Prince William and his wife Kate were urged to “keep going” as they made their first public appearance since the publication of Prince Harry’s memoir – but remained tight-lipped over its revelations.
The British royal couple yesterday paid a visit to the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital just days after coming under fire from Harry, who laid bare the intimate details of several run-ins with the couple in his book, Spare, including a fight with Prince William.
On arrival, somebody in the crowd shouted: “Were you hurt by the comments in Harry’s book, sir?”
The couple either did not hear the comment or chose to ignore it.
Inside the building, patient Sylvia Staniford (81) gripped William’s hand tightly and said: “Keep going, keep going. Scousers love you.”
William smiled at her and replied: “Yes, I will.”
Mrs Staniford said afterwards: “Of course that was a reference to Harry. He knew what I was talking about.”
The couple posed for several selfies, stroked a therapy dog named Rosie and thanked nurses and healthcare workers for the “fantastic” jobs they were doing.
King Charles was also seen at a separate engagement in Scotland, where he appeared relaxed and made no mention of the family drama.
The furore is understood to have been firmly off limits for the charity workers and volunteers he met.
The 74-year-old, wearing a Hunter tartan kilt, toured the Aboyne & District Men’s Shed, which boasts a workshop and community space and is just a 20-minute drive from Balmoral.
He admired wood and stone carvings made by elderly men who meet up three times a week for craftwork and company. He showed enormous interest in a 1920s postbox bearing a “GR” insignia from the time of King George V.
Pointing at it with delight, he said: “He’s my great-grandfather.”
Meanwhile, Harry’s ghostwriter has defended Spare from claims of inaccuracies and historical errors, insisting mistakes are common in memoirs where “the line between memory and fact is blurry”.
JR Moehringer, the award-winning journalist and author, came to the defence of Prince Harry after the controversy surrounding his newly published memoir.
On Wednesday night, the writer shared a quote from Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir, which said: “The line between memory and fact is blurry, between interpretation and fact. There are inadvertent mistakes of those kinds out the wazoo.”
Mr Moehringer tweeted Harry’s words: “Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory, it does what it does...and there’s just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as there is in so-called objective facts.”
The New York-born author, who was reportedly paid $1m (€920,000) to write Spare, was coming to the defence of several highlighted inaccuracies, including that Harry was given an Xbox computer game console before they were manufactured and that he is a descendant of King Henry VI.
In his memoir, Harry writes of his “great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather” King Henry VI, who founded Eton College and died in 1471, despite the fact the king’s direct lineage ended after his son died childless at the Battle of Tewkesbury.
