring would be on hand to attend to their ageing parent; to offer comfort and support when required, and to
As the furore about Prince Harry and Spare finally shows some signs of dying down – the book’s second week sales dropped 82 per cent, albeit with a wildly impressive 82,538 copies sold – it is time, once again, for his uncle to take centre stage. It seems as if the beleaguered and not-so-grand Duke of
The furore surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has made it easy to forget about the other younger members of the Royal Family. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, have been relatively peripheral presences on the world stage until now. Damned by association with their disgraced father, the pair have
As the furore caused by the publication of Spare may – or may not – be dying down, there are some signs that the Royal Family are beginning to take back control of the media narrative, while refusing to make any public comment on Prince Harry’s revelations. Firstly, there was the announcement that Prince Charles
At the end of the Frasier theme song, its star Kelsey Grammer always sang the words: ‘Frasier has left the building!’ And when the show finished in 2004, it felt as if Frasier, Niles, Daphne, Martin, Roz and the rest had indeed left the building. In truth, the popular programme did not end in glory. Ever since Niles
The pundits called it long ago: Avatar 2: The Way of Water was going to be a flop. They did allow that betting against the so-called ‘king of the world’ James Cameron was rash – after all, Titanic and the first Avatar film overcame almost hysterically negative buzz in order to become box office behemoths. But there were too many reasons
For all of the noise that Prince Harry has made over the past few days (weeks, months, and years) about his loathing of the British media, he knows – or has been made aware by his publishers – of the necessity of sitting down with journalists in order to promote his book. And so it
Even Prince Harry’s critics must concede that his memoir Spare has been an enormous success. The book is the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever: 400,000 copies flew off the shelves on its first day. The Duke of Sussex’s recent blitzkrieg of high-profile publicity opportunities, on both sides of the Atlantic, leaves little doubt that he
The epigraph for Spare, Prince Harry’s frenziedly awaited memoir, is from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun. It states simply ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ As a gesture of authorial intent, it’s a bold one. It suggests from the outset that this is not going to be some backwards-gazing book, but instead that it is going to be fully engaged with the
It’s fair to say that last night’s ITV interview – imaginatively entitled Harry: The Interview – between Prince Harry and his long-standing friend, the journalist Tom Bradby, has been overshadowed by the chaotic leak of Harry’s autobiography Spare. Given the sheer wealth of revelations in the book, what should have been a revelatory teaser for its publication tomorrow has now become almost anti-climatic. Nonetheless, ITV has
After a fair-to-middling 2022, it’s not unreasonable to hope that 2023 will see several stars burn brightly in the literary firmament. Whether what promises to be the most talked-about book of the year, Prince Harry’s Spare (out tomorrow with Bantam), is included in this number remains to be seen. On the plus side, the Prince has the
It was inevitable, with a book as highly anticipated as Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, that there would be a leak of its contents ahead of its release next week. Given the Duke of Sussex’s antipathy towards his family, it is fitting that the newspaper that landed this exclusive is the republican-leaning Guardian. Nonetheless, it is
A new year, a new grudge. Or, at least, a new expression of an old one, which is pretty much all that we’ve heard from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex over the past few years. Yet after the interminable six hours of score-settling that Netflix punished us with last month in the form of
