Harry’s complete lack of self-doubt is a problem for the royal family

Watching Prince Harry being interviewed by Tom Bradby, one thing was clear: the man is in deadly earnest. He is a true believer. And that, I think, makes him very dangerous to the monarchy indeed.

He came across well: modest, steely, scrupulously honest by his own lights, unshakably coherent in his view of the world and in his view of his place in it. He combined the moral authority of a victim of trauma with the unruffled calm of the fanatic. It was an extraordinarily, dangerously seductive performance. Moral clarity, a simple story, an injury nobly borne, a righteous crusade against a corrupt institution – these are the things that public opinion finds it very easy to get behind. Reticence, emotional stiltedness, institutional complexity, human frailty: not so much.  

The book extracts, incidentally, artfully burnished that seduction. They speak very well of his ghostwriter. Crisp little writerly details studded the vignettes that punctuated their conversation. For example, when after his mother’s death he and his brother smiled and greeted mourners outside Kensington Palace, he recalls shaking ‘wet hands’; the freely flowing tears of people who’d never met Diana contrasted with the forced reserve of those who had been closer to her than anyone in the world.