logo
‘I saw them having dinners together': Royal butler Grant Harrold ‘debunks' Prince Harry's claims in Spare about Queen Camilla

‘I saw them having dinners together': Royal butler Grant Harrold ‘debunks' Prince Harry's claims in Spare about Queen Camilla

Sky News AU10 hours ago
Prince Harry's recollection of his relationship with Queen Camilla has been scrutinised by a former palace staffer who flatly denies the Duke of Sussex's version of events.
Harry's palpable animosity towards his step mother was a major theme in his best-selling memoir Spare, in which the Duke paints Camilla as hellbent on becoming Queen.
In Spare, Harry wrote that the future Queen leaked negative stories about him to the press to improve her own public image and alleged she 'sacrificed him on her personal PR alter'.
'Oddly enough I wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she was less dangerous when she was happy,' the Duke of Sussex wrote.
Camilla became stepmother to Harry and his elder brother Prince William in 2005 after marrying then-Prince Charles and becoming the Duchess of Cornwall.
But in Spare, Harry insisted he and William did not support the marriage and that they begged their father not to marry her.
'We support you, we said,' Harry recalled in Spare.
'We endorse Camilla, we said.
''Just please don't marry her. Just be together, Pa.' He didn't answer. But she answered straight away.
'Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown (with Pa's blessing, we presumed).'
Former royal butler Grant Harrold worked for Charles, William and Harry during the time period covered in Spare and claimed he saw no signs of animosity between Harry and Camilla.
'The four of them, I promise you, got on so well,' he told The Telegraph newspaper on Monday to promote his memoir The Royal Butler.
'And that's why I don't understand what Harry's said, I really don't understand. Because I saw them.
'I saw them having dinners together, I saw them having drinks together, I saw them going to parties together.'
Mr Harrold claimed that far from opposing their father's remarriage, Harry and William even decorated Charles and Camilla's wedding car.
'At the end of the festivities, Charles and Camilla were catching a flight to head straight to Birkhall (on the Balmoral estate in Scotland),' he writes in the book.
'We all went outside to wave them off and laughed as we saw William and Harry had decorated their car with 'Just Married'.
'As they drove off through the arches to cheers, the boys raced after the car.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Prince Harry leaves letter to Prince Phillip after ‘scathing' interview with Oprah Winfrey
Prince Harry leaves letter to Prince Phillip after ‘scathing' interview with Oprah Winfrey

Sky News AU

time6 hours ago

  • Sky News AU

Prince Harry leaves letter to Prince Phillip after ‘scathing' interview with Oprah Winfrey

'To Di For' podcast host Kinsey Schofield discusses the possible signs Prince Harry is moving closer to reconciling with King Charles and Prince William. It was revealed Prince Harry left a secret letter to mark Victory in the Pacific Day, while he reportedly asked a friend to place this letter at the British National Memorial Arboretum. Ms Schofield told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power Prince Harry's 'scathing' Oprah Winfrey interview has caused so much damage, as it is 'still so detrimental to the Royal Family to this day'. 'If Prince Harry's team is leaking to GB News that Prince Harry left a letter to Prince William and Prince Phillip, then I don't really consider that a secret. 'People are not going to forgive Prince Harry over a secret letter; they're not going to forgive him for the terror he caused, not only his grandfather, but his grandmother in the twilight years of their lives.'

‘Chelsy and Kate got on really well': Ex-butler Grant Harrold's brutal swipe at Meghan Markle
‘Chelsy and Kate got on really well': Ex-butler Grant Harrold's brutal swipe at Meghan Markle

Sky News AU

time6 hours ago

  • Sky News AU

‘Chelsy and Kate got on really well': Ex-butler Grant Harrold's brutal swipe at Meghan Markle

Princess Catherine and Prince Harry once shared a sibling-like bond prior to the Duke of Sussex's marriage to Meghan Markle, a former palace butler has claimed. Former palace staffer Grant Harrold served as a butler to King Charles from 2004 until 2011, and knew both Princes William and Harry as well as Catherine. In a new interview with The Telegraph, the ex-staffer revealed how the brothers and Kate were 'a little gang' with Harry often spending time with Middleton when William was away. 'They involved him. He used to go out with Kate,' he said on Monday. 'William would be away and Kate and Harry would be off doing stuff together. 'They'd go shopping together, they'd go to pubs together. (…) I think when people say 'oh he was left out', he really wasn't.' It was during this period that Harry dated Zimbabwe-born society beauty Chelsy Davy, who Mr Harrold claimed had the seal of approval from Kate as a possible sister-in-law. 'Chelsy was always around. And Chelsy and Kate got on really well,' he said. '(William and Harry) used to go around being silly with each other and winding each other up, jumping out at their dad from corners and making him laugh. 'It was just like a family.' Ms Davy and Prince Harry dated on and off for a period of about seven years between 2004 and 2011 and was at one point tipped to become the Duchess of Sussex. The romance was Prince Harry's most significant relationship before he met his now-wife Meghan Markle in 2016. Harry also dated socialite Cressida Bonas, a friend of his cousin Princess Eugenie, but the romance fizzled out the year he cross paths with the newly divorced Markle. According to aristocrat and biographer Lady Colin Campbell, Harry's previous relationships before Markle broke down because Bonas and Davy were uninterested in royal life. 'Harry had one or two really nice girlfriends,' she told Best magazine's Suddenly Single podcast in April. 'He had wonderful taste in girls, the problem is after a point when the excitement of being with a prince and the possibility of being a royal duchess has worn thin it had no appeal.' In the end, Harry wed Markle at St George's Chapel in 2018 with both his ex-girlfriends in attendance. The Sussexes would ultimately stay in the royal family less than 18 months before abandoning royal duties and starting new lives in California.

Prince Philip drops F-bomb at Harry and Meghan's wedding, according to new royal memoir
Prince Philip drops F-bomb at Harry and Meghan's wedding, according to new royal memoir

7NEWS

time9 hours ago

  • 7NEWS

Prince Philip drops F-bomb at Harry and Meghan's wedding, according to new royal memoir

A shocking new claim about Prince Philip's unfiltered reaction to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding has surfaced in a former royal aide's memoir, and it is anything but warm. Grant Harold, who previously served as a butler for King Charles when he resided at his Highgrove estate, recalls in his new book that Prince Philip did not mince his words as he left St George's Chapel in Windsor following the Sussexes' marriage in 2018. Standing alongside the Queen, the 96-year-old Duke of Edinburgh is said to have muttered a brutal four word sledge as he walked out of the service: 'Thank f*** that's over.' 'It was very funny. I think he was speaking for the majority of people, who were wondering what it was all about and when it was going to end, but he was the man who actually said it,' Harold writes in The Royal Butler. While Philip was well-known for his candid and sometimes controversial gaffes, the revelation adds to a growing list of stories suggesting Harry's grandparents were never entirely convinced by his choice of bride. Royal biographer Ingrid Seward has previously claimed that Philip privately nicknamed Markle 'D.O.W' – a pointed comparison to Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, whose romance with Edward VIII shook the monarchy in the 1930s. According to Seward, Philip grew wary of Markle's 'charm offensive' ahead of the wedding and even warned the Queen to be cautious. 'It was uncanny,' the Duke reportedly said, 'how much Meghan reminded him of the Duchess of Windsor.' While the Queen continued to show outward support for Harry and Markle, insiders suggest that Philip's suspicions endured. Seven years on, Harry and Markle are settled in Montecito, California and marking wedding anniversaries with doting Instagram tributes.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store