The Harry show – the bestselling memoir, the Netflix documentary, the rounds of television interviews – isn’t over. In fact, it’s only just begun: the prince’s legal claims against Britain’s biggest media groups are headed to court this summer
Why this story?
For Prince Harry, the press is to blame for most of the major upheavals and upsets in his life. The pages of his memoir Spare are filled with a visceral hatred of paparazzi, newspaper editors, tabloid reporters and proprietors. But that’s not the story of family drama that we read in the newspapers when the book was published – because the people framing his story are the objects of it.
The real story is in the documents Prince Harry has submitted to the English High Court: privacy claims against the three biggest media groups in the UK. Read these and you realise his argument with his family is just a sideshow: the main event is his case against Fleet Street. He has called it his “life’s work”. And, starting this summer, it may go to court.
How we got here
By digging into Prince Harry’s court filings, we have tried to understand his story. A single one of the cases he’s filed might not tell us the whole of that tale. But if we took them in the round? What’s the ultimate aim of his legal claims? Is it really about press reform or, simply, revenge?
Past reporting
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Harry’s sad kingdom of the self-righteous
The prince who had so much to offer has succumbed to the hypermodern cult of unsullied rectitude and victimhood. His compulsive oversharing helps nobody, least of all himself
Philip Collins: Flashbulbs, blood feuds and fairy tales
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Harry, Diana and me
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William or Harry?
Who’s winning, and does it matter?
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On reflection: Oprah, Harry and Meghan
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Is Prince Harry winning?
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The rule of King Charles
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Source of trouble
The use of anonymous sources in the reporting around Harry and Meghan’s departure raises troubling questions about the royal family – and the press