The extraordinary prospect of the King of England’s son not attending his coronation came a step closer today, after Prince Harry suggested he would not attend the event unless his family were first ready “to sit down and talk.”
Harry explicitly refused to say if he would attend his father’s coronation, due to take place in May this year, in a trailer released Thursday for an interview to promote his forthcoming biography, Spare.
In the clip, interviewer Tom Bradby asks Prince Harry: “If you are invited to the coronation will you come?”
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Harry replies: “There’s a lot that can happen between now and then. But, the door is always open. The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed and I really hope that they’re willing to sit down and talk about it.”
The astonishingly hostile response comes after careful palace briefings that Harry and Meghan would be invited to the coronation in May.
In his accession speech, Charles mentioned Harry and Meghan by name, saying he loved them, in what was seen as a major and public olive branch, however, Harry has since accused his family of showing no willingness to reconcile.
Bradby is a friend of Harry and Meghan’s, and was invited to their wedding. He also used to be a friend of William’s—and was also invited to his wedding—but the relationship is understood to have cooled since Bradby’s famous “Are you OK?” interview with Meghan that foreshadowed Harry and Meghan’s departure from royal life. Speaking to the Radio Times in June 2022 Bradby said he felt “a little bit caught in the middle” of the brothers’ argument.
In the new trailer, Bradby asks Harry if he “still believes” in the monarchy to which Harry replies, “Yes.”
However when Bradby asks, “Do you believe you will play a part in its future?” Harry says: “I don’t know.”
Bradby also challenges Harry on the ethics of his apparent hypocrisy in betraying his family’s secrets, saying: “Some people will say you’ve railed against invasions of your privacy all your life and the accusation will be, here are you invading the privacy of your nearest and dearest without permission. That will be the accusation.”
Harry responds: “That would be the accusation from people that don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”
Bradby then says, “Wouldn’t your brother say to you, ‘Harry, how could you do this to me after everything? After everything we went through?’ Wouldn’t that be what he would say?”
Harry responds, icily: “He would probably say all sorts of different things.”
In the first ITV trailer earlier this week, Prince Harry said of his family: “They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile… I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.”
King Charles and Prince William’s offices have declined to comment on the extracts or trailers, and are currently not expected to respond to the book when published.
