Prince Harry gets emotional, invokes Princess Diana in testimony against UK tabloids


However, in December 2007 Harry began serving a tour of duty in Afghanistan after the British media agreed to not publicize details of his service; his tour ended in February 2008 after foreign news outlets reported his deployment. Because of Princess Diana’s desire that Harry and his elder brother, Prince William, experience the world beyond royal privilege, she took them as boys on public transportation and to fast food restaurants and stood in line with them at Disney World. In 2018 Harry married Meghan Markle, and two years later the couple stopped being working members of the British royal family. On Jan. 21, Harry gave evidence earlier than scheduled and spoke with visible emotion about the toll the legal fight — and years of press scrutiny — has taken on his family. They are still referred to as “His/Her Royal Highness” in legal and private settings. Despite the palace congratulating the Duke and Duchess on the birth of their daughter Lilibet in June 2021, a few days later the BBC reported that Harry and Meghan had not sought the permission of the Queen before naming their daughter with her personal family nickname.
In March 2020, the couple took Splash UK to court after the Duchess and their son were photographed without permission during a “private family outing” while staying in Canada. His appearance marked the first time a member of the royal family had been cross-examined in court since Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, appeared as a witness in court in 1891. In his lawsuit, Harry sought damages in excess of £200,000 from the publisher of the News of the World and The Sun and alleged an earlier agreement between News Group Newspapers (NGN) and the royal family which would see he and William not take legal action in return for an apology had not been honoured. In January 2020, the Duke and Duchess announced that they were stepping back from their role as senior members of the royal family, and would balance their time between the United Kingdom and North America. On Wednesday, he returned to the courtroom to testify about the effects of the period in the 2000s when his private matters often became front-page news—much to Harry’s surprise. “It’s not a nice experience for anyone to find themselves in court,” a source close to the prince told the Times earlier this month.
On World AIDS Day, Harry and Rihanna helped publicise HIV testing by taking the test themselves. After taking part in an unfinished trip to the North Pole with Walking With The Wounded in 2011, Harry joined the charity’s 200-mile expedition to the South Pole in Antarctica during December 2013, accompanying twelve injured servicemen and women from the UK, harry casino login the US and the Commonwealth. Spare was officially published on 10 January 2023 in 16 languages, and it has since become the UK’s fastest selling non-fiction book with 400,000 confirmed sales in all formats on publication day. The memoir is reportedly the first of a four-book publishing deal that is set to include a second book by Harry and a wellness guide by Meghan. In October 2021, Harry and Meghan announced their partnership with Ethic, a sustainable investment firm based in New York City, which also manages the couple’s investments. In the following month, UCAS reported an increase in the percentage of students declaring mental health issues on their university applications, citing self-help books and Harry’s statements on his struggles with “panic attacks and anxiety” as contributing factors.
Judge Carl Nichols ordered that redacted versions of the court documents be released by 18 March 2025. He stated that he had struggled with aggression, experienced anxiety during royal engagements, and had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions”. He adds in the memoir that he smoked cannabis at Eton and in the gardens Kensington Palace, though he later told a court that “he never smoked in his father’s house”. In 2002, it was reported that, with Charles’s encouragement, Harry had visited a drug-rehabilitation unit to speak with recovering drug addicts after it emerged that he had been smoking cannabis and drinking at his father’s Highgrove House and at a local pub in the summer of 2001.

Sandhurst; Blues and Royals; deployment to Afghanistan

  • Harry, though, has spent years aggressively challenging both the press and the government of his native country, ever since he stopped getting legal advice from Queen Elizabeth II’s lawyers and instead hired his own legal representation.
  • (Lawyers for the government denied that Harry was treated unfavorably.) Harry was so upset about this issue in particular that he wrote about it Spare, choosing pseudonyms to describe the courtiers he believes were responsible for the decision.
  • In January 2020, Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as working members of the royal family and relocated to Southern California.
  • In March 2021, it was reported that the Charity Commission for England and Wales was conducting a review of the Sussex Royal organisation in a “regulatory and compliance case” regarding its conduct under charity law during dissolution.
  • In June 2011, Clarence House announced that Harry would be available for deployment in current operations in Afghanistan as an Apache helicopter pilot.
  • In view of their environmental activism, Harry and Meghan were criticised in August 2019 for reportedly taking four private jet journeys in 11 days, including one to Elton John’s home in Nice, France.

The case was settled later that year with Splash UK agreeing to no longer take unauthorised photos of the family. In January 2020, lawyers issued a legal warning to the press after paparazzi photographs were published in the media. In June 2023, Harry testified in the court case accusing former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan of horrific personal attacks and claimed that his phone had been hacked dating back to when he was still at Eton. At the beginning of trial, MGN apologised for one instance of unlawful information gathering against Harry and added that his legal challenge “warrants compensation”. Lawyers for the Mirror denied accessing Harry’s voicemail messages and other allegations, but admitted to instructing “private investigators to unlawfully obtain private information” about Harry on a single occasion that involved him visiting Chinawhite.

