‘TERRIBLE BLOW’

King Charles’ Close Friend Attacks ‘Hurtful,’ ‘Cruelest’ Prince Harry

“Of course it was hurtful. You could see it, written all over his face,” Sir Nicholas Soames said of King Charles’ response to Harry’s attacks. "It was just painful beyond words.”

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The man said by some to be the king’s best friend has given an astonishing interview, excoriating Prince Harry for “hurtful” behavior of “the cruelest” kind toward his father.

The extraordinary interview with Sir Nicholas Soames was released by Times Radio at 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, just as the country was entering the final furlongs of coronation preparations and with Harry due to arrive in the country any hour for the coronation on Saturday.

The explosive allegations matter because Soames, while not explicitly named as a surrogate for the king, had likely been authorized to speak by the king’s office, and appeared to have a talking point that Harry’s behavior, in publishing a memoir and giving interviews that have attacked the family, had deeply wounded and upset the king.

While the royals have tried hard to starve Harry of the oxygen of publicity so far, Soames’ pre-emptive strike on his character represents a rare moment of naked PR realpolitik from the palace. The days of pretending Harry isn’t happening to this coronation will come to a shuddering halt the moment Harry, who is expected to step off a plane from L.A. sometime Friday and make a beeline for his soon-to-be-vacated home Frogmore Cottage, is spotted on British soil.

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Soames’ comments matter. A grandson of Winston Churchill, he is a sufficiently close friend of Charles, who he has known since he was 12, that he asked Charles to be his best man at his wedding and served as equerry to him. He described himself as “entirely partial” in the interview, saying, “I love him and admire him very, very much indeed.”

Soames told Times Radio, in the course of a 30-minute interview praising the king, “In respect of Prince Harry, I just think it’s the most tragic. I mean, I can’t put myself in the position where my own son, if he did something like that to me, it would just be the cruelest… and one would mind.”

He added, “Of course, the king was very, very sad,” and said the situation was “tragic,” adding, “But, we all have families. We’ve all lived through it. But it was a terrible blow.”

Soames loyally supported the king’s decision to invite him, however, saying, “I think it would have been a great pity if Prince Harry hadn’t come to his father’s coronation. And he is coming and I just hope that we can keep all this in proportion. This day is about the king and the queen, not about Prince Harry.”

Soames was asked later in the interview how Queen Camilla felt about Harry but dodged the question saying he hadn’t discussed it with her, returning instead to how Harry’s public attacks on the family had affected Charles, saying, “Of course it was hurtful, you could see it, written all over his face. Put oneself in his position. It was just painful beyond words.”

A spokesperson for the king did not respond to a query by The Daily Beast asking if the comments by Soames accurately represented the views of the king.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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