Prince Harry has opened up about his relationship with the late Caroline Flack for the first time. The Duke of Sussex has discussed their brief romance in his new memoir, Spare, which is due to be released next week. In it, he defends the former Love Island host after she was called his "bit of rough".
It was previously rumorued that the pair struck up a blossoming romance with Caroline, who died after taking her own life in 2020, after they met at a restaurant in 2009 with mutual friends. He wrote in his new book, titled Spare: "She wasn’t taken aback that I didn’t recognise her. She didn’t have a big ego."
He also went on to share the sad reason their short-live relationship came to an end in which he blamed a picture leaking of the pair into the press. "Very soon after they papped me and Flack, those photos set off a frenzy", he writes. "Within hours a mob was camped outside Flack’s parents’ house, and all her friends’ houses, and her grandparents’ house."
"She was described in one paper as my 'bit of rough', because she once worked in a factory or something. Jesus, I thought, are we really such a country of insufferable snobs? We kept on, I think, because we genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, and because we didn’t want to admit defeat at the hands of these a****."
He continued: "But the relationship was tainted, irredeemably, and in time we realised it just wasn’t worth the grief and harassment. Especially for her family. Goodbye, we said. Goodbye and good luck."
Harry then recalled Caroline as being 'so light and funny' when they first met and shared his response to her tragic death. He said: "I felt so awful for her family. I remembered how they’d all suffered for her mortal sin of going out with me. She’d been so light and funny that night we met. The definition of carefree."
Caroline previously confirmed the romance in her own memoir, Storm in a C Cup, which was released in 2014. She wrote at the time: "I was no longer Caroline Flack, TV presenter, I was Caroline Flack, Prince Harry’s bit of rough. Once the story got out, that was it. We had to stop seeing each other."
Harry has been hitting the headlines as parts of his book, due for release next Tuesday (January 10), are leaked. The Duke of Sussex is also due to feature in a series of broadcast interviews ahead of the official publication date of Spare.
In the UK, he has sat down with Tom Bradby of ITV while in the US the duke has spoken to Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes on CBS News and Michael Strahan of Good Morning America, with both set to air on Sunday (January 8).
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