The Observer View on How Prince Harry’s Stream of Revelations Will Benefit No One

THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL: The desire to tell all after a lifetime of imposed secrecy is understandable, but it will not produce the catharsis he seeks

‘Encouraged and emboldened by his wife, Harry appears to have become besotted by truth-telling.’ Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images
Accounts of the psychology of the Duke of Sussex tend to focus on the trauma of following his mother’s coffin along the Mall in 1997. Less attention is paid to the effect of the lurid details of his parents’ horrific marriage that were aired so publicly when he was at prep school in London.

The scandalous leaked phone conversations between Diana and her lover James Gilbey, and Charles and Camilla, no doubt infect Harry’s earliest memories – his formative understanding of the shameless instinct of the tabloid press. The tit-for-tat TV interviews that followed, with Jonathan Dimbleby and with Martin Bashir, meanwhile, gave him profoundly troubling insights into the management and confession of family secrets and lies. » | Observer editorial | Saturday, January 7, 2023