Queen Elizabeth's royal aide seeks apology over misrepresentation in Prince Harry's Spare

The Queen's former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, has claimed that Prince Harry's newly released autobiography, Spare, suggests that he used aggressive language about the Prince and Meghan Markle.

• Prince Harry's autobiography, Spare, was released on January 10, 2023.
• The book made a number of claims about members of the Royal Family, and the employees working for the family.
• In other royal news, Prince Harry’s ghostwriter had something to say about all the alleged factual inaccuracies in Spare.

In one section of Prince Harry's new autobiography, the Prince made reference to the 'Fleet Street Jury' that appeared in an article for the Daily Mail. The article collected opinions from a variety of sources - some who had worked within the Royal Households - and asked them about their opinions when it came to Harry and Meghan's decision to step back as senior royals in 2020.

In his book, Prince Harry said, "Among [the jury] was the Queen’s ex-press secretary, who concluded, with his fellow jurors, that we should hereafter "’expect no mercy’. I shook my head. ‘No mercy’. The language of war?"

This reference from the Prince suggests that it could have been Dickie Arbiter, te Queen's ex-press secretary who made these comments in the article. While Dickie was included in the article, he did not make these comments. Similar comments were made by another contributor, Trevor Phillips, but he was not at any point the ex-press secretary to the Queen.

Speaking to The Independent, Dickie has made it clear that he wants an apology, "While I am not mentioned by name - referencing ‘the Queen’s ex-press secretary’ – it is by association that by being the only former courtier regularly contacted by the media, the author is pointing the finger at me."

"I wish to make it abundantly clear I was not asked to be a part of ‘jury’ and I certainly would not use words like ‘expect no mercy’. I am therefore seeking an acknowledgement from Penguin Random House for their recognition of this misrepresentational error," added Dickie.

The former aide also repeated this statement and requested a public apology in a comment made to another British newspaper. "I think as a number of people have interpreted the quote as coming from me, when clearly it wasn’t, that an apology is in order,” Arbiter told The Times. “There are a number of errors in the book and future copies should be corrected.”

Once again on Twitter, the aide asked, "What are @penguinrandom going to do about correcting this allegation against me - I never said anything of the sort. How about a public apology pdq?"

A number of other people and commentators have highlighted potential inaccuracies in Prince Harry's autobiography, and many have criticized the Prince and the publishers for not ensuring fact-checkers interrogated all of the claims made by the Prince.