LONDON - Prince Harry’s eagerly awaited memoir will be published within a matter of weeks, his publisher has confirmed.

Penguin Random House announced the news yesterday, along with the book’s title – Spare – and the cover, which “shows a steely-looking” profile of Harry, said the BBC’s royal correspondent, Sean Coughlan.

Described by Coughlan as “a guaranteed best-seller before a page has been printed”, the book “has been the subject of intense speculation in the publishing world and among royal watchers”, said The New York Times.

What does Spare have in store for readers?

In a statement in July 2021 announcing the planned memoir, Harry said that he would be writing “not as the prince I was born, but as the man I have become”.

In a statement yesterday, Random House said that the book offers “full insights, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief” with “raw, unflinching honesty”.

Readers will be taken back “to one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror”, the publishers said.

It’s thought that the book will go on to detail the prince’s childhood, his military service in Afghanistan, and his family life, according to Hello! It will also “touch on” the Duke of Sussex’s decision to give up his duties as a senior royal in 2020, and “may dissect his rocky relationship” with his brother.

The choice of title is “presumably a nod to the phrase that monarchies need an ‘heir and a spare’”, said the BBC’s Coughlan. Harry “will tell his version of his life in that ambiguous territory of the ‘spare’”, he continued – being put under “the spotlight from birth” but “with no defined role”, said Vogue.

How long has Spare been in the making?

The New York Times reported that the book project “began even before” Harry and wife Meghan took part in a broadcast interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, in which they spoke with “unusual, unflattering candor about a subject often veiled in secrecy”.

The duke has worked with ghostwriter and Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer on Spare – and Harry’s choice of collaborator “offers a tantalising glimpse into what the tone and content of his book may be”, said the Mail on Sunday.

Moehringer is “known for probing the tensions inherent in father-son relationships”, and has been praised for his autobiography of Andre Agassi, Open. “If Agassi’s experience is anything to go by, the Duke of Sussex’s book is set to deliver bombshell after bombshell,” said the newspaper.

What will the book say about the royal family?

“The project has been shrouded in rumors, delays and secrecy,” said The New York Times. But friends of the ghostwriter told the Mail on Sunday “they have no doubt that Harry’s memoir will dig deep and contain bombshells”.

It’s “expected to take aim at members of the Royal family, as well as the institution [of the monarchy] as a whole”, said The Telegraph. Harry’s family have not seen the manuscript, or been given an opportunity to address claims made by the book through their lawyers, the newspaper continued.

Publishing sources told The New York Times that the prince “has gotten cold feet about the memoir’s contents at various points”.

The Mail on Sunday reported that the duke pushed for “significant” last-minute alterations to avoid a public backlash following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September.

A source told The Telegraph that these reports were “overblown”, but “any attacks” that the book makes on members of the royal family “could strike many readers as unseemly”, said The New York Times.

As preparations for King Charles’s coronation next year get underway, Harry’s relationship with his father and step-mother Camilla “is likely to come under the microscope”, said the Mail on Sunday.

When will the book be released?

The memoir was reportedly set to be released late this year, but the Queen’s death “threw a bit of a wrench into those plans”, said Parade.

The duke and the publishers “reached a deal over the respectful length of time to leave” after his grandmother’s death, said The Telegraph, and Spare will now be released on 10 January 2023 in 16 languages. An audio version of the book will also be read by Harry, and profits from the book’s sales will be donated to charity.

It will be “a delicate moment for the British monarchy and public,” said The New York Times. “Damaging revelations could hurt” relationships within the royal family, “but holding back could dampen sales” – and “erode Harry’s self-made image as the rebellious, truth-telling prince”.

Random House “certainly” thinks the book will “be a global bestseller”, said the Mail on Sunday. A source told the newspaper that the manuscript was “being guarded like Fort Knox”.

Why does Harry want to publish his story?

Harry has said that he hopes his memoir will “help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think”.

Some commentators have drawn parallels with his late mother’s biography Diana: Her True Story, in Her Own Words, written by Andrew Morton in 1992.

The tell-all book covered the difficulties in Diana and Charles’s marriage, her eating disorders and more.

“Harry’s memoir will resurface a particular agony for Charles,” royal commentator Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers, told The Daily Beast shortly before the Queen’s death.

Brown predicted that the memoir would explore Harry’s relationship with his mother, potentially causing awkwardness for Camilla, Charles’s Queen Consort.

“The Queen was re-stabilized after the death of Diana, whereas Charles has continually battled to end those ghosts,” Brown said. “The rehabilitation of Camilla’s image has been utterly successful, but she lives in dread of Harry’s book. In some ways, Diana’s ghost still rattles at the gate.”

Some pundits have suggested that Harry might also be seeking to tell his side of the story to counter damaging newspaper articles. The duke won the first stage of his legal claim against the Mail on Sunday’s publisher Associated Newspapers over a series of articles that he claimed caused “serious damage to his reputation and substantial hurt, embarrassment and distress which is continuing”.

A judge ruled in July that the articles about Harry were defamatory, although the paper can still try to defend the articles, for example by claiming they were true.

Harry’s wife Meghan also won a separate case last December against the Mail on Sunday for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement, after the paper published a letter that she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle.