The ghostwriter for Prince Harry reveals his experience working with him

As they collaborated on his book, Prince Harry’s ghost writer revealed that they frequently argued and that, at one point, he worried they were “hurtling towards some kind of decisive rupture.” Spare

During a Zoom conversation, J. R. Moehringer and the Duke of Sussex had a debate about a passage in the royal’s biography, which he detailed in an essay for The New Yorker.

The power relationship between a ghost writer and a celebrity topic is fascinatingly shown in the author’s account.

And it provides stunning insight into the duke’s “intellectual capabilities,” a quality of Harry’s personality that Moehringer claimed “people had always belittled.”

The two were examining Harry’s experience of being the victim of a simulated kidnapping while he was undergoing military training, in which his pretend captors used the passing of his mother, Princess Diana, to test his mental fortitude. The event had already gone through several rounds of editing.

Moehringer stated in The New Yorker, “Clawing that particular wound,” “It’s forbidden to talk about Harry’s deceased mother. One of the participants offers his or her regrets once the simulation is finished.

“Harry always intended to end this scene with a statement he made to his captors, a retort that I thought was needless and slightly inane.”

It’s admirable that Harry had the guts to do it, but concluding with what he said would take away from the scene’s main point—that his underlying tragedy interferes with even the most absurd and incidental parts of his existence.

When the two first chatted, Moehringer recalls that he had just lost his own mother, a common sorrow that helped them bond.

In addition, he sheds light on Harry’s motivations for producing the book, which were to confront the media for what he believed to be its inaccurate portrayal of the prince: “Just as Borges imagined of unlimited libraries, Harry dreams of endless retractions, resulting in no end to disclosures.”

He was aware that initially some people would be horrified. One could ask why Harry would bring that up. But he had confidence that they would soon realise it because someone else had discussed it and had predicted it incorrectly.