What Prince Harry book Spare tells us about King Charles III

Prince Harry has revealed some of the quirks of his father, King Charles.

The unique - and previously secret - habits of the King are a mystery no more thanks to his son’s intimate revelations, says Guy Kelly of the Daily Telegraph

It’s up to booksellers to decide where they place copies of Spare, Prince Harry’s collection of therapy notes. Biography? Could do. Fiction? Oh, you wag. Erotic thriller? That depends how sexy you found War Horse.

One place they’re unlikely to put it is in British History, given it contains passages like: “I took a hit, looked at the rinsed creamy blue of the California sky. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, said they wanted me to meet Christina Aguilera”.

But to do that would be to overlook Spare’s value as a resource for surreal titbits about the lives, loves and late-night habits of the King. Or as Harry calls him, “Pa”.

Here is what we have learned from his son.

The royal nose

In a past life Charles “must’ve been a bloodhound”, his son reckons.

“He was always sniffing things. Food, roses, our hair,” says Harry.

Maybe, Harold muses, suddenly code-switching to sound like Joan Rivers, “he took all those long sniffs because it was hard to smell anything over his personal scent. Eau Sauvage. He’d slather the stuff on his cheeks, his neck, his shirt. Flowery, with a hint of something harsh, like pepper or gunpowder, it was made in Paris.”

Charles, centre, with his sons Prince William, right, and Prince Harry in 2014. Photo / AP

Impressively arch from the voice of 12-year-old Harry, there, and restraint from the ghostwriter not to invoke the most recent “face” of the perfume, Johnny Depp, when Sauvage comes up.

Takes a teddy everywhere

Before Camilla truly joined the family, it is written, Charles had a teddy bear. I will resist probing (although note that teddies are popular with royals - Andrew collects them).

But the passage in question, about the teddy who had helped him get through Gordonstoun, is sweet. It still goes with him everywhere.

“It was a pitiful object,” observes Harry, a man who can lose his mind over a damaged necklace, “with broken arms and dangly threads, holes patched up here and there [...] Teddy expressed eloquently, better than Pa ever could, the essential loneliness of his childhood.”

He and Willy thought their father deserved better.

Charles and Camilla at their wedding blessing at Windsor Castle's St George's Chapel, on April 9, 2005. Photo / AP

“Apologies to Teddy, Pa deserved a proper companion. That was why, when asked, Willy and I promised Pa that we’d welcome Camilla into the family.”

And that makes Teddy exceptional in being the only creature who receives a sincere apology in Spare.

He likes his women like he likes his coronation...

...which is to say: stripped back, demure, with minimal obvious accoutrements.

When Meghan met her future in-laws, Harry gave her some advice.

“Her hair was down, because I suggested she wear it that way. Pa likes it when women wear their hair down. Granny too. She often commented on ‘Kate’s beautiful mane’.”

Honestly, this family and horses. Therapists must have a field day. A paddock day.

Prince Harry apparently suggested his wife Meghan wear little make-up when meeting his father.

Anyway, “Meg was wearing little make-up, which I’d also suggested,” her de facto stylist Harry continues.

“Pa didn’t approve of women who wore a lot.”

Of... make up? Or generally? The sentence ends there.

He starts the day with a headstand

The King is a creature of habit. When Harry was growing up, he’d start the day with headstands - in his boxers and in private.

If he heard someone about to come in he would go, “No! Don’t open! Please God don’t open!”

He also had a bar to hang on, “like a skilled acrobat”.

He’s forever appearing at the end of Harry’s bed

Harold must be a deep sleeper, because on several occasions in Spare, he wakes up to find the actual Prince of Wales sitting at the foot of his bed, like a Christmas stocking.

How long has he been there? All night?

King Charles III and the Queen Consort as they appeared on their 2022 Christmas card. Photo / AP

Usually he has something important to say, but in one instance, he loomed over his “darling boy” and “tickled my face until I fell asleep”.

Say what you like about Charles but any parent knows that if you want your child to drift off quietly, you relentlessly tickle their face.

He bathes with a CD player

As Willy and Harold tucked into fish fingers and cottage pie, “we heard Pa padding past in his slippers, coming from his bath”.

Charles “was carrying his ‘wireless’, which is what he called his portable CD player, on which he liked to listen to his ‘storybooks’ while soaking”.

Charles and Camilla with Prince Harry during the opening ceremony for the Invictus Games, in 2014. Photo / AP

This may have been 1997, but it is difficult to understand why the Balmoral budget couldn’t stretch to a CD player in Charles’s bathroom, to save him from hauling the thing around and risking electrocution.

The only plausible explanation is that these “storybooks” are not something he wants people to know he listens to.

Charles, there’s nothing embarrassing about The Goon Show.

He should be on Gogglebox

”He never read [the press]. He read everything else, from Shakespeare to White Papers on climate change, but never the news. (He did watch the BBC, but he’d often end up throwing the controller at the TV.)” Same, Charles.

This is the King, however, so we cannot be sure he didn’t have the literal controller of BBC News called in, picked up by a protection officer, and hurled across the room.

He sleeps on the job

Harry writes about how hard his father works.

Often, he and Willy would “find him at his desk amid mountains of bulging postbags. More than once we discovered him, face on the desk, fast asleep. We’d shake his shoulders and up he’d bob, a piece of paper stuck to his forehead”.

That is no way to treat a man who is simply sniffing every letter he’s received before replying.