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“There’s a difference between public interest and what interests the public,” he said. Harry’s lawyers alleged that unlawfully gathered information was used in dozens of articles about the prince that had been published between 1996 and 2010. After more than six years of courtroom struggles, Harry may be getting ready to bury the hatchet. In June 2023, Harry became the first senior royal to testify in High Court since 1891, when his great-great-great-grandfather Edward VII testified for 20 minutes during a trial.

  • “By standing up here and taking a stand against them, this has continued to come after me,” Harry told the court, his voice cracking.
  • In July 2018, the Elton John AIDS Foundation announced that the Duke of Sussex and British singer Elton John were about to launch a global coalition called MenStar that would focus “on treating HIV infections in men”.
  • The commission later concluded that the foundation did not act unlawfully, but criticised the board of directors for expending a “substantial proportion of funds” to setting up and closing the charity.
  • The publisher agreed to cover Harry’s legal costs and pay damages reported to be in the region of £300,000.
  • Mr Justice Fancourt concluded Piers Morgan and other editors knew about the phone hacking at their publications and were involved in it.

In May 2018, it was reported that they had signed a two-year lease on WestfieldLarge, located on the Great Tew Estate in the Cotswolds. This earlier exchange of vows was not an official religious or legally recognised marriage. The couple later revealed in the 2021 television interview Oprah with Meghan and Harry that, three days before the ceremony, they had privately exchanged vows in their garden in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In September 2017, Harry and Markle made their first public appearance together at the Invictus Games in Toronto. On 8 November, eight days after the relationship was made public by the press, Harry directed his communications secretary to release a statement on his behalf expressing concern about pejorative and false comments made about his girlfriend by mainstream media and internet trolls.

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Referring to the press as “the devil”, he also alleged that “certain members” of his family were “in the bed” with them to “rehabilitate their image”. In January 2022, the couple mutually filed a legal complaint against The Times for an article reporting on Archewell raising less than $50,000 in 2020. A September 2020 article by The Times claiming an Invictus Games fundraiser had been cancelled due to its affiliation with a competitor of Netflix, Harry’s business partner, became the subject of a legal complaint issued by the Duke. News Group Newspapers, publisher of the Sun, emphasised that they had done nothing “unlawful” in sourcing the stories and no illegal payments were made. It was alleged that the Sun had made two payments amounting to £4,000 to the partner of a royal official in relation to stories published in June and July 2019 which detailed the nannying and god-parenting arrangements for Harry and Meghan’s son Archie. In April 2020, the Duke and Duchess announced that they would no longer cooperate with the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror and the Express.
In June 2011, Clarence House announced that Harry would be available for deployment in current operations in Afghanistan as an Apache helicopter pilot. In October 2008, it was announced that Harry would follow his brother, father, and uncle, in learning to fly military helicopters. It was later reported that Harry had helped Gurkha troops repel an attack by Taliban insurgents, and had carried out patrol duties in hostile areas while in Afghanistan. He was immediately withdrawn due to concerns that the publicity would endanger him and fellow soldiers.

Prince Harry gets emotional, invokes Princess Diana in testimony against UK tabloids

On 17 January 2014, the Ministry of Defence announced that Harry had completed his attachment to 3 Regiment Army Air Corps and would take up a staff officer role, SO3 (Defence Engagement), in HQ London District. Harry compared operating the Apache’s weapons systems in Afghanistan to playing video games. On 8 July 2013, the Ministry of Defence announced that he had successfully qualified as an Apache aircraft commander. On 10 September, within days of his arrival, it was reported that the Taliban had threatened his life. Later that month, it was reported that he had placed top of his class in extensive training undertaken at the Naval Air Facility, El Centro, California.

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It did, however, see Harry follow in his brother’s footsteps and the Spencer family tradition, as both his maternal grandfather and his maternal uncle attended Eton. It was also reported that Harry would inherit the larger share of the money left by the Queen Mother for the two brothers, as William is expected to ascend the throne and receive additional financial benefits. In 2002, The Times reported that Harry would share with his brother a disbursement of £4.9 million from trust funds established by their great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on their 21st birthdays, and a further £8 million on their 40th birthdays. Diana sought to give her sons a broader range of experiences and a clearer understanding of ordinary life than previous generations of royal children.

It was also revealed that during the proceedings Harry had leaked information via email to “a partner of Schillings” and to Johnny Mercer, for which he apologised to the court. Despite his lawyers’ attempts to have him pay no more than 50% of the Home Office’s legal costs of defending his challenge, the judge held him liable for 90% of the costs. In June 2023, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Harry’s legal fight with the Home Office had cost £502,236, with £492,000 covered by the state and the remaining £10,000 covered by Harry. In February 2023, a High Court judge ruled that the second case should be thrown out; however, the decision was later appealed by Harry’s legal team. Harry filed a lawsuit against the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police in August 2022, challenging the decision by RAVEC from January 2022 which stated that State security could not be made available to private individuals even if they wished to pay for it themselves.