I wish everyone would read this - not just quote from it.

Spare - My review (also on Amazon and GoodReads)

I wish people would read it all, with an open mind, rather than merely the sensationalised sound bites and misinterpretations. Unfortunately we live in an era when people are conditioned to want and believe the sound bites and the skewed interpretations of them, the more sensational the better.

Harry, the supposed ‘thicko’, has shown himself in recent years to be an articulate, thoughtful man. It is the same with this book. OK, this is ghost-written, but it’s still done from his own account, put together using his own thoughts and words.

He tells it like it is, as he sees it and has experienced it. That’s as close to honesty as any of us can get. (I recently wrote a memoir of my own, so I appreciate the difficulties.) Having lately read ‘Courtiers’ by Valentine Low (an author who is said to hold no great brief for Harry and Meghan) I can readily believe the many machinations that go on behind the scenes by staffers and bureaucrats from various royal households scheming to sway the press favourably towards their own principals, even at the cost of blatant untruths. Harry hasn't told the half of it!

Even so, I was shocked to learn how many of the things I’ve read over the years have been outright lies - even things not especially nasty, but nevertheless completely made up so as to have and sell a story.

By now - indeed, from early on - Harry and Meghan can’t win; for most of the press and social media, whatever they do or say, it’s wrong. That’s already the case with this book too. The outrage is already being confected. The book is selling well - but an even larger public, I think, is put off reading it at all because of what they have already been fed about this couple, and/or because of believing the spin put on the bits taken out of context. To be fair, the book does include allegations which appear to be justly deserved, and which have only been made now as a very last resort.

It may be true, as some people are saying, that it was naive of him to write it. But keeping silent over the years didn’t do any good either. I understand his wish to get his truth out there: his own knowledge, feelings and recollections. I even applaud him for it.

I only hope that, whatever people’s reactions, this couple may be able to find both the peace they crave for themselves and their children, and the work they want to do. In fact, they seem to be making some headway in both respects, despite serious challenges, since their move away from Britain. I think the troubles that befell them since their relationship began are no fault of their own, and they have earned the right to thrive.

Note: I listened to it as an audio book (read by Harry) simultaneously with reading the ebook.

Meghan and Harry: The Real Story by Lady Colin Campbell – Review

 

Meghan and Harry: The Real Story by Lady Colin Campbell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Her Ladyship builds a case that Meghan is a controlling, manipulative fake and Harry a besotted idiot – all the while declaring at frequent intervals how much sympathy she has for them and how she hopes to see them do well.

In some ways she is quite convincing, partly because she moves in aristocratic circles in which she has access to both facts and gossip that most of us don't. However she is fond of extremely spurious methods of argument, saying things like, 'Some people might think that ...', 'It's possible to interpret this as ...' and so on – and then, later in the book, using these speculative incidents as if they were proven fact, as the basis for saying things like, 'This is yet another example of [some piece of reprehensible behaviour or bad intentions]' or, 'As we have seen, [X] is typical.' (I'm paraphrasing from memory, not quoting exactly.)

She defends the tabloids against accusations of bias, and the British against a racist attitude to Meghan. Sorry – I became very interested in Meghan when her romance with Harry first went public, so I did a lot of research online and read everything that came up about her. In the tabloids, the poor woman couldn't take a trick. Whatever she did, it was wrong.

For instance, I bought the issue of Vogue she edited. (It wasn't distributed to Australia, but I was able to order it.) It seemed a very interesting thing for a new member of royalty to do, so I was curious. That's when I first realised that, whatever else Meghan is, she is essentially a writer – which has now been proved several times over, with other things she has authored. I might add, I consider her a very good writer.

I liked and respected what she had to say there, and other aspects of her editing of that issue. She was soon questioned as to why her own face was not included on the cover, among 'women of influence'. When she said she thought that would seem boastful, this was immediately touted in the tabloids as insulting to both Princess Diana and the Duchess of Cambridge, who had been featured on Vogue covers. Could nobody see the obvious – that there's a vast difference between being invited to appear on a cover and putting oneself on the cover of an issue which one has oneself edited? Of course she would have been criticised for being boastful, had she done so!

I could cite many other instances of tabloid prejudice, distortion of facts and outright lying. Suffice to say that Lady CC's defence of the tabloids doesn't really hold water.

There's also the telling point that Prince Harry's two previous most serious relationships, with Chelsey Davy and Cressida Bonas, broke up (we are told) because neither young woman would continue facing the intense media scrutiny.

I certainly discerned racial undertones in much of the tabloid coverage, as well as snobbishness on the basis of class – a snobbishness which Lady CC's book is also full of. Half the time she doesn't even seem to realise she has this attitude, but it's very apparent. Perhaps someone of her background takes it all for granted. I of course, as an Australian, am one of those colonials whom she gently disparages as not really understanding British manners and mores.

Oddly enough, that very point is one of the strengths of this book. She has spent considerable time in America too, and is able to explain clearly the great differences in British and American customs and attitudes – which account in large part for the very different ways in which Meghan and Harry are perceived on different sides of the Atlantic, and also for ways in which Meghan upset and offended people in her new country without having any notion that that's what she was doing – and without such people realising she wasn't intentionally being rude and thoughtless.

I'm grateful to this author for clarifying that for me, and doing so in some detail. Otherwise I would never have guessed at some of the finer points of British (and particularly aristocratic) sensibility. It's a fascinating look at these social distinctions. Nevertheless I'm disappointed that she only pretends to be giving a fair, balanced and sympathetic point of view whilst really doing a nice little hatchet job. If I ever read Lady Colin Campbell again, I'm afraid it will now be with a fair degree of cyncism.

However, credit where it's due. It's one big mark in the book's (publisher's) favour that typos and other copy-editing mistakes are almost absent.

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A Republican Like Me Sticking Up For Royalty???

Not into fashion as the latest ‘look’, I like to create my own style (on limited budget). And I’m ideologically opposed to hereditary monarchy / aristocracy. But I admire the way some contemporary royals conduct themselves, and I’m interested in the Sussexes. 

What a lot of nasty press they get! One headline says they’re about to divorce, another that they are adopting 4 girls. All nonsense. 

They’re criticised for spending public money on their home, despite official advice the building was overdue for repair and public money only went to those aspects that make it national property. Personal touches were at their own expense. 

They’re criticised for not letting their new baby get flashlights in his eyes. A mark of good parenting, I think. 

They’re criticised for excessive security and privacy during and immediately after Meghan’s pregnancy. Does no-one recall what happened to Harry’s mother when he was only 11, and his revelations about the lasting trauma that has been? And here’s his wife getting racist and/or snobbish hate mail. Of course he’s exceedingly protective. 

She’s criticised for saying it would have seemed boastful to include her own face on the cover of her guest-edited issue of Vogue. A slur, ‘they’ say, on Princess Diana and Duchess Kate, who did covers. Very different circumstances, being invited to be photographed for a cover and, as editor, putting oneself forward. (She’d have been criticised either way.) 

I’m not a Vogue reader, obviously, but I got the local newsagent to order this issue for me. Skipping past the necessary ads which keep the magazine afloat, and failing to covet the startling clothes, I find articles, serious and entertaining at the same time, about ways in which women can be empowered and empowering. 

I also know that while Meghan, who has long been in the public eye, is interested in both fashion and style, she is passionate about ‘sustainable fashion’ and is supportive of businesses which take that initiative. 

I’m glad I bought this issue, which will give me lots of good reading yet.