Latest Tom Sykes from Daily Beast today,
Meghan and Harry’s Friends Have Collaborated With Journalists on New Biography, Publisher Says
“Written with the participation of those closest to the couple.”
These 10 words, taken from the online description of a new biography of Meghan and Harry to be published on Aug. 11, will strike a deep chill into British courtiers.
Sources close to Harry and Meghan have spent the week trying to play down the cooperation of the couple on the new Harper Collins book, revealed Sunday to be entitled, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family and authored by two of Meghan and Harry’s favored journalists, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Earlier this week, when details of the book first broke, a confidante of the couple told The Daily Beast, “This all seems rather over-exaggerated to be honest.”
The source said that the book was “not an official or endorsed biography,” and added, that it “does not claim to feature interviews with the duke and duchess.”
The precise form of words—if they didn’t give an interview why not just say they didn’t give a damn interview—stirred up our suspicions, and, when asked by The Daily Beast directly to clarify if Harry and Meghan had not given an interview for the book, the source wouldn’t say (although now the same source is somewhat firmer, saying the book didn’t include interviews with the couple).
So while the book is perhaps not going to be an empire-crumbling dish-fest on the scale of the 1992 Andrew Morton book Diana: Her True Story—for which Princess Diana made secret tape recordings detailing her innermost anguish, which were passed to Morton on her behalf—the description of the new book will do little to calm royal nerves.
It says: “Finding Freedom goes beyond the headlines to reveal unknown details of Harry and Meghan’s life together, dispelling the many rumors and misconceptions that plague the couple on both sides of the pond.
“With unique access and written with the participation of those closest to the couple, Finding Freedom is an honest, up-close, and disarming portrait of a confident, influential, and forward-thinking couple who are unafraid to break with tradition, determined to create a new path away from the spotlight, and dedicated to building a humanitarian legacy that will make a profound difference in the world.”
The extent to which Meghan’s pals briefed the media on her behalf with her knowledge is set to be a pivotal issue in her ongoing privacy and breach of copyright suit against the publishers of the Mail on Sunday.
The Mail claimed that it was entitled to reproduce a letter Meghan wrote to her dad because she had already effectively put its contents in the public domain by, they said, briefing some of her friends about its contents who then sat down to do an interview with People magazine.
Meghan stunned observers when she responded in a written filing that she had no idea the friends were doing an interview with People, suggesting that she was claiming five of her friends had sat down for an extensive media interview without even contacting her for her approval.
It is, therefore, interesting to see that Meghan’s camp are effectively making the same claim about her friends’ alleged co-operation with this new book, saying, “We don’t know who they have spoken to.”
Harry and Meghan’s office declined to comment.
Thanks to the unavoidable hypocrisy, he’s back to being less sugary now lol.
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Thanks for sending this in. LOL, the book must have quite a few “friend” revelations if they are already claiming it didn’t come from them.
Oh lookee, another puff piece from Tom Sykes, BIL to Euan Rellie and BFF to the SoHoes…