Prince Harry's memoir 'Spare' ghostwriter defends factual errors in book

Even as Prince Harry’s explosive tell-all book, Spare, is flying off the shelves, the ghostwriter J R Moehringer seems to be going all out to stem criticism about factual errors and inconsistencies in the much-anticipated royal memoir, through a series of tweets.

Critics are ostensibly latching on to a litany of fact-checking errors, inconsistencies about Harry’s family tree and anachronisms in the 400-plus page book, said reports in international newspapers. Spare, which primarily targets his brother Prince William, who is the heir to the throne and whose position in the royal line of succession makes Harry the “spare” to the heir, has sold more than 1.43 million copies in all formats (print, electronic and audiobook) in the United States, Canada and Britain. The number of copies sold was given in a statement issued by its publisher Penguin Random House.

In this backdrop, Pultizer prize winning journalist J R  Moehringer — who reportedly met Harry through Hollywood star George Clooney — and whose own memoir Tender Bar was made into a movie with Ben Affleck, hit back on the nit-picking criticisms of the factual errors in the book, by posting a series of quotes from another author.

“The line between memory and fact is blurry, between interpretation and fact. There are inadvertent mistakes of those kinds out the wazoo,” he tweeted quoting from Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir.

Also read: Prince Harry’s memoir, titled ‘Spare’, to come out on January 10

Further, he said with “intense memories,” people “often record the emotion alone, all detail blurred into unreadable smear.”

https://t.co/u6ztJtu7tL pic.twitter.com/c8TEy5DRza

— J.R. Moehringer (@JRMoehringer) January 11, 2023

The errors

Among the first fact-checking errors to be reported, said Los Angeles Times, was Harry’s claim about where he was when his great-grandmother died in March 2002. According to the prince, he was at his boarding school Eton College but instead there are photographs showing him with his father and brother on a skiing trip in Switzerland, before the 101 year old Queen Mother’s death.

The estranged Duke of Sussex also writes that his family lineage is linked to King Henry VI, who founded Eton and how he hated history because it meant he had to learn about his family. But many social media users and historians pointed out that the 15th-century monarch had only one son, Edward of Westminster, who died at age 17 in the 1471 Battle of Tewkesbury — without having any children of his own. So, here again, there was no truth in Harry’s claim of direct lineage.

Another inconsistency is around what Harry has written in Spare about flying out Markle’s father from his home in Mexico to the UK. This was just after Thomas Markle had got embroiled in a controversy staging photographs of himsel along with the paparazzi. This was just before the couple’s royal wedding.

“We told him, leave Mexico right now: A whole new level of harassment is about to rain down on you, so come to Britain. Now,” the prince wrote. “Air New Zealand, first class, booked and paid for by Meg.” However, Air New Zealand said on Wednesday (January 11) that it has “never operated flights” between Mexico and Great Britain .

In another revelation, he talks about being gifted an Xbox gaming console for his 13th birthday in 1997. However, critics have pointed out that the device was first released in the U.S. in 2001 and abroad in 2002.

There were social media users who jumped to defend him as well. “I think Harry meant PlayStation which was released in 1995, or the console before Xbox,” one person tweeted. “It’s easy to confuse the names and he was 13years at the time, that was 20+ years ago after a huge traumatic loss. His mother gave him a gaming console. Y’all nitpick every single detail.”

Also read: Prince Harry says explosive book is a bid to own my story

Moehringer defends himself

Moehringer also tweeted a quote from the book responding to this allegation: “It was an Xbox, I was pleased. I loved video games, that’s the story, anyway. It’s appeared in many accounts of my life, as gospel, I have no idea if it is true. Pa said Mummy hurt her head, but perhaps I was the one with brain damage? As a defence mechanism, most likely, my memory was no longer recording things quite as it once did.”

https://t.co/diuQdJRn1j pic.twitter.com/HkLnT8OZy8

— J.R. Moehringer (@JRMoehringer) January 11, 2023

One user told Moehringer, …”How on earth you managed such eloquent work under the strain of extraordinary amnesiac warblings is beyond belief!”

While another said that they give it about a month before Harry and Meghan try to toss @JRMoehringer under the bus and claim that the utter destruction of Harry’s reputation due to #Spare is the ghostwriter’s fault. “Hope he had a really strong non-disparagement clause,” another tweeted.

Unlike Moehringer, Penguin Random House and the prince have not yet made any public comments on the inaccuracies. However, royal biographer and historian Hugo Vickers said the errors were “quite serious” and only further “discredit” the exiled royal’s explosive allegations.

He told The Times of London that he was “horrified” by the amount of mistakes that have been found, both historical and also in relation to things he did. And pointed out that if Prince Harry can get those sorts of things wrong, what else can he get wrong, you ask yourself.

There are sympathetic voices raised in favour of Prince Harry as well. As one Twitter user wrote about Spare: “It’s heartbreaking and funny and introspective, I’ve had to take several breaks to digest what I’ve read. And the haters won’t admit this but it is full of love for his family, even as he criticises their actions”.