Paul Burrell slams Prince Harry over US interviews saying he’s ‘blinded’ by Meghan Markle

On the Sussexes’ cries for help to the Royal Family

‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect. We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’

On Harry’s family ‘stopping’ them from quitting 

‘That feeling of being trapped within the family, there was no option to leave. Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, “You can’t do this”, And it’s like, “Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?”. She [Meghan] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’ 

On Meghan’s wish to ‘end her life’

‘Meghan decided to share with me the suicidal thoughts and the practicalities of how she was going to end her life.

‘The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now to be put in a position of losing another woman in my life — with a baby inside of her, our baby.

‘The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought. She hadn’t “lost it.” She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane’. 

On Prince Charles’ parenting

‘My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to both William and I, ‘Well it was like that for me so it’s going to be like that for you’,’ Prince Harry says in the new documentary.

‘That doesn’t make sense. Just because you suffered doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer, in fact quite the opposite.

‘If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever negative experiences you had, that you can make it right for your kids’.

On ‘smears’ from ‘The Firm’

‘Before the Oprah interview had aired, because of the combined efforts of The Firm and the media to smear her, I was woken up in the middle of the night to her crying into her pillow because she doesn’t want to wake me up because I’m already carrying too much. That’s heartbreaking.’ 

And trying to repair the relationship

‘I like to think that we were able to speak truths in the most compassionate way possible, therefore leaving an opening for reconciliation and healing’

On Meghan helping Harry into therapy

‘I saw GPs. I saw doctors. I saw therapists. I saw alternative therapists. I saw all sorts of people, but it was meeting and being with Meghan I knew that if I didn’t do the therapy and fix myself that I was going to lose this woman who I could see spending the rest of my life with.

‘When she said, “I think you need to see someone,” it was in reaction to an argument that we had. And in that argument not knowing about it, I reverted back to 12-year-old Harry.’ 

Using booze and drugs to cope with his mother’s death

‘I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.’

The royal said he would drink a week’s worth of alcohol on a Friday or Saturday night ‘not because I was enjoying it but because I was trying to mask something’.