Prince Harry Ghostwriter's Poorly Timed Swipe at Royals

Kate Middleton encouraged young people to open up about their mental health days after Prince Harry's ghostwriter said the duke's "family actively discourages talking."

The Princess of Wales has backed the "Let's Talk About Anxiety" project, run by charity Anna Freud, during the latest in a long line of initiatives by the royals aimed at promoting discussion about emotions.

She wrote on Twitter: "Anna Freud does incredible work supporting children, young people and families with their mental wellbeing. Their new 'Let's Talk About Anxiety' toolkit raises awareness and provides even more access to invaluable coping strategies for managing anxiety.

"It was lovely to meet with the students who co-created this toolkit, hearing more about what we can all do to look after ourselves this #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and beyond."

The event, part of Mental Health Awareness Week, will have been in the diary for months but the timing is awkward for J.R. Moehringer, Harry's ghostwriter, who 10 days earlier gave a very different appraisal of the royals.

In an essay for The New Yorker, he wrote: "That imperious Windsor motto, 'Never complain, never explain,' is really just a prettified omertà, which my wife suggests might have prolonged Harry's grief.

"His family actively discourages talking, a stoicism for which they're widely lauded, but if you don't speak your emotions you serve them, and if you don't tell your story you lose it—or, what might be worse, you get lost inside it.

"Telling is how we cement details, preserve continuity, stay sane. We say ourselves into being every day, or else."

Moehringer is, of course, free to oppose the "never complain, never explain" motto but his blanket statement about not talking fails to acknowledge a number of high-profile public campaigns involving Prince William and Kate, and the fact Spare itself shows it was William who first encouraged Harry to seek professional help.

Newsweek reached out to the Sussexes and Moehringer's publisher by email.

Prince William, Kate and Harry launched mental health campaign "Heads Together" in 2016. At a launch event, William said: "We have seen that unresolved mental health problems lie at the heart of some of our greatest social challenges.

"Let's all get together and change the conversation from one of silence and shame to one of optimism and support."

Quoted by ABC, Kate added: "People feel afraid to admit they are struggling with their mental health. This fear of judgment stops people from getting the help they need, which can destroy families and end lives."

The following year, Prince Harry talked in detail about the trauma of his mother's death publicly for the first time in a series of media interviews and with the support of his brother and sister-in-law.

In an interview with charity magazine CALMzine, William said: "There may be a time and a place for the 'stiff upper lip' but not at the expense of your health."

"Catherine and I are clear we want both [son] George and [daughter] Charlotte to grow up feeling able to talk about their emotions and feelings," he continued.

"Over the past year we have visited a number of schools together where we have been amazed listening to children talk about some quite difficult subjects in a clear and emotionally articulate way, something most adults would struggle with.

"Seeing this has really given me hope things are changing and there is a generation coming up who find it normal to talk openly about emotions."

In 2020, William made a BBC documentary, Football, Prince William And Our Mental Health, about the struggle men have to talk to men about their mental health.

And in 2022 he visited James' Place, a London center offering free support for men experiencing suicidal thoughts.

The prince said: "I'm always touched and incredibly moved by my visits to places like this, knowing that there's something here for guys to come to."

"I think the one takeaway thing for me today, in particular," he continued, "is that there is always a solution."

Moehringer would certainly be correct to observe that the royals have sometimes been characterized as emotionally distant.

King Charles III, in 1994, co-operated with journalist Jonathan Dimbleby on his book The Prince of Wales: A Biography which suggested Prince Philip reduced him to tears with "banter" while the only place he was guaranteed a hug was the nursery, with his nanny.

However, the blunt, un-caveated statement that Prince Harry's "family actively discourages talking" takes no account of seven years of campaigning by William and Kate to do precisely the opposite.

What makes it particularly hard to understand is that Spare shows William actively trying to talk to Harry about the death of their mother, Princess Diana, when they were teenagers and Harry being unable to do so, for understandable reason related to his trauma.

"Willy sometimes tried to talk about Mummy," the book reads. "I wasn't willing. Whenever he went there...I changed the subject.

"He'd get frustrated. And I wouldn't acknowledge his frustration. More likely, I couldn't even recognize it.

"Being so obtuse, so emotionally unavailable, wasn't a choice I made. I simply wasn't capable. I wasn't close to ready."

And years later William urged Harry to see a therapist, prompting the duke to seek professional help for the first time, though it did not work out on that occasion. He had more luck with a different therapist after Meghan encouraged him to try again.

"I've tried therapy, I told her," Spare reads. "Willy told me to go. Never found the right person. Didn't work."

And the swipe came in an essay where Moehringer takes issue with journalists fact- checking Spare.

He wrote: "Within days, the amorphous campaign against Spare seemed to narrow to a single point of attack: that Harry's memoir, rigorously fact-checked, was rife with errors.

"I can't think of anything that rankles quite like being called sloppy by people who routinely trample facts in pursuit of their royal prey, and this now happened every few minutes to Harry and, by extension, to me."

Sloppiness is one thing, but fairness is a principle Harry has asked for from the media many times. If he deserves fairness, then some may think his family deserve it too.

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.