Officially, Buckingham Palace has maintained what it must hope is being seen as a dignified silence in the face of Prince Harry’s new memoir Spare.
However, the first signs of pushback strategy are now starting to filter out from behind palace walls, with friends of the late Queen Elizabeth II telling senior reporters at the Daily Telegraph that Harry and Meghan’s “ambushing” of the family, by making shocking revelations to the media in the final years of her life, “had an impact” on her health before she died in September last year.
The Daily Beast was told last summer that the queen was suffering from bone cancer, subsequently confirmed by an unofficial biography by her and her husband’s friend Gyles Brandreth, which the palace has not contested.
It therefore seems unimaginable that Harry and Meghan were not at the very least aware of the fragile state of his grandmother’s health as they made damaging allegations in TV and media interviews. The queen was also worried what further revelations would be made in the Prince’s book, Spare, which was originally due to be published last year, the paper said.
The Telegraph report is by royal correspondent Victoria Ward and associate editor Gordon Rayner, both highly credible and experienced reporters.
It quoted “friends of the late queen” as saying that the prospect of the book “was playing on her mind in her last months,” with one source saying: “This did have an impact on the queen’s health in her final year. It did take its toll.”
The queen went to great lengths to try and keep lines of communication with Harry open, describing him as “much-loved” in public statements, but the friend said his status as a “much-loved grandson” made the “almost weekly” attacks even worse for her.
One source, described as a “friend of the late queen” told the Telegraph: “She never wanted to deal with confrontat