It comes as the ghostwriter behind Spare, released earlier this week, spoke about the difference between “memory and fact” amid accusations of errors.
Spare has become the United Kingdom's fastest selling non-fiction book ever, its publisher say, after days of TV interviews, leaks and a mistaken early release of the memoir containing intimate revelations about the British royal family.
The book has garnered attention around the world with its disclosures about Harry's personal struggles and its accusations about other royals, including his father King Charles III, stepmother Camilla, the Queen Consort, and elder brother Prince William.
Harry and his American wife Meghan, known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are no longer working royals and now live in the United States.
A post on Air New Zealand's Twitter page poked fun at Harry’s claims that Meghan booked an Air New Zealand flight for her father in 2018, writing, “Introducing #SussexClass, apparently coming soon.”
“Any Spare seats?” one person joked in the comments.
"Well played, Air NZ" says another.
New Zealand's national carrier was responding to claims about a flight from Mexico to the United Kingdom Meghan had apparently booked for Thomas Markle, who was embattled in a controversy surrounding his staged photographs for media at the time in 2018.
“We told him, leave Mexico right now: A whole new level of harassment is about to rain down on you, so come to Britain. Now,” Harry wrote.
“Air New Zealand, first class, booked and paid for by Meg.”
But the airline says it never operated flights between those two countries, nor does it offer first class flights.
Air New Zealand responded to general questions from The New Zealand Herald by pointing out it only provides Business Premier fares, rather than first class as the book claimed.
“We’ve never had flights between Mexico and the UK. And we only have Business Premier,” an spokesperson said.
Other inconsistencies have raised questions over whether other parts of Harry’s book might be incorrect, including claims about where he was when he learnt of the death of his great-grandmother, The Queen Mother, and a gift his mother Princess Diana bought for him in 1997 that didn’t exist until four years later.
The book does reveal that Harry and Meghan considered moving to New Zealand when they announced their “stepping back as ‘senior’ members” of the royal family in January 2020.
“What if we could spend at least part of each year somewhere far away ... beyond the reach of the press? The question was ... where? We talked about New Zealand,” Harry says in Spare.
Ghostwriter defends mistakes
The book's ghostwriter, JR Moehringer, has brushed off the “inadvertent mistakes” in the book, sharing a quote from The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr on Twitter.
“The line between memory and fact is blurry, interpretation and fact,” the excerpt reads.
“There are inadvertent mistakes of those kinds out of the wazoo.”
Spare hit shelves around the world and in New Zealand on Wednesday.
In it, the 38-year-old prince did not hold back in the at times scathing tell-all, claiming that heir to the throne Prince William (40) physically assaulted him in 2019.
But several readers have accused him of making “factual errors” in the book. For example, he claimed he was at boarding school at Eton when he heard of the Queen Mother’s death in March 2002.
In fact, the teenage Prince Harry was on a ski trip in Switzerland at the time with William and his father Charles, who became the King earlier this year after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth.
Harry also wrote that King Henry VI was his “great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,” but many have pointed out that the monarch only had one son, who was killed in battle and left behind no children.
“Prince Harry cannot even fact-check his own family tree given that he remains under the impression he is descendant from King Henry VI, whose son died childless at 17,” one person wrote. “But sure, let’s all believe.”
Harry himself is yet to address the errors, telling Stephen Colbert in an interview earlier this week that his book is “history [getting] it right”.
Several people responded to this statement on Twitter, with one writing: “The problem with his facts being off is that he is writing this for ‘history’,” while another called it “gaslighting”.
However, others have praised Moehringer for helping Harry to “speak his truth so clearly”.
Spare is the latest revelatory offering from Harry and Meghan, since they stepped down from royal duties in 2020, and follows their Netflix documentary last month.
The Royal Family has not commented on the book or the interviews and is unlikely to do so.
Buckingham Palace has said it would not comment on any of the allegations in Spare.
- NZ Herald, Reuters
