Who is royal biographer Omid Scobie?

Omid Scobie has now written two books about the royal family: Endgame - published November 28 - and Finding Freedom, which he wrote alongside Carolyn Durand and was released on August 11, 2020.

Both texts focus heavily on the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, starting with their first meeting and courtship, to their tensions with the wider royal family and eventual exit as working members.

Endgame has prompted a flurry of controversy as it claims that two members of the royal family were accused of raising questions about the skin colour of Harry and Meghan's son, Archie, before he was born.

A translated version of the new book was then taken off shelves in the Netherlands, after copies appeared to name the senior royals accused.

Other notable claims in the book include the fact that King Charles III likes to have his shoelaces ironed and that the Coronation celebrations were according to Downing Street's "full-fat" vision for the festivities, rather than the scaled-back events envisioned by Buckingham Palace.

It is details such as these that have drawn readers to Mr Scobie's books. But who is the author and where does his information come from?

Who is Omid Scobie?

Omid Scobie is a British journalist who works as the royal editor for monthly fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar and regularly commentates on royal news stories.

Mr Scobie is thought to have been born in Wales and grew up in Oxford, attending fee-paying independent schools and then a state sixth form, and went on to study journalism at London College of Communication at University of the Arts London.

The journalist then worked for a series of outlets, including Heat magazine and Us Weekly, covering celebrity news.

As Mr Scobie started to do more reporting on the royal family, he sought to grow his contacts.

"I was going to work my damn hardest to make sure I was close to every single person in their lives, and become someone that, at the very least, people at the palace feel they can come to when they need to correct a story," he told The Sunday Times.

Over years of reporting on the royal family, particularly in a favourable way when it came to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Mr Scobie gained the nickname "Meghan's mouthpiece".

What qualifies him to write about the royal family?

Mr Scobie's level of familiarity with the royal family is unclear.

He told The Times that he was "not her [Meghan's] friend", but did say that he had mutual friends with the Duchess of Sussex.

"And that definitely helps with getting information and breaking details," he told the newspaper.

Talking to Tatler magazine about the release of Finding Freedom, Mr Scobie said friends of the duchess had wanted to give him details as to how she was feeling.

"People who said no at the beginning, as they saw things getting worse, suddenly replied to an email we'd sent six or seven months to a year earlier - people who'd just grown increasingly frustrated with the stuff they'd seen and how far [different] that is to what really goes on," he said, as first published by Tatler in November 2020.

Mr Scobie was reportedly one of three journalists to accompany Meghan on her last solo appearance as a working royal.

The journalist wrote in Harper's Bazaar that the pair shared "a big farewell hug" at Buckingham Palace as the duchess prepared to leave England and head back to the United States.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the extracts from Mr Scobie's book.

The journalist then gave evidence on behalf of Prince Harry in a High Court trial in May, saying that he had been taught how to hack voice messages while working at a tabloid paper.

In his witness statement, Mr Scobie said: "I was taken aback by what seemed completely immoral and I never carried out the task."

He denied that his evidence about Piers Morgan being told about an incident of phone hacking was a “false memory” made up to help Prince Harry.

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