Prince Harry speaks of ‘guilt’ he felt after Diana’s death in latest ITV trailer

In a trailer released by ITV ahead of Sunday's broadcast of Harry: The Interview, the Duke of Sussex reveals he has only cried once over the death of his mother

Prince Harry has described the guilt he felt while walking outside Kensington Palace after his mother’s death.

His mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997 after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris.

The Duke of Sussex, who was aged just 12 when his mother died, said he only cried once after his mother’s death – at her burial.

His latest comments were taken from a new trailer for his upcoming ITV interview with ITV News at Ten presenter Tom Bradby.

“Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died,” he said.

“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.

“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling.”

The duke also recalls that mourners’ hands were wet with tears.

He said: “We couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.

“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.”

In a series of clips from the duke’s ITV conversation released throughout the week, Prince Harry said he wants his father and brother back, but also said "staying silent" won’t make things any better with his family.

He also refused to commit to coming to the historic coronation of his own father, the King, later this year.

The interview is the first of four broadcast appearances over the coming days, with Harry also speaking to Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes on CBS News on Sunday night, Michael Strahan of Good Morning America on Monday and Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on CBS on Wednesday morning UK time.

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Harry's interview with ITV is due to be broadcast on Sunday ahead of the publication of his much-anticipated memoir, Spare. The interviews comes at the end of a week that has seen several explosive claims emerge from the memoir, which was accidentally released early in Spain.

Harry reportedly says in the book he thinks that he is unable to cry in public because of his family’s preference for not showing emotion. According to the Telegraph, Harry writes: “I disliked the touch of those hands. What’s more, I disliked how they made me feel: guilty. “Why was there all that crying from people when I neither cried nor had cried? “I wanted to cry, and I had tried, because my mother’s life had been so sad… but I couldn’t… not a drop. “Perhaps I had learnt too well, had absorbed too thoroughly the family maxim that crying was never an option – never.”

The Telegraph also reports the book details claims of heated behind-the-scenes arguments between Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, and the royal family about whether 12-year-old Harry and 15-year-old William should walk behind their mother’s coffin at her funeral. The prince’s uncle “flew into a rage” at the idea, calling it “a barbarity”, Harry writes in Spare, recalling the Earl saying: “You cannot force these children to walk behind their mother’s coffin. It’s a barbarity!” But when an alternative plan had been suggested of William following his mother’s hearse on his own, Harry said he had objected. “It didn’t seem right that Willy would have such a hard time without me,” he says. Harry writes in the book that “It seemed like a lot to ask for two children”, adding: “Several adults were horrified”.

The controversial book has been the subject of headlines for days as excerpts were leaked detailing personal details of Harry’s love life, drug-taking and rifts within his family.

The Sun has reported that as well as the first alleged physical attack by his brother in 2019, Harry also claims that a “steaming” and “shouting” William grabbed his shirt as the pair held peace talks with their father in the gardens of Frogmore Cottage in 2021. Other controversial claims include that William and Kate encouraged him to wear the Nazi uniform that sparked outrage in 2005, and that he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving in Afghanistan. Harry: The Interview will be broadcast at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday