| Trying and failing (repeatedly) to get onto the train Wi-Fi this morning, a hotspot suggestion popped up: ‘Harry’s phone’. Of course, I thought, even when I am literally detached from the Internet, Harry is not far away. I am talking about Prince Harry, of course, who – to clarify – was not the hot-spotter on the 08.09 from Woking (hometown of the nation’s most famous Pizza Express). It feels, however, that he is everywhere else right now such is the publicity bombardment surrounding his memoir, Spare. The book is only out today (officially!), but you’re no doubt already intimately acquainted with the contents – from Prince ‘Willy’ to a frostbitten one – whether you want to be or not. The Duke of Sussex’s ubiquity is not in question; you can run, but you can’t hide. It feels a bit like your neighbours music, or arguments or – heaven forbid – sex noises: I can hear it, but I am not listening. Anyway. Given Harry’s current omnipresence, one feels little choice but to form assertive opinions, both about him and the royal family. That’s not unique to this situation, but it is amplified. And those opinions tend to be polarising: it is all too easy to take sides and cast one party into the role of hero/victim and the other into perpetrator/villain. But why do we always need to make binary calls on everyone and everything? It is indicative of the slow death of nuance, I think. The reality is messier and less committed: like me, like you, like everyone really, Harry has the propensity to be both profound and petty, serious and silly, kind and mean, thoughtful and impulsive. He is both right and wrong. What the discourse around Spare seems to miss is that the even happiest, most functional family is chaotic – and that none of our private selves would look entirely good if suddenly exposed in public. We are all heroes and villains, bit parts and main parts – it just depends who’s telling the story, and who is listening to it. Laura |
