Harry says royals have shown no willingness to reconcile

Royal Editor Chris Ship recaps the stand-out moments from the interview

The Duke of Sussex’s first interview about his controversial memoir, Spare, aired on ITV ahead of the book’s launch.

In the interview with Bradby, which aired from 9pm on Sunday, Harry touches on his mother's death, family fallouts and more.

Royals have shown no willingness to reconcile, Harry says

Bradby puts to Harry that by making public claims about the royal family, "you haven't so much burnt your bridges as taken a flame thrower to them".

"Well," Harry retorted. "They've shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile. And I'm not sure how honesty is burning bridges. You know, silence only allows the abuser to abuse."

Prince Harry denies he and Meghan said the royal family was racist

Harry denied that he and Meghan ever accused the royal family of racism, arguing that there is a "difference between racism and unconscious bias".

Bradby asked about the couple's sit-down with Oprah Winfrey last year.

Meghan claimed to Winfrey that when she was pregnant with Archie there were "concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born".

In Sunday's interview, Bradby said: "In the Oprah interview, you accuse members of your family of racism..."

"No," Harry interjected. "The British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention 'they're racists'?"

Bradby said: "She said there were troubling comments about Archie's skin colour. Wouldn't you describe that as essentially racist?"

Harry responded that he would not describe the incident as racist, "not having lived within that family".

Harry suggests Camilla leaked private conversation with William

In his memoir, Harry said that the Queen Consort Camilla met privately with him and William before she married their father.

"Shortly after our private summits with her, she began to play the long game. A campaign aimed at marriage, and eventually the Crown, with Pa’s blessing we presumed," Harry wrote.

When asked about this excerpt, Harry told Bradby: "Stories began to appear everywhere in all the papers about her private conversation with Willie, stories that contained pinpoint accurate details, none of which had come from Willie, of course. They could only have been leaked by the other one other person present."

Harry saw photos of Princess Diana at the scene of her death In the interview, Harry described the moment his father told him about the death of his mother, Princess Diana. The Duke of Sussex was aged just 12 when Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris. Harry told Bradby that when writing his memoir, he took himself back to the moment when his father shared the news with him.

He said: “Only now… did I really think about how many hours he'd been awake. And the compassion that I have for him as a parent, having to sit with that for many, many hours, ringing up friends of his, trying to work out, ‘how the hell do I break this to my two sons?’”

The Duke of Sussex added that he experienced “post-traumatic stress” from his mother’s passing. He also revealed that he asked to be shown photos of his mother at the scene of her death. “I'd heard people talking about there being photographs. By this point, I was starting to understand the involvement of the paparazzi chasing her,” he said. “And to this day, I will remain eternally grateful for [Harry's then private secretary] Jamie for showing me what he believed I needed to see, but removing the stuff that he knew I didn't need to see.”

William and Kate didn’t get on with Meghan from the get-go, Harry says

The Duke of Sussex said he had put a lot of hope into the idea the four of them would get along but stereotyping caused a “bit of a barrier” to the Prince and Princess of Wales welcoming Meghan.

Bradby said the impression was that his brother William and sister-in-law Kate did not get on “almost from the get-go” with Meghan, to which Harry replied: “Yeah, fair.”

When asked what the reason was, he said: “Lots of different reasons … I had put a lot of hope in the idea that it’d be William and Kate and me and whoever. “I thought the four of us would bring me and William closer together, we could go out and do work together, which I did a lot as the third wheel to them, which was fun at times but also, I guess, slightly awkward at times as well. “I don’t think they were ever expecting me to get… into a relationship with someone like Meghan who had a very successful career.”

Some members of the royal family got into bed 'with the devil'

Harry told Bradby: "After many, many years of lies being told about me and my family, there comes a point where, going back to the relationship between, certain members of the family and the tabloid press, those certain members have decided to get in the bed with the devil."

Harry claims he and William had a week-long dispute...over a beard

The Duke of Sussex said he asked the late Queen for permission to keep his beard for his own wedding, which she allowed, but his brother was unhappy. Asked what the disagreement was actually about, Harry told Bradby: “I think a lot of it is to do with – I mean I refer to it as heir/spare but also older brother/younger brother – there’s a level of competition there. “And again, writing this, I remembered that William had a beard himself and that granny and other people...told him that he had to shave it off.

“I think William found it hard that other people told him to shave it off, and yet here I was on my wedding day wearing military uniform, no longer in the military, but believing as though I should shave it off before my wedding day. “And I said ‘well I don’t believe that Meghan’s going to recognise me if she comes up the aisle and sees me beardless’.”

Harry describes relationship with William as 'heartbreaking'

The Duke of Sussex said it was “heartbreaking” that he “simply didn’t believe” his brother when he said he wanted him to be happy and used the words “on mummy’s life” at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral.

In his book Spare, Harry described the phrase as a “universal password” or a “secret code” between the pair, which he said they had used for 25 years “for when one of us needed to be heard”. Harry told Bradby: “It is heartbreaking. This whole thing is completely, not just unnecessary, it’s incredibly sad."

At another point in the interview, he said: "I love my father. I love my brother. I love my family. I will always do. Nothing of what I've done in this book or otherwise has ever been to harm them or hurt them."

Duke feels 'relief' that Netflix documentary and memoir are complete

Questioned on whether he was “looking back too much”, the duke said: “There are two sides to every story, so it’s been – it’s been a painful process – cathartic at times, but going back over old ground to be able to get these projects right has taken a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of relief now that both these projects have been complete. “Now we can focus on looking forward and I’m excited about that."

He said that he's sure he "got things wrong, but I’ve continued over the last three, four years, to ask to tell me, what we got wrong, so that we can address it and apologise for those things.

"But every single time I’ve asked, I’ve received nothing in response."

'I'm very happy, I'm very at peace'

Harry told Bradby he's happy, at peace and "in a better place than I’ve ever been".

"I think that probably angers some people, infuriates others...I’ve got two beautiful kids and an amazing wife -the happiness in my family now, I have never felt anywhere else before," he said.

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