“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. I’ve seen the videos,right,I looked back over it all. And the wet hands that we were shaking,we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet,but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.”
He adds:“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.”
The comments come after days of revelations from Harry’s book,which is officially published on Tuesday but was put on sale early in Spain.
In his memoirs,he says that he thinks his inability to cry in public may have stemmed from his family’s insistence on not openly showing emotion.
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In the Spanish edition of the book,Harry writes of the day he and his brother travelled to meet the crowds outside Kensington Palace:“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.”
He also wrote inSpare that after he and his brother spoke to mourners outside Kensington Palace,there was a discussion about the next day’s funeral.
The plan drawn up by palace officials was for Diana’s coffin to be carried on a gun carriage,drawn by the King’s Troop,Royal Horse Artillery,with her sons following on foot.
He says in the book:“It seemed like a lot to ask of two children. Several adults were horrified.”
He writes that his uncle,Earl Spencer,“flew into a rage”,saying:“You cannot force these children to walk behind their mother’s coffin. It’s a barbarity.” Earl Spencer has previously said that he felt he was lied to about the desire of the princes to walk behind their mother’s coffin. His alleged reaction at the meeting appeared to echo that of some who later witnessed the funeral cortège and said too much pressure had been put on the young princes.
However,when a suggestion was made at the meeting that Prince William,as the eldest,should walk behind the coffin alone,Prince Harry says he objected and said:“It didn’t seem right that Willy would have such a hard time without me.”
He adds that if their roles had been reversed,Prince William would not have wanted him to have to walk alone.
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In what could be a reference to public criticism at the time of the royal family’s reaction to Diana’s death,Prince Harry described the plan to have his brother walk behind the coffin as designed in all likelihood to “inspire compassion”.
In the end,as the world witnessed,Prince Harry joined the procession alongside Prince William,his grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh,Prince Charles and Earl Spencer.
In a moving passage of the book,which was published early in Spain,he recounts that he walked behind his mother’s casket “feeling numb”,keeping his fists clenched and his eyes focused on the road. He adds that the sight of Prince William in the corner of his eye had given him the strength to complete the grim task.