Harry condemns royal family's 'deafening silence' on Jeremy Clarkson's Sun article on Meghan Markle
Prince Harry has criticised the royal family's "silence" on Jeremy Clarkson's "horrific" newspaper column about Meghan Markle.
Last month, broadcaster Clarkson wrote in The Sun that he "hated" the Duchess of Sussex and dreamt of her being forced "to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain" while crowds threw excrement at her.
The article became the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s most complained about article with more than 17,500 complaints, more than the press regulator received in the whole of 2021.
In an interview with ITV, Harry said Buckingham Palace's "silence" in response to the column was "deafening".
He told ITV News presenter Tom Bradby: "Not only is what [Clarkson] said horrific and hurtful and cruel towards my wife, but it also encourages other people around the UK and around the world, men particularly, to go and think that it's acceptable to treat women that way."
Harry then refers to the Queen Consort Camilla, who for years has campaigned for female victims of violence.
The duke said: "To use my stepmother's words recently as well, there is a global pandemic of violence against women.
"It's no longer a case of me asking for accountability, but at this point, the world is asking for accountability and the world is asking for some form of comment from the monarchy. But the silence is deafening, to put it mildly."
In the article in question, former Top Gear host Clarkson wrote that he "hated" Meghan "on a cellular level" in the article.
He also said that he dreamed of Meghan being forced "to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant 'Shame!' and throw lumps of excrement at her", adding, "everyone who’s my age thinks the same way".
After the backlash, Clarkson said he was "horrified to have caused so much hurt".
He said in a tweet, "Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game Of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future."
Backlash over the article came from high-profile figures including Nicola Sturgeon, Carol Vorderman and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
It followed the broadcast of Harry and Meghan’s explosive six-part Netflix documentary, in which the couple made allegations of mistreatment by the royal family.
In the interview with ITV, screened on Sunday night, Harry also told Bradby about the "guilt" he felt while walking outside Kensington Palace after his mother’s death.
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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.
“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.”
Harry spoke to ITV ahead of the release of his much-anticipated memoir, Spare.
He will also talk 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.This week that has already seen several explosive claims emerge from the memoir, as it was accidentally released early in Spain.