Prince Harry’s explosive and controversial memoir is flying off the shelves at Kiwi bookstores, but a new claim about a flight with Air New Zealand which the airline says it never flew is raising eyebrows.
Booksellers were gearing up for the first day of the book’s public release today, anticipating readers eager to grab the book behind the headlines.
Parts of the book have already been leaked online after it accidentally went on sale early in Spain, and Harry himself has given four revealing media interviews discussing the book’s contents in the days leading up to its release.
But despite so many revelations making headlines early - from details of Harry’s life growing up, to an alleged physical fight with his brother Prince William, frosty texts between Meghan Markle and Princess Kate, and casting Queen Consort Camilla as the “evil stepmother” - many Kiwis want to read the book for themselves, say booksellers and librarians.
“We are really happy with sales so far, it’s been ticking away very nicely on this rainy Wednesday morning,” Time Out bookstore manager Jenna Todd said.
Melissa Oliver of Unity Books’ Wellington store said, “It is definitely selling today, we’ve had a lot of interest in it even if people are just picking it up to look at in-store.
“A few conversations with customers show the spectrum of people reading the book. Some, who are avid royalists and others who want to see for themselves what he has to say. It’s been really interesting to hear how people are coming to the book.”
And the book includes a new bizarre claim about an Air New Zealand flight from Mexico to the United Kingdom which Harry’s wife Meghan Markle had apparently booked for her father.
“We told him, leave Mexico right now: A whole new level of harassment is about to rain down on you, so come to Britain. Now,” Harry wrote in Spare.
“Air New Zealand, first class, booked and paid for by Meg.”
The only problem; the airline says it never operated flights between those two countries.
Prince Harry also claimed his wife bought her father, embattled in a controversy surrounding his staged photographs for media at the time in 2018, a first-class ticket on the flight.
Air NZ responded to general questions from the Herald by pointing out it only provides Business Premier fares, rather than first-class as the book claimed.
“We’ve never had flights between Mexico and the UK. And we only have Business Premier,” an Air NZ spokesperson said.
Other inconsistencies have raised questions over whether other parts of Harry’s book might be incorrect, including claims about where he was when he learnt of the late Queen Elizabeth’s mother’s passing and a gift his mother bought for him in 1997 that didn’t exist until four years later.
The book does reveal that Harry and Meghan considered moving to New Zealand when they announced their “stepping back as ‘senior’ members” of the Royal Family in January 2020.
“What if we could spend at least part of each year somewhere far away ... beyond the reach of the press? The question was ... where? We talked about New Zealand,” Harry said in Spare.